Program Manager Livelihoods

Job Description

About PCI India

PCI India, a registered Indian society, has been working in India for the past 26 years. We drive interventions to transform the lives of communities at scale by solving complex development problems. In the past year, PCI India reached more than 1.7 crore, i.e. 17 million people in 204 Districts in 15 States.

Our Vision and Mission

Vision - A happy, healthy, safe and a sustainable world for all.

Mission - Rooted in community realities, we co create and scale sustainable solutions to complex development problems.

Our Values

• Excellence - Quality in everything no matter how small, is paramount.
• Respect - There is inherent value in all people for who they are and what they contribute.
• Collaboration - Only through collaboration we can address complex development problems.
• Boldness - Boldness requires disruptive thinking backed up by courage and conviction.
• Creativity - Creativity ensures dynamic responsiveness, relevance and impact.
• Integrity - Integrity is non-negotiable in both personal and professional domains.

PCI is an Equal Opportunity Employer

PCI is committed to providing equal opportunity to all working for it and in creating an inclusive work environment. We respect the diversity of our people and follow a fair, non-discriminatory approach in terms of gender, age, nationality race, caste, religion, community, marital status, physical challenge, and sexual orientation.

We promote diversity in the workplace and ensure a culture of zero tolerance to any form of discrimination, abuse or harassment whether sexual, physical or psychological.

PCI provides equal opportunity in recruitment, appraisals, promotion and career progression. Our people policies are fair, objective and non-discriminatory and everyone is expected to adhere to them.

About the Position

• Job Title:Program Manager Livelihoods
• Number of positions: 01
• Reporting: Director- Livelihoods
• Qualification: Post-graduate degree/diploma in business management
• Location: New Delhi
• Salary Range: Competitive salary commensurate with experience
• Type- Project Based till Mar-2026

About the Role

The Program Manager Livelihoods, based in Delhi, will lead PCI s efforts to collaborate with Ministries and States to expand opportunities for Women-Led Enterprises (WLEs) in public procurement. She/ he is expected to develop project strategies, action plans, evaluation tools, budgeting and overall project implementation. She/he will guide the team at various State Rural Livelihood Missions (SRLMs) in collaborating with state departments to identify WLEs from existing SHG federations and help them build skills and support systems for success in public procurement. S/he will represent the organization and coordinate with NRLM and other responsible point persons in different SRLMs, and also with other key business organizations, stakeholders and agencies as per the requirement, under the close supervision of Director Livelihoods. She/ he will work effectively with market intelligence and business processing with overall support and guidance of Director Livelihoods to effectively interact and gather information/input from different public procurement and market space of WLEs and similar programs/ initiatives under NRLM/ SRLM. She/ he will develop analytical reports, data/ evidence and presentations for different stakeholders. S/he is expected to support the team in developing instructional playbooks on PP and undertake risk assessments of existing WLEs for generating evidence of best practice.

Key Responsibilities

Support in Project Operations & Management

• Provide technical support at national and state levels to promote public procurement opportunities for women-led enterprises.
• Lead the design and structuring of all major knowledge products (including research reports, situation analyses, instructional playbooks, Lessons Learnt Documents, workshop reports, etc.)
• Assist NRLM and SRLMs in identifying key indicators for public procurement and business model impact, ensuring effective data capture through the MIS and conducting necessary analysis.
• Identify best practices and lessons learned to guide programme improvement and strategy planning
• Lead and support in developing concept dissemination strategy for ensuring strategic positioning of the project at national and global level.
• Support in managing and optimizing project operational procedures, partnership management, contract management in sync with evolving program strategies in close coordination with COPs.
• Work closely with program support team to ensure judicious use of project resources in compliance with organizational policies

Supporting Project team positioned at different SRLMs

• Support team members at national and key states in planning & executing project activities at different SRLMs.
• Support the team to submit the progress reports and attend meetings and discussions with the donor representatives at different states as & when required.
• Be updated with all project activities at different states by having a regular connect with them, to serve as a stopgap, if required.
• Identify any shortcomings, and report to program lead to ensure uninterrupted project implementation.
• Support in project monitoring, timely reporting of the projects of different geographies.
• Support in preparation of any strategic documents pertaining to any project geography as requested by donor, client or any other stakeholder.

