Head of Business Development, WACAR

Location: Nairobi, Kenya; open to candidates in the WACAR region or other IRC locations in GMT and EAT time zones, with significant experience in West and Central Africa

Company

hirify.global is an international humanitarian non-governmental organization supporting people affected by conflict and disaster through health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and community empowerment programs.

What you will do

• Lead regional business development strategy, pipeline oversight, donor targeting, and resource planning for WACAR country programs.
• Guide opportunity analysis and Go/No Go decisions across institutional and public donor opportunities.
• Coordinate capture, partnering, proposal development, budgeting, reviews, approvals, negotiations, and handover to post-award teams.
• Represent IRC with donors, partners, and peers while strengthening national and regional partnerships, including women-led organizations.
• Build business development capacity through training, tools, knowledge sharing, and support to country and regional teams.
• Manage and mentor the regional Program Development Advisor and contribute to team cohesion and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• Substantial experience and a successful track record leading large proposal teams on complex, multi-year, multi-partner proposals with minimal supervision.
• Experience developing and supporting humanitarian and development proposals for NGOs.
• Strong proficiency in English and French required.
• Experience with proposal strategies and processes for USAID, the US Department of State, FCDO, EU institutions including ECHO and INTPA, and other government or institutional donors such as GAC, Sida, GFFO, BMZ, and SDC.
• Experience collaborating with and supporting national and community-based partners.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, including effective collaboration across diverse relationships in a multicultural environment.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate in remote and diverse teams, including as a proposal team leader.
• Clear, compelling writing skills, preferably including proposal-writing experience.
• Ability to multitask and prioritize effectively.
• Ability to travel internationally for approximately 20% of the time.

Nice to have

• Experience in proposal budgeting.

Culture & Benefits

• Work supports humanitarian relief, post-crisis recovery, and development programs across the WACAR region.
• Collaboration spans regional and country teams, global business development, technical units, finance, legal, supply chain, compliance, and external stakeholders.
• Work is conducted across remote and diverse teams in a multicultural environment.
• IRC promotes integrity, service, equality, accountability, critical reflection, power sharing, debate, objectivity, safeguarding, and protection from retaliation.