Director of Performance Metrics

About Educate!

Educate! works to unlock the potential of Africa’s rapidly growing youth population by creating practical, scalable solutions that help young people learn, earn, and thrive. The organization focuses on two main approaches: introducing an employment-oriented school subject for secondary students and running livelihood boot camps for out-of-school youth, especially marginalized rural girls and young women.

More than 500,000 young people across Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania have been reached so far. Educate! is a team of over 300 mostly African staff members and 300 volunteer youth mentors, with a strong emphasis on a supportive, fulfilling, and growth-oriented culture. The organization has earned recognition and support from major foundations and global institutions, and its long-term goal is to create solutions that positively affect millions of youth across Africa every year.

Role Overview

The Director of Performance Metrics will lead the organization’s data and performance-metrics function at a time when Educate! is becoming increasingly data-driven and technology-led. This role is central to moving the function toward AI-native ways of working while also contributing to the organization’s predictive analytics strategy alongside senior leaders across evaluation, product, implementation, and technology.

As the most senior data leader in this area, you will own four core pillars: data design, data engineering and infrastructure, analytics oversight, and data collection. The role requires someone who can operate like a full-stack analytics leader: technically strong in SQL, dbt, and cloud warehousing, while also managing people and partnering closely with cross-functional teams.

First-Year Outcomes

Within the first six months, you are expected to understand the current metrics environment, the team structure, and the data stack, and to shape the strategy and operating model together with the COO. By this stage, the team should be organized and equipped as an AI-native function ready to scale.

By 12 months, implementation, product, and leadership teams should be using self-service analytics for the large majority of their data needs. The BigQuery analytics engineering layer should be fully owned and healthy, AI-native working practices should be in regular use, and the data architecture should be aligned to the predictive analytics roadmap.

Key Responsibilities

You will define the vision, operating model, and priorities for the performance metrics function, set standards across the department, and build the structures and processes needed to support high-quality, scalable data systems. You will also strengthen leadership capability through coaching, leveling frameworks, and a culture of rigorous, continuous learning.

On the technical side, you will design and own the full data architecture, including ingestion, warehousing, transformation, and delivery. You will help build a modern BI environment with self-serve reporting and automated pipelines that country teams can use directly, and you will set the quality expectations for the analytics engineering layer so that data remains accurate, complete, timely, consistent, valid, and traceable.

In analytics, you will work with product, implementation, and performance metrics teams to define what should be measured and how. You will help transition the team from manual reporting toward a self-service model supported by dashboards, insight tools, and an optimized semantic layer designed for AI use. You will also develop strategies that improve frontline data use so implementation teams can scale programs with consistency and quality.

As a cross-functional leader, you will partner with Technology, Evaluation, and Product, advise the COO, and contribute to organization-wide analytics capabilities by supporting shared tools, standards, and ways of working.

Who This Role Is For

This role is suited to a senior analytics, data, or monitoring and evaluation leader with approximately seven or more years of experience, including several years of team leadership. You should have experience managing managers, building or scaling analytics teams, and making sound decisions about hiring, leveling, and professional development.

You should be comfortable with data models, transformations, metrics layers, SQL, dbt-style workflows, and a warehouse environment such as BigQuery. You do not need to code daily, but you should be technically strong enough to guide engineers, evaluate pipeline quality, and make informed architectural decisions.

You should also be able to turn data into action, explain technical trade-offs clearly to non-technical stakeholders, and understand the difference between ongoing performance monitoring and deeper evaluation work. Experience from a startup, social enterprise, private-sector, or mission-driven setting is welcome; a traditional nonprofit or M&E background is not required.

Eligibility and Preferences

Applicants from a wide range of professional backgrounds are encouraged to apply, especially those with strong analytics, data science, or business intelligence leadership experience. African candidates are strongly preferred. The organization will also consider exceptional candidates based outside East Africa and the UK where it does not have a physical office, in which case the role will be remote and will require substantial travel.

Work Arrangement and Compensation

The position can be hybrid or fully remote depending on location. Compensation is competitive and based on experience and market conditions, with benefits aligned to the country of hire.

Benefits commonly include medical and travel insurance, learning and growth support, flexibility in working hours when needed, hybrid work options, paid leave, and one week of office closure over the December holidays.

Application Note

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and interviews are expected to begin soon.

Culture and Values

Educate! expects every team member, from interns to executive leadership, to be assessed against its five culture tenets. These include putting youth first and staying impact-focused, consistently exceeding expectations, staying open to learning, working as one team with many perspectives, and maintaining a startup mindset that embraces change, experimentation, and continuous improvement.

The organization values people who bring initiative, adaptability, and a willingness to contribute beyond their core job description while growing their own skills and helping others grow as well.