SPL EdTech and AI (OBF)

Senior Project Lead – EdTech and AI (OBF)

Location: Delhi

Founded in 2012, Central Square Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic foundation working with the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. We believe that effective foundational learning is essential for better learning outcomes for all children in school. Development of foundational literacy and numeracy skills can help children progress to higher levels of learning and is an essential building block in a child's life.

We are driven by our mission to enable the school education system to adopt solutions that are scalable, sustainable and effective, so that all children get equal access to opportunities needed for leading a better life. CSF has prioritised five critical areas of work: Foundational Literacy & Numeracy (FLN); EdTech and AI; Early Childhood Education (ECE); Schools Governance; and High Potential Students (HPS).

Read more about our work at the CSF website: https://www.centralsquarefoundation.org.

About EdTech and AI at CSF

CSF's EdTech and AI initiative focuses on leveraging technology to enhance teaching and learning, both in classrooms and at home, through student-focused and teacher-directed interventions. Our goal is to improve foundational learning in primary grades and provide remediation support in middle school using evidence-based, scalable technology solutions.

• Since 2012, CSF has played a pivotal role in shaping India's EdTech ecosystem by bridging demand and supply, backed by rigorous research. We drive impact by:
• Supporting EdTech organisations to build contextually relevant, pedagogically sound products for low-income learners.
• Generating evidence on what works, how it works, and how to scale effective EdTech interventions.
• Partnering with governments to adopt and effectively implement evidence-backed EdTech solutions, strengthen the utilisation of public investments in technology, and influence policy and system priorities.
• Creating public goods to drive innovation and strengthen the broader ecosystem.
• In the last five years, CSF has collaborated with 15+ EdTech organisations, 11+ state governments, and leading academic institutions, reaching over 10 million learners across India.

About the Project

A proposed outcomes-based financing (OBF) platform is being developed by Central Square Foundation in partnership with a selected program partner, to improve foundational literacy and numeracy outcomes in government schools. The initiative aims to build a robust, evidence-based case for personalised adaptive learning (PAL) in Grades 1–5, while creating the delivery, financing and procurement pathways required for state governments to adopt and fund effective solutions over time.

The programme is currently in its design and preparation phase. This includes defining the outcomes and payment framework, selecting states and solution providers, designing implementation and governance structures, establishing independent verification arrangements, securing implementation funding, and engaging governments early so that evidence generated through the programme can translate into long-term public-system adoption.

Position Summary

The Senior Project Lead – EdTech and AI (OBF) will lead CSF's programme design and government adoption work for the project. This is a build-stage role suited to someone who can create structure in ambiguity, bring together diverse stakeholders, and design a programme that is rigorous enough for outcomes-based financing while remaining feasible and relevant for government systems.

The role will work closely with state governments, EdTech solution providers, funders, program partners, independent evaluators and internal CSF teams. A core mandate will be to ensure that government adoption is not treated as an end-stage activity: the Senior Project Lead will shape the programme from the outset around government priorities, implementation realities, evidence needs and eventual pathways for public financing and procurement.

The Senior Project Lead will report to the Associate Director/Senior Project Director – EdTech and AI.

Key Responsibilities

1. Programme Strategy, Design & Build

• Lead the end-to-end design of the OBF project from CSF's programme and government-adoption perspective, translating the concept into a clear operating model, implementation architecture, workplan and measurable outcomes.
• Define key design choices across target grades and geographies, student reach, school-level implementation, technology and infrastructure requirements, provider roles, sequencing and scale-up pathways.
• Work with internal and external stakeholders to identify critical assumptions, risks and trade-offs, and translate them into testable design decisions and mitigation plans.
• Ensure the programme design balances learning impact, implementation feasibility, provider incentives, evidence requirements, cost-effectiveness and relevance to government systems.

2. Outcomes-Based Financing & Performance Framework

• Work closely with a selected program partner, funders, providers and evaluators to shape an outcomes-based financing model that is credible, implementable and aligned to the programme's learning objectives.
• Contribute to the definition of outcome metrics and payment milestones across onboarding/readiness, product usage and learning gains, including thresholds, verification approaches and implications for provider incentives.
• Support the development of templates and approaches that can inform future outcomes-linked government procurement for PAL.

