Job Openings Senior Program Associate - Strategic Public Finance (TG)

About the job Senior Program Associate - Strategic Public Finance (TG)

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. CEGIS' 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

CEGIS' 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 a few other priority line departments. 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 organised into vertical 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 contextualise the solutions, and support governments in implementing them; and enablement teams that enable the organisation to function smoothly.

The CEGIS Journey: 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 one state government engagement in 2019, today CEGIS is working across nine 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 six 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 CEGIS' 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 Vertical – Strategic Public Finance (SPF)

The Strategic Public Finance (SPF) team at CEGIS works at the intersection of evidence and governance to strengthen the quality of public financial management across Indian states. The team's core problem statement is that state governments often lack the data infrastructure, analytical capacity, and institutionalised processes to make evidence-based fiscal decisions leading to inefficiencies in revenue mobilisation, budget planning, and public expenditure.

The SPF team's theory of change is anchored in institutionalising data-driven decision-making within key government departments by building robust data systems, analytical capacity, and repeatable solution stacks that enable better goal-setting, monitoring, and strategic resource allocation.

SPF operationalises this through three core solution stacks that together address the full fiscal lifecycle:

  1. Quality of Expenditure Stack (QoE) - Focuses on improving efficiency of public spending through diagnostics, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of welfare spending through better targeting and strengthening outcome linkages between expenditure and service delivery.
  2. Revenue Stack - Aims to strengthen state's revenue value chains through analytics, process improvements in revenue administration, compliance nudges, and institutional capacity building to enhance states' revenue ecosystems.
  3. Macrofiscal Analytics Stack - Focuses on strengthening fiscal strategy through better visibility into economic activity through an integrated view of growth, employment, and productivity by combining data on labour supply, firm demand, and land and property markets to inform urban planning and revenue potential.

Across these stacks, SPF engagements typically involve:

  • Partnering with government stakeholders & donors in designing, testing, and scaling revenue optimization and expenditure efficiency interventions, for example, budget analysis, expenditure tracking, and performance-linked reforms.
  • Supporting state finance departments to build in-house analytical capacity and enable data driven interventions.

This stack-based approach allows SPF to address fiscal challenges in an integrated manner - linking revenue, expenditure, and macroeconomic insights to enable more strategic and sustainable public finance management.

Position Summary

The Senior Programme Associate will play a key role in supporting the design and delivery of Strategic Public Finance and governance reform projects at CEGIS. Working closely with Project Leads, the role involves contributing across the full project lifecycle including developing concept notes and conducting department level diagnostics to supporting solution design, pilot development, implementation, and scale up. The position combines analytical, implementation, and stakeholder facing responsibilities, with a strong focus on generating insights, supporting evidence - based decision making, and improving frontline service delivery. The Senior Programme Associate will contribute to research and data analysis, assist in building practical, scalable solutions, and coordinate with government stakeholders to ensure effective execution. This role is suited for candidates with 3 - 6 years of experience who are comfortable working in dynamic, multi-stakeholder environments and are motivated to drive impact inpublic systems.

Roles & Responsibilities

Data & Insights

  • Collect and validate data from multiple sources to ensure accuracy and reliability.
  • Analyse complex datasets to generate actionable insights for project and stakeholder decision-making.
  • Identify and resolve data issues proactively to support ongoing project progress.

Research, Diagnosis & Solutioning

  • Conduct independent research, diagnostics, and root cause analysis to identify key system and implementation challenges.
  • Support the development of practical, project-specific solutions in collaboration with internal teams and stakeholders.
  • Translate analysis into clear insights and recommendations to inform problem-solving and policy decisions.

Project Management & Delivery

  • Support the team in end to end project execution, ensuring alignment of data, analysis, and outputs with project objectives.
  • Track progress and regularly update internal and external stakeholders on milestones and deliverables.
  • Develop high quality outputs, including reports, notes, presentations, and analytical documents.

Stakeholder Engagement & Communication

  • Support the engagement with relevant stakeholders, including government officials and project partners.
  • Coordinate meetings, facilitate communication, and synthesise key messages for diverse audiences.
  • Build and maintain strong working relationships to enable effective collaboration and project progress.

Knowledge Management & Documentation

  • Support knowledge creation through documentation of insights, learnings, and best practices.
  • Conduct literature reviews and contribute to project collaterals and knowledge products.
  • Ensure systematic organisation and management of project documents for easy access and reuse.

Education & Experience

  • Required degree domain(s): Bachelor's or postgraduate degree in Economics, Public Policy, Statistics, Data Science, Finance, or a related quantitative or social science discipline
  • Experience: minimum 3 years of relevant professional experience in analytical, policy, or program delivery roles
  • Experience in public policy, governance, data analytics, service delivery, or systems reform, with demonstrated work in research, data analysis, diagnostics, and supporting implementation of projects
  • Prior exposure to government systems and programs, and experience working in multi-stakeholder environments involving government departments, partners, and internal teams, familiarity with frontline service delivery contexts is desirable.

Required Competencies

Domain Competencies

  • Foundational understanding of public policy, governance, and service delivery systems, with exposure to government programs and implementation challenges.
  • Basic knowledge of public finance or sectoral domains (e.g., health, education, or welfare), and how data informs decision making in these contexts.
  • Working familiarity with analytical tools and methods relevant to the role (e.g., data analysis, diagnostics, and evidence synthesis).

Functional Competencies

  • Strong research and analytical ability, with experience in structuring problems and deriving insights from data.
  • Good data literacy, including working with datasets, ensuring data quality, and using tools such as Excel and R / Python.
  • Problem solving skills with the ability to support solution design and translate insights into actionable recommendations.
  • Effective communication and documentation skills for creating presentations, reports, and stakeholder-ready outputs.
  • Ability to manage tasks and contribute to project execution, ensuring timelines and quality standards are met.

Behavioural Competencies

  • Demonstrates ownership in delivering assigned workstreams and ensuring quality outputs.
  • Strong learning agility and willingness to work across new domains and evolving project needs.
  • Collaborative mindset, with the ability to work effectively in team-based and multi-stakeholder environments.

Role Logistics

The role is based out of Hyderabad, Telangana. Proficiency in English and Telugu is essential to effectively engage with government stakeholders. The role involves travel within state, depending on project needs, including regular interactions with line departments and periodic field visits.

Pre-reads for the Application Process

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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