Deputy Country Director – Kampala – PEAS

Who we are
PEAS (Promoting Equality in African Schools) is a UK based charity/social enterprise with a mission to ‘expand access to sustainably delivered, quality secondary education across Africa’. PEAS establishes and operates low-cost secondary schools in Uganda and Zambia in areas where access to quality secondary education is limited due to cost and geographical barriers. PEAS’ interventions are built upon 3 pillars of education impact; Access, Quality and Sustainability. Since opening its first schools in 2008, the PEAS network has grown to 30 schools, and we are currently educating over 13,000 students. What’s more, external evaluations have proven that although PEAS students come from poorer backgrounds and begin secondary school academically behind their peers in other similar schools, they are able make significantly more academic progress by studying in PEAS schools.
PEAS has a small team of about 10 people in London who provide fundraising, programme and management support to the country teams. PEAS has two country offices (a larger one in Kampala, Uganda and a smaller one in Ndola, Zambia), who provide management and programme support and supervision to the school networks. PEAS Uganda has about 50 staff at the Country Office team and over 600 staff working in the network schools. We work in close partnership with the governments of Uganda & Zambia and local communities to help every learner in our schools to gain the knowledge and skills needed to lead a fulfilling and socially responsible life.

The Role
An outstanding opportunity for an exceptional operations professional with strong financial understanding and a proven track record of successfully driving organisational strengthening to join a fast growing, value for money focused and mission-driven organisation.
Reporting to the Country Director, the Deputy Country Director of Operations will serve as an integral member of the Senior Management Team (SMT) and will be responsible for delivering organisation wide results on a day-to-day basis.
The role will work closely with the Deputy Country Director of Programmes and Operations department heads based in Kampala, and the equivalent Finance, Operations and Support functions based in the PEAS UK office.
The position holder will champion an organisation wide ‘value for money’ approach, driving efficiencies and effectiveness both at the schools and support office levels with a strong focus on sustainability. They will be responsible for Finance, Operations and Human Resource leadership and delivery in PEAS Uganda. In particular, the post-holder will lead the development and implementation of PEAS ‘financial and operational management strategy’ which will involve policy and guidelines development across these broad functions. This work will facilitate and support organisation wide culture strengthening and programme implementation thereby contributing to the achievement of organisational strategic objectives.

Person Specification
Essential
• Qualifications: A Business or Accounting degree is strongly preferred as a minimum.
• Management Experience: Minimum of 5 years senior management and leadership experience in an operational and financial capacity – including managing departments of professionals with high levels of technical expertise and managing through others to deliver organisational improvements.
• Delivery and prioritisation: Able to work well under pressure and deliver work with high levels of accuracy to tight deadlines across a range of internal and external stakeholders while balancing competing demands.
• Policy creation & compliance: Experience in creating organisation wide policies across finance, operations, and HR, together with overseeing operational adherence.
• Experience with performance management: Experience in utilising sound leadership and management skills to ensure key deliverables are achieved on an individual, departmental and organisation wide basis.
• Experience in financial management: Experience in budget setting, cash flow management and monthly management accounts reporting, together with overall management of financial systems and processes.
• Financial regulation: Knowledge and experience of financial regulatory requirements including taxation, the financial year end process, the creation of statutory accounts and liaising with external auditors and other stakeholders to ensure regulatory requirements are met.
• Commercial sense: Able to make high quality business decisions on a timely basis that ensure the effective and efficient functioning of the organisation and ‘value for money’ for PEAS.
• Problem solving and thinking strategically: Able to get things done by focusing on solutions as opposed to problems and able to see the big picture while demonstrating excellent attention to detail.
• Values driven: Demonstrates PEAS values of effective, empowering, enduring, genuine & collaborative.
• Great people skills: Able to work effectively with staff of all levels.
• Excellent judgment and creative problem solving skills including negotiation and conflict resolution skills
• Excellent English communication skills (both oral and written)
• Excellent IT skills (i.e. Word, Outlook, Excel etc).

HOW TO APPLY:
Application process
Please submit a cover letter (paying particular attention to the person specification) and curriculum vitae torecruitment@peas.org.uk
Please include all portions of your application in one attached document as a PDF document, and use PEAS Deputy Country Director–Finance and Operations as the subject of your email.
Only complete applications will be reviewed and only qualified candidates will be shortlisted and contacted.
Closing date for applications: 8th July, 2016. 17:00 EAT.
Interviews date will be communicated only to shortlisted candidates a week after closing date.