Role Purpose:

This role owns the pedagogical and assessment integrity of a full FLN product portfolio, alongside its program execution in low-resource environments across Sub-Saharan Africa. This is a hands-on pedagogical role designed to bridge curriculum/assessment design, data science, and government education operations. The primary mandate is grounding AI-driven assessment tools (ASR/OCR) in rigorous learning sciences and pedagogy while ensuring field data collection is tailored to child capacity.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Pedagogical Design, Assessment Design, and Quality Assurance (50% - 60% - Non-Negotiable):

- Hands-On Pedagogical Architecture: Own the instructional and assessment design logic across both literacy and numeracy tools: item construction, scoring rubrics, benchmarks, grade-level calibration, and alignment to national curriculum frameworks.

- Applied Learning Sciences & Phonetics/Error Analysis: Apply core learning sciences and pedagogical principles (how children acquire literacy and numeracy skills, common error patterns, developmental progression) directly to shape product design decisions - such as calibrating word difficulty repositories based on phonics/pronunciation rules and building diagnostic error typologies for math tools (e.g., carry-forward failures in addition).

- Psychometric & Pedagogical QA: Validate that AI-scored outputs are pedagogically and psychometrically sound, not just technically accurate, ensuring outputs reflect real classroom progression rather than simple answer-correctness scoring.

- Contextual & Multi-Language Adaptation: Work with literacy, numeracy, and assessment specialists and local content partners to adapt assessment content across multiple languages and national curriculum contexts.

- Classroom Progression Logic: Ensure numeracy tool design reflects sound classroom pedagogy and progression logic, not just answer-correctness scoring.

2. Program Execution & Child-Centric Data Delivery (20% - 30%):

- Child Capacity & Field Protocols: Design and manage end-to-end field data collection cycles across both literacy and numeracy instruments: enumerator training, school-level rollout, quality checks, and troubleshooting. Tailor assessment instruments to child capacity (e.g., structuring appropriate reading durations and paragraph lengths to prevent cognitive fatigue).

- Operating Calendar Management: Own and manage the operating calendar across multiple countries and multi-partner environments, sequencing rollouts against local school terms and government academic calendars.

- Implementation Tracking: Build and maintain an implementation tracker covering timelines, sample sizes, data quality flags, and blockers, disaggregated by literacy and numeracy workstreams.

3. Government and Partner Interface (10% - 20%):

- Pedagogical Representation: Serve as the pedagogy and assessment-credible face of the organization to Ministries of Education, teacher training institutes, and implementation partners across both FLN domains.

- Government Policy Insights: Translate assessment outputs into policy-usable insights for government counterparts at classroom, district, or system level.

- Technical Proposal Input: Support proposal and concept note development with technically sound literacy, numeracy, and assessment sections for institutional funders.

4. Evidence, Reporting, and Risk Management:

- M&E Frameworks: Design M&E frameworks that connect AI-scored literacy and numeracy data to learning outcome claims that hold up to funder and government scrutiny.

- Donor Reporting: Own FLN workstream inputs for donor reporting across both product lines.

- Pedagogical Divergence Flagging: Flag where AI tool performance, pedagogical validity, or assessment reliability diverge, before a government or funder counterpart catches it.

Candidate Qualifications:

Must-Have:

- 5 - 7+ years in education program management with direct, hands-on experience in early childhood education / FLN (Grades 1 - 3), featuring a heavy focus on hands-on pedagogy, instructional design, curriculum development, or assessment creation (literacy and/or numeracy).

- Deep subject matter expertise in pedagogy, phonics, reading fluency calibration, and foundational math error analysis.

- Direct field experience running academic programs, interventions, or data collection in low-resource, government school settings.

- Strong comfort working with assessment data (assessment scores, sampling, basic statistics, item-level analysis) without requiring software programming skills (AI/tech concepts will be coached on the job).

- Proven experience managing multi-country or multi-partner program operations across complex operational environments.

Preferred / Strong Plus:

- Master's degree or formal training in Pedagogy, Elementary Education, Instructional Design, Psychometrics, or Learning Sciences (e.g., M.Ed / B.Ed in Elementary Education/PG).

- Applied experience spanning both literacy AND numeracy pedagogy, rather than just one domain.

- Familiarity with ASR/OCR, AI-based assessment tools, game-based learning platforms (e.g., GeoGebra), or prior edtech pilot experience.

- Existing relationships with Ministries of Education, DIETs, or teacher training institutions in relevant geographies (particularly Sub-Saharan Africa).

- Experience writing technical assessment and pedagogy sections for institutional donor audiences.

- Local language fluency relevant to target program countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.