3. Government Engagement, Salience & Adoption Pathway

• Lead early government engagement so that programme design reflects state priorities, FLN strategies, infrastructure constraints, implementation capacity and decision-making processes.
• Develop a deliberate government salience strategy: identify the evidence, experiences, champions, review forums and decision points required for PAL to become a credible part of the state's FLN agenda in the long term.
• Create a pathway from philanthropic financing to sustained government ownership, including potential budget heads, procurement models, institutional roles and transition milestones.
• Develop government-facing narratives and outputs such as concept notes, briefs, implementation frameworks, review materials and procurement-oriented documentation.

4. Multi-Stakeholder Partnership & Programme Governance

• Serve as a key integrator across state governments, solution providers, selected program partner funders, independent evaluators and CSF teams, ensuring clarity of roles, dependencies and decision rights.
• Lead programme governance processes including workplans, design reviews, decision logs, risk registers, partner reviews and senior stakeholder updates.
• Anticipate and resolve cross-stakeholder bottlenecks while protecting the integrity of the programme's learning and adoption objectives.

5. Implementation Readiness, Evidence & Learning

• Co-develop the learning agenda and define the conditions for PAL to deliver outcomes at scale in government primary schools, including implementation fidelity, cost, provider performance and system integration
• Work with Evidence/M&E teams and independent evaluators to ensure that the evaluation and verification framework answers both payment-related questions and the broader questions governments will need answered before adoption.
• Use implementation data and field insights to diagnose bottlenecks, drive course correction and strengthen the programme model over time.

6. Knowledge, Scale Strategy & Institutionalisation

• Translate programme evidence and implementation learning into a compelling case for state adoption of PAL in primary grades.
• Develop practical public goods such as implementation playbooks, adoption frameworks, procurement templates, cost models, case studies and policy notes that can support replication beyond participating states.
• Contribute to CSF's broader thought leadership on evidence-backed EdTech, outcomes-based financing and sustainable public financing for technology-enabled learning.

7. Team, Budget & Organisational Leadership

• Lead, coach and performance-manage a high-performing team while building ownership and execution capability.
• Own CSF-side programme planning, budgeting, resourcing, reporting and leadership decision materials for the OBF project.
• Coordinate closely with CSF's EdTech and AI, Evidence, State Reform, Finance, Legal, Communications and other relevant teams.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• 10+ years of relevant experience, including significant work with Indian state and/or central government systems. Preference will be given to applicants from Education, EdTech, or adjacent sectors.
• Exposure to outcomes-based financing, results-based financing, impact bonds, performance-linked contracts or innovative procurement models
• Track record of leading complex, multi-stakeholder programmes from design through implementation and institutionalisation.
• Experience managing portfolios, budgets, teams and external partners with strong execution discipline.
• Master's degree in business, public policy, education, engineering, development studies or a related field.
• Demonstrated ability and track record in building senior government relationships and translating evidence and programme insights into policy, strategy and system-level outcomes.

Desired Qualities

• Strong commitment to improving learning outcomes and equity through public education systems.
• Systems thinker who connects policy, programmes, implementation, evidence and government incentives while remaining execution-focused.
• Entrepreneurial, self-directed and comfortable creating structure in ambiguous and evolving environments.
• Strong influencing, relationship-building, judgement and prioritisation skills across diverse stakeholders.
• Excellent synthesis and communication skills, with curiosity about emerging technologies and their responsible application to education and government systems.

Compensation

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy and social-impact sector benchmarks, commensurate with experience.

Application Process :

Interested candidates should submit a resume customized to role outlining relevant experience, a brief statement of interest outlining how your past experience and future aspirations connect to the role (max. 500 words), and two references through the CSF Careers Portal by 30th September 2026.

We are looking for someone who can commit to at least a three-year journey to help materialise CSF's 2025–2028 EdTech and AI strategy. Shortlisted applicants will complete a case exercise and participate in 2 panel interviews and final leadership conversations. We will evaluate applications on a rolling basis and will close the application process once we find the right candidate.