Support in Stakeholder and Donor Management

• Support Senior leaders in partnerships management by preparing meeting notes, draft articles, speeches, briefings, presentations, reports, documents and collated information as and when required.
• Engage in liaising with project stakeholders at different project locations.
• Support in quality and timely completion of final deliverables
• Assist the donor-facing presentation, data rich reporting, presentations, knowledge products and high-level dissemination of all final products.
• Other responsibilities

• To carry out any other relevant duties as required.

Expected Competencies

Academic Qualifications:

The ideal candidate shall have a post-graduate degree/diploma in business management with specialisation in marketing, financial management or entrepreneurship development.

Professional Experience:

The ideal candidate should have minimum 7 years of experience in working with enterprise development space or NRLM/ SRLM with international project support including being in reporting, financial management role with proven expertise in one or more of the following domains:

• Rural enterprise livelihoods
• small and micro enterprise promotion

The candidate should preferably have an experience of working on projects for the government, with focus on managing relations with donors and government system writing project reports, budgeting, and cost management.

1. Skills and Attributes:

• Excellent knowledge & skills to work on MS office.
• Knowledge and experience with gender approaches
• Knowledge of principles of negotiation, research & market analysis techniques
• Good analytical and problem-solving skills
• Demonstrated ability to provide leadership in a highly motivated team
• Excellent oral and written English skills

Duration of Appointment:

The professional will be engaged till March 2026. The extension of contract is subject to project extension/requirement & performance.

Special Remarks:

The candidate is expected to join at a short notice. Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

Note: This job description is intended to provide a general overview of the position and may not cover every aspect of the role. Additional responsibilities and duties may be assigned as needed to support organizational goals

About the Project:

In India, government procurement constitutes above 20 percent of the GDP ~ $500 billion. In fact, India is among the large emerging economies where procurement by the government accounts for over 20% of the GDP. Since 2018, the provisions under Govt. of India mandate public buyers to procure at least 25 per cent of their annual procurement of goods from Micro & Small Enterprises (MSEs). With a view to support MSEs, several benefits have been provided, e.g., issuance of tender document for free, exemption from Earnest Money Deposit requirements and reservation of 358 items for exclusive procurement from MSEs. There has been a gradual increase in the share of government procurement made from MSEs in the past four years barring FY 2021.

However, in the public procurement of goods and services in India, Women s Self-Help Groups and their federations have largely remained excluded and have not had the opportunity to create wealth for the rural poor through entrepreneurship. One of the reasons for this is a scarcity of evidence to demonstrate that viable models managed by community-based institutions exist and are successful in catering to the requirements of the State adequately and efficiently at scale.

PCI India has recently been engaged by a leading international philanthropic foundation to address this evidence gap and provide technical assistance (TA) to several State Rural Livelihoods Missions (SRLMs) to enable them to plan, create and manage more women-led businesses in public procurement space, thereby generating more jobs and income for women. The project is called Leveraging Public Procurement for Women s Economic Empowerment .

What can you expect in PCI

• A warm, inclusive and happy work environment.
• Performance driven reward mechanism.
• Best of class benefits with competitive remunerations.
• Health Insurance coverage for self, spouse & Children.
• Group Terms Life Insurance and Group Accident Insurance for Self.
• All other statutory benefits.
• Regular Recognition of performance and PCI Value display in work
• An empowering organization structure which values individual s skills, competencies and potential.
• Opportunities to operate in cross functional role.
• Higher responsibilities and larger roles are merit based.
• Young Talent Programs for developing future leaders.
• Leadership roles for women is encouraged and given preference in selection and training.

Recruitment Process

1. Applications will be shortlisted based on the specified criteria mentioned in the Job Description.
2. Shortlisted candidates will appear for a written assignment (if required).
3. Group Discussions may be part of the interview process for certain positions.
4. The process could also include presentation of the assignment.
5. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to attend one or more rounds of panel interview/s.

The complete process usually takes 2 to 3 weeks. If your application is not shortlisted, you will receive a mail from the People & Culture team. Those moving to the final round of interviews will be hearing from the People & Culture team. We prefer in person meetings but in case of location distances, we are happy to meet you virtually.

After the final round, if you are not selected for the position advertised, we will inform you over a mail. However, we invite you to apply to other open positions. We always look forward to engaging with talent that add value to our endeavors in various capacities.

PCI is committed to preventing any type of unwanted behavior at work including sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse, lack of integrity and financial misconduct.