Technical Director, MNCH

The AFGHS-Jhpiego project is funded by the U.S. Department of State (DoS) to support the delivery of lifesaving, comprehensive maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) and malaria services across Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. It aims to improve service and data quality, strengthen health-system integration and resilience, facilitate effective transition, and promote local ownership and accountability for sustained health outcomes.

Jhpiego works closely with the Ministries of Health in Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar, the Reproductive and Child Health Section (RCHS), the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP), the Zanzibar Malaria Elimination Programme (ZAMEP), and Regional Administration and Local Government (RALG) structures to align implementation with national priorities and strengthen locally led implementation and oversight.

Position Summary

The Technical Director – MNCH provides overall technical leadership, coordination, and oversight for comprehensive maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) interventions under the project, drawing on subject matter expertise in maternal and newborn health, child health, nutrition, immunization, quality improvement, and related service delivery approaches. Working closely with the project’s management team and the Senior Technical Team, the Technical Director – MNCH coordinates technical inputs across these areas and provides strategic guidance to ensure coherent, evidence-based approaches aligned with national policies, guidelines, and standards across Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar.

The Technical Director – MNCH works closely with the monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL), community-based health services (CBHS), malaria, and field implementation teams to ensure high-quality implementation and timely use of data for performance improvement and adaptive management. The role serves as a key technical point of contact with relevant Ministry of Health technical units, Regional Administration and Local Government (RALG) structures, research and academic institutions, professional bodies, and other technical partners. The Technical Director – MNCH also serves as the link between the project’s MNCH technical team, national technical forums, and Jhpiego’s global technical teams, ensuring technical alignment, coordination, and application of national and global evidence.

The Technical Director – MNCH provides technical leadership for the sustainability, institutionalization, and transition of project-supported MNCH interventions. Working with government counterparts, the role strengthens government leadership and technical capacity and supports integration of effective approaches into government policies, plans, budgets, workforce development, clinical training, supportive supervision, quality improvement, routine service delivery, and data and accountability systems. The Technical Director – MNCH works closely with the Sustainability and Transition Director to identify and address barriers to sustained implementation and support progressive transition of technical leadership and implementation functions to government structures while maintaining quality and continuity of essential MNCH services.

This position will be closed on October 15, 2026.

1.  Technical Leadership and Quality Improvement

• Provide overall technical direction and oversight for MNCH interventions, ensuring alignment with national policies, project objectives, and global evidence.
• Provide technical leadership across maternal and newborn health, child health, nutrition, immunization, and related integrated service delivery approaches.
• Provide technical input into the design, planning, implementation, and scale-up of MNCH activities to ensure effectiveness, quality, consistency, and responsiveness to national and subnational priorities.
• Lead implementation and institutionalization of evidence-based quality improvement approaches across project-supported MNCH services.
• Provide technical leadership for high-impact maternal and newborn interventions across the continuum of care: antenatal care, high-quality intrapartum care, emergency obstetric and newborn care, prevention and management of postpartum hemorrhage, essential newborn care, care for small and sick newborns, postnatal care, and referral systems.
• Provide strategic technical guidance for child health, nutrition, and immunization interventions, including integrated management of childhood illness, emergency triage and treatment, routine and intensified immunization, growth monitoring, infant and young child feeding, and management of acute malnutrition.
• Ensure appropriate integration of MNCH services with malaria, HIV, community health, and other relevant service areas.

2. Capacity Strengthening

• Provide technical leadership for assessment of MNCH workforce and clinical capacity needs and development of evidence-based approaches to address identified gaps.
• Strengthening government-led clinical training, mentorship, supportive supervision, and quality improvement systems at national, regional, council, and facility levels.
• Support development and strengthening of government trainers, mentors, and clinical champions across priority MNCH technical areas.
• Ensure use of evidence-based national training materials, clinical standards, competency-based approaches, mentorship systems, simulation and skills-development approaches, and assessment tools.
• Provide technical oversight for preservice and in-service capacity-strengthening approaches, as appropriate, and promote alignment between health workforce competencies and service delivery requirements.
• Work with government counterparts to institutionalize effective training, mentorship, supportive supervision, and quality improvement functions within routine government systems.

