(Associate) Director, Program Innovation & Evidence - AI in Agriculture

About the role

The AI Access Initiative (2AI), incubated at Evidence Action, is a remote, US-based role reporting to the VP, Agriculture. It owns the engine behind AI-enabled weather forecasting services for smallholder farmers, testing how forecasts are formatted, framed and delivered, developing new forecast types with academics, and building the cost-effectiveness evidence base. The role manages at least one senior manager and involves extensive international travel (~20%).

Key responsibilities

• Run A/B tests across format, framing and delivery to find what drives farmer comprehension and behaviour change.
• Pilot new forecast delivery channels such as chatbots, WhatsApp, SMS and social media, assessing reach, cost and effectiveness.
• Partner with academics to develop new forecast types, manage their roadmap and possibly hire and manage post-doctoral students.
• Coordinate monitoring and evaluation with in-country teams and lead cost-effectiveness analysis for the agriculture programs.
• Assess new directions for the portfolio, including benchmarking, advisory services and new intervention types.
• Nurture relationships with academic institutions, research groups, delivery partners and other agriculture organisations.
• Build best practices and toolkits, and share learnings with the sector through blogs and other public-good resources.

Required profile

• 7-10+ years of experience as a builder in international development, consulting or an agriculture-related organisation.
• Proven track record of scaling programmes, preferably in partnership with national governments.
• Experience leading international development programmes from idea to scaled delivery and managing multi-stakeholder coalitions.
• Strong people manager who can set standards and empower distributed and field-based teams.
• Ability to travel extensively internationally (~20%) to India and other low- and middle-income countries.
• Must be legally authorised to work in the US; visa sponsorship is not available.

Required skills

• Designing and running randomised or quasi-experimental evaluations (RCTs, A/B tests) to measure behaviour change.
• Translating evaluation results into product or program iteration.
• Fluency with AI tools and willingness to learn AI/ML forecasting concepts.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, able to explain complex technical ideas clearly.