Job Openings Senior Program Associate

About the job Senior Program Associate

About CEGIS

Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS – pronounced See-Jis) aims to improve lives by helping Indian state governments deliver better development outcomes. We believe that the most impactful lever for accelerating national development is to improve governance and state capacity to better deliver core public services at scale.

Informed by cutting-edge research and evidence as well as a practical orientation toward implementable ideas, CEGIS works with state governments in India to enable a transformative improvement in their functioning. CEGISs vision and Theory of Change (ToC) are an outcome of extensive research done by Prof. Karthik Muralidharan (CEGIS Co-Founder and Scientific Director) and outlined in his multiple award-winning, national bestselling book Accelerating India's Development, and enabled by strategic philanthropic support provided by Ashish Dhawan (CEGIS Co-Founder).

CEGIS Approach and Model of Functioning:

CEGISs solutions to enhance governance are co-created with state governments in a state-led way, where we focus on deep partnerships with states using an iterative cycle of think-demonstrate-document-transfer. We work closely with the top bureaucratic leadership, front-line workers and public officials in Finance, Planning, Human Resources and priority line departments like education, health, and women and child development. Many of our solutions reflect ideas outlined in the book Accelerating India's Development, and these solutions are constantly refined based on real-time feedback and are designed to both be customized to the contexts we are working in, and to create templates that can provide the starting point for replication across contexts.

Our focus areas reflect evidence that key characteristics of high-performing organisations include (a) measuring outcomes through reliable, high quality data that enables goal setting and progress monitoring; (b) strategic use of personnel – competency based hiring and training, skilling, and performance appraisals to determine job assignments, pay, and promotions – to achieve the goals above; (c) strategic budgeting where resource allocation and revenue collection are based on evidence and cost-effectiveness; (d) and creating efficient systems to leverage external actors (including for-profit and nonprofit organisations). CEGIS partners with states to improve capacity by focusing on these pillars of State effectiveness, and aims to also integrate these horizontal governance improvements into integrated sectoral roadmaps to accelerate the achievement of state and national development outcomes.

Internally, CEGIS is organized into solutions teams that lead the design and technical quality control of our research and evidence-backed approaches to improving governance and state capacity; delivery" teams that lead state-facing work to contextualize the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organization to function smoothly.

CEGIS@6 to CEGIS@10: Building on momentum to catalyse national development

Since its incorporation in 2019, CEGIS has gained significant momentum in building strong collaborations with state government(s) as a trusted partner who can provide both thought leadership and implementation support on key governance reforms. CEGIS position as a non-profit that does not take any funding from the government (other than in-kind contributions of office space/staff) has been a key enabler in earning this trust.

Beginning with 1 state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across 9 Indian states (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh). We also partner with union agencies/ministries such as Capacity Building Commission, Ministry of Women & Child Development (MoWCD), and Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to share insights from our state-level work to inform national-level guidelines and dissemination to other states. Finally, we also take on selected work at the district level to design and test implementation templates.

From a small group of founding members, we have grown to become a team of 150+ members located across the country, and expect to grow to over 200 in the coming year. Led by a former senior civil-servant with deep governance experience; state and solution team leads with decades of domain expertise; and enabling functions led by professionals with considerable corporate experience, the team at CEGIS brings together knowledge and experience that spans various sectors – from development economics, research, governance, management consulting, and social entrepreneurship.

Over the last 6 years, CEGIS has also garnered support for our vision and theory of change from several foundations and philanthropists whose partnership has enabled us to build our organisational capacity as well as continue to experiment and improve our solution design to augment state capacity and governance. With the rapidly growing demand for CEGISs offerings, CEGIS is well-positioned to play a key role in accelerating India's development.

To explore what the mission of CEGIS is and the impact we hope to have, please take a look at this video of our CEO, Dr Vijay Pingale.

About the Outcome Measurement Team at CEGIS

Within CEGIS, the Outcome Measurement (OM) teams role is to support the institutionalisation of data-driven decision-making by setting up the required infrastructure and technical capacity with the Planning department and relevant line departments in the state.

Position Summary

The Senior Program Associate – Outcomes Vertical will play an important role in strengthening the quality, consistency, and scalability of CEGIS's Outcomes Management (OM) practice across state engagements. The role sits at the intersection of technical analysis, knowledge building, and organisational capability — providing analytical and diagnostic support to state teams, developing frameworks and toolkits that standardise OM implementation, and contributing to learning and onboarding systems that build OM capacity across the organisation. The Senior Program Associate will be directly reporting to the Program Manager, Outcome Measurement team.