3. Workforce Development

• Assess priority institutional and workforce capacity gaps with government counterparts and translate findings into time-bound capacity-strengthening plans with measurable competency or system outcomes.
• Ensure training is linked to post-training mentorship, supportive supervision, workplace application, and measurement of competency or service-delivery improvement rather than training completion alone.
• Strengthen government-led mentorship, supportive supervision, clinical audit, data review, and QI mechanisms and progressively reduce reliance on parallel project systems.
• Build the technical and leadership capacity of project MNCH staff through clear performance expectations, coaching, delegated leadership, and periodic review of technical deliverables.

4. Government Engagement and Technical Coordination

• Serve as a senior technical resource to relevant Ministry of Health technical units, PMORALG structures, regional and council health teams, and other government counterparts on MNCH programming.
• Maintain strong technical relationships with government, professional bodies, academic and training institutions, implementing partners, and other MNCH stakeholders.
• Represent the project in relevant national technical working groups, task forces, guideline-development processes, and other MNCH coordination forums.
• Provide targeted technical input into national strategies, guidelines, standards, training materials, implementation approaches, and other technical products in collaboration with government counterparts.
• Coordinate with DoS implementing partners and other stakeholders to promote technical complementarity, address implementation gaps, leverage resources, and avoid duplication.
• Promote joint planning, implementation, performance review, and problem-solving with government counterparts to strengthen government leadership and ownership.

5. Data Use and Performance Monitoring

• Work closely with MERL staff to strengthen collection, analysis, interpretation, and use of routine MNCH service delivery and quality data.
• Monitor technical performance against approved targets, milestones, and quality standards and identify areas requiring technical support or corrective action.
• Support government counterparts to use routine data for planning, performance review, quality improvement, targeting of technical assistance, and evidence-based decision-making.
• Facilitate routine technical performance reviews with national, regional, council, and project teams to identify gaps, analyze underlying causes, and agree on corrective actions.
• Strengthen government-led data review and performance monitoring processes and promote use of existing national information systems rather than parallel project systems.
• Use performance data and implementation learning to adapt technical approaches and improve quality, coverage, and outcomes.

6. Sustainability, Transition, and Institutionalization

• Provide technical leadership for institutionalization and sustainable scale-up of effective MNCH interventions within routine government systems.
• Work closely with the Sustainability and Transition Director and government counterparts to identify technical, workforce, financing, service delivery, data and accountability, and community-level barriers to sustained MNCH implementation.
• Integrate sustainability and transition considerations into MNCH technical strategies, annual work plans, budgets, capacity strengthening, quality improvement, supervision, and scale-up approaches.
• Support incorporation of priority MNCH interventions and associated resource requirements into national, regional, council, facility, and other relevant government plans and budgets.
• Strengthen government capacity to progressively lead technical planning, implementation, clinical training, mentorship, supervision, quality improvement, performance monitoring, and scale-up of priority MNCH interventions.
• Promote use and strengthening of existing government structures, systems, tools, and processes and avoid creation of parallel technical systems.
• Support implementation and monitoring of agreed transition milestones and readiness criteria and identify technical gaps that could affect continuity or quality of services.
• Ensure transition and scale-up approaches protect continuity, quality, and equitable access to lifesaving MNCH services.

7. Milestone Achievement and Project Performance

• Align MNCH technical activities, technical assistance, resources, and implementation timelines with approved project milestones and payment-linked deliverables to support timely achievement and payment.
• Work closely with the Senior Project Director, MERL, Finance, Sustainability and Transition Director, and field teams to routinely monitor progress against MNCH-related milestones and identify deliverables at risk.
• Lead technical corrective actions where service quality, implementation performance, government capacity, or other technical gaps threaten milestone achievement.
• Ensure MNCH results are supported by complete, accurate, timely, and technically sound evidence and documentation required for milestone verification.
• Contribute to preparation and technical review of milestone verification packages and timely resolution of technical questions or verification requirements.
• Ensure MNCH teams understand their contribution to project milestones and maintain accountability for agreed technical deliverables and timelines.

