Senior Program Manager - CPI ANZ

Role: Senior Program Manager

Salary: $125,000 - $140,000 per annum full time equivalent (base salary, not including 9% superannuation) (precise salary to be negotiated based on level of experience)

Contract: 0.8 FTE; 6-month fixed term contract (with extension possible)

Location: This role is an Australia-based position. CPI ANZ is a remote-first team, meaning that we have no central office and will support our staff to work from a home office, co-working space, or a combination of locations. If applying from outside Australia, you should ensure that you meet the necessary visa and work permit requirements. We are unable to act as a sponsor or provide visa support. We will not be considering applications from New Zealand staff as part of this recruitment round, but hope to in the not-too-distant future.

When: Looking for a commencement date in early November 2021.

About the Centre for Public Impact (CPI)

CPI is a not-for-profit founded by the Boston Consulting Group. We work with governments, public servants and other changemakers to reimagine government, and turn ideas into action, so that government works for everyone.

We are a small organisation, and just over six years old, but already our global footprint is expansive and we partner with some of the biggest names in government, academia and public sector innovation in the world. As well as the ANZ team, we have a Europe team (formerly UK team), a North America team, and a very new team (of one) in India. We are all supported by the Global Hub team who provide operational and communication support across the regions.

Our values: 

• courageous - we have the courage to speak the truth, to challenge without fear and tackle the difficult questions

• respectful - we respect differences, we seek to understand them and we look out for one another

• optimistic - we are positive about what we and governments can do for our societies

• inclusive - we are non partisan, we work together and seek ideas and solutions across the divides

To advance our purpose of reimagining government so that it works for everyone, CPI seeks to attract and support a diversity of backgrounds, experience, talent and thought. For this reason, we encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply. This includes candidates that have previously found it hard to be considered for other positions on the basis of their qualifications, disabilities, personal background or life events. If you would like to apply for the position but see a barrier to joining us, please do apply and we will work with you to find a solution. You can also read our full Diversity Equity and Inclusion Policy here.

About the ANZ team

The ANZ team was established in March of 2020. The current team is made up of Thea Snow, Director, and David Murikumthara, who joined as a Program Manager in January 2021. 

Over the past year and a half, the CPI ANZ team has been working to build a presence, develop strong relationships, and secure a pipeline of work in ANZ. On the basis of this foundational work, we now feel ready to bring some new members into the ANZ team. Both Thea and David are Melbourne-based, but we are looking for candidates to join us from anywhere across Australia. 

Because we are very much still in start-up mode, we need someone who is willing to work across the full spectrum of tasks - from administrative work to blue-sky thinking. We are also a self-managed team. While self-management is a continuous process of development and improvement, we think it means (amongst other things