Roles & Responsibilities

Data Collection and Analysis

  • Supports gathering and quality controlling administrative data from relevant government line departments and finance/planning departments, including data from key government systems such as HMIS, POSHAN Tracker, UDISE+, and state-specific MIS platforms.
  • Manages all primary, secondary, and administrative data by following data management and security protocols.
  • Analyzes complex datasets and evaluates data quality across different types of datasets using statistical software and analytical tools (e.g. Stata, R, Python, etc.).
  • Generate actionable insights and translate data into clear, coherent, and decision-oriented outputs
  • Creates visual representations of data and prepares outputs such as reports, briefs, and presentations to support government review meetings and internal decision-making.

Research, Diagnosis and Solutioning

  • Conducts independent research — including secondary research and on-field diagnostics — and performs root cause analysis to identify key system and implementation challenges through an outcomes management (OM) lens.
  • Translates analysis into clear insights and recommendations to inform problem-solving and policy decisions.
  • Creates high-quality knowledge products and concept notes on OM principles and practical toolkits to implement them.

Central Team Support and Knowledge Building

  • Provides technical backstop to state and field teams on data analysis, diagnostics, and evidence interpretation, enabling stronger on-ground implementation.
  • Leads or contributes to the development of frameworks, guidelines, templates, and toolkits that standardise OM practice across state engagements.
  • Supports the design and delivery of learning and development initiatives — including training sessions, onboarding materials, and practice notes — to build OM capability across the organisation.
  • Documents learnings from state engagements and contributes to building a shared knowledge base for the vertical.

Collaboration, Communication and Project Management

  • Collaborates across internal teams for solution development, bringing together solutions with a sectoral lens.
  • Collaborates with project delivery and state teams to ensure alignment of diagnostic, analysis, and implementation plans with the technical thinking of OM.
  • Communicates project updates, findings, and recommendations to internal and external stakeholders.
  • Supports engagement with relevant stakeholders including government officials and organisational partners.
  • Tracks workplans, manages deliverable timelines, and coordinates across workstreams to ensure project milestones are met.

Personal Development

  • Sets, assesses, and reports specific goals for self and remains receptive to feedback.
  • Owns learning and focuses on self-development by seeking opportunities for growth.
  • Demonstrates willingness to take up additional responsibilities and collaborate with team members based on project priorities.

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities

Educational Qualifications and Professional Experience

  • 2 - 4 years of experience with a Masters degree or equivalent in economics, public policy, social science or related fields from a reputed institution
  • Proven experience in analytical contributions and task management.
  • Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
  • Experience with data cleaning and analysis of large and complex data sets and econometric analysis
  • Knowledge of STATA or R (strongly preferred) or any other data analysis software preferred
  • Experience in client servicing/government projects would be preferred
  • Commitment to CEGIS's mission and values

Domain competencies

  • Deep knowledge of measurement techniques, along with an understanding of how data informs decision making in state government contexts.
  • Experience in data management and analysis using STATA, R or Python programming.
  • Experience working in sectors such as nutrition, health, education, labour, and agriculture preferred.

Functional Competencies

  • Strong research and analytical aptitude, with ability to analyze complex quantitative and qualitative data, and formulate solutions
  • Excellent problem-solving skills and strategic thinking skills.
  • Excellent writing and communication skills to communicate complex ideas effectively within and outside the organization.
  • Demonstrated relationship-building ability with government and partner organizations
  • Strong planning and organizational skills, ability to set priorities, plan timelines, and meet deadlines

Behavioural Competencies

  • Passion for improving the effectiveness of Indian States, and alignment with CEGISs theory of change/impact
  • Operating style suited to working independently and in a small-organization setting, where teamwork and resourcefulness are highly valued.
  • Demonstrates high ownership of solutions, projects and workstreams.
  • Ability to work under pressure, handle competing priorities, maintain attention to detail, and deliver high-quality outputs
  • Ability to think creatively, willingness to take risks to experiment with new ideas, and ability to turn ideas into action
  • High ability to collaborate and actively listen to others, understanding and valuing others view

Role Logistics

The candidate should be based in Delhi, Bangalore, or Hyderabad. Travel to CEGIS state locations will be required on an occasional basis to support state engagements and build contextual understanding of on-ground implementation.

Pre-reads

Please go through the following materials before sending in your application:

Recommended listening:

  • Karthik Muralidharan: India's Roadmap for Effective Governance — FED Dialogues: Podcast Episode.
  • Karthik Muralidharan on Making Governance More Effective — Sushasan | Podcast.

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