8. Documentation, Research, Learning, and Knowledge Sharing

• Document implementation experiences, technical adaptations, challenges, results, and lessons learned across MNCH interventions.
• Identify and disseminate effective tools, approaches, best practices, and innovations that can strengthen quality, scale, institutionalization, and sustainability.
• Promote implementation research, operational learning, and evidence generation to address priority MNCH implementation questions.
• Contribute high-quality technical inputs to project reports, presentations, learning briefs, success stories, and other donor and government deliverables.
• Author or co-author abstracts, presentations, technical products, and peer-reviewed publications in collaboration with government, in-country, and global colleagues.
• Facilitate dissemination and use of MNCH evidence and learning through national technical forums, professional networks, communities of practice, and other appropriate platforms.

9. Technical Team Leadership and Management

• Provide technical leadership, supervision, mentorship, and guidance to MNCH Technical Advisors, Specialists, Technical Officers, and other assigned technical staff.
• Establish clear technical priorities, expectations, and accountability for quality, performance, milestone achievement, sustainability, and transition.
• Work closely with Field Team Leads and regional technical staff to ensure technical assistance is responsive to regional and council needs and consistently implemented across project geographies.
• Promote collaboration and integration across MNCH, malaria, CBHS, MERL, and other project technical and operational functions.
• Support development of annual work plans, budgets, technical assistance plans, and other implementation documents related to the MNCH portfolio.
• Ensure compliance with national clinical standards, DoS requirements, and Jhpiego operational and technical policies.
• Support strategic growth, partnerships, and other project priorities as assigned.

• Advanced degrees in medicine, nursing, midwifery, public health, maternal and child health, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, nutrition, or another relevant clinical or public health field.
• At least 9–10 years of progressively responsible experience in MNCH programming, including substantial experience providing senior technical leadership for large-scale health programs.
• Demonstrated technical expertise across maternal, newborn and/or child health, with strong understanding of integrated MNCH programming; experience in immunization and/or nutrition strongly desirable.
• Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, monitoring, and scaling evidence-based MNCH interventions within government health systems.
• Strong experience in quality improvement, clinical capacity strengthening, competency-based training, mentorship, supportive supervision, and/or health workforce development.
• Demonstrated experience working with Government of Tanzania institutions and technical programs at national and subnational levels.
• Strong understanding of government health systems and experience institutionalizing technical approaches within government policies, plans, budgets, service delivery, workforce, supervision, and data systems.
• Demonstrated experience supporting sustainability, institutionalization, and transition of donor-supported health interventions to government leadership.
• Experience using routine service delivery and quality data to identify performance gaps, guide technical assistance, and support adaptive management.
• Experience with U.S. Government or other major donor-funded health programs and understanding of donor performance, reporting, and compliance requirements.
• Experience managing project milestones, technical deliverables, and performance-linked results is highly preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and mentor multidisciplinary technical teams and work effectively across technical, programmatic, MERL, finance, and operational functions.
• Demonstrated ability to engage effectively with senior government officials, technical working groups, professional bodies, implementing partners, donors, academic institutions, and other stakeholders.

• Fluency in English required; proficiency in Kiswahili strongly preferred.
• Strong leadership, strategic thinking, negotiation, communication, relationship management, and problem-solving skills.
• Strong technical writing, communication, presentation, facilitation, negotiation, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability and willingness to travel regularly across Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar.

Jhpiego offers competitive salaries and a comprehensive employee benefits package.

Please apply at www.jhpiego.org/careers

Applicants must submit a single document for upload to include cover letters, resume, and references.

For further information about Jhpiego, visit our website at www.jhpiego.org

Note: The successful candidate selected for this position will be subject to a pre-employment background investigation.

Jhpiego is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer

Jhpiego, a Johns Hopkins University affiliate, is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of gender, marital status, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, other legally protected characteristics or any other occupationally irrelevant criteria. Jhpiego promotes Affirmative Action for minorities, women, individuals who are disabled, and veterans.

#LI-GM1

RECRUITMENT SCAMS & FRAUD WARNING

Jhpiego has become aware of scams involving false job offers. Please be advised:

• Recruiters will never ask for a fee during any stage of the recruitment process.
• All active jobs are advertised directly on our careers page.
• Official Jhpiego emails will always arrive from a Jhpiego.org email address.
• Please report any suspicious communications to Info@jhpiego.org