Senior Associate – Food Systems, Agriculture & Climate Resilience

About the role

Busara’s Food Systems, Agriculture and Climate Resilience Management (FaRM) team is looking for a Senior Associate to lead rigorous research and advisory projects for donors, governments and private‑sector clients. You will apply behavioural science to complex food‑system challenges across the Global South, translating evidence into actionable recommendations.

Key responsibilities

• Own the client relationship throughout the engagement lifecycle, from scoping and contracting to delivery and dissemination.
• Design and lead qualitative research components (IDIs, FGDs, ethnographic observation, participatory methods) and integrate them with quantitative workstreams.
• Translate client problems into well‑defined research briefs, develop proposals, concept notes and pitch decks, and represent Busara at conferences and technical working groups.
• Manage project timelines, budgets, staffing plans and mentor analysts and project leads, coordinating with Busara’s Data, Programming and Operations teams.
• Contribute to FaRM team strategy, internal knowledge management and hiring processes.

Required profile

• 5–8 years of research, advisory or program design experience focused on food systems, agriculture or climate resilience in sub‑Saharan Africa or comparable contexts.
• Deep expertise in qualitative research methods with extensive fieldwork experience in low‑resource settings.
• Proven ability to manage senior client and partner relationships and lead multi‑stakeholder projects from inception to delivery.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant social science discipline; a Master’s degree is strongly preferred.
• Excellent written and verbal communication in English for both technical and non‑technical audiences.

Required skills

• Stata
• R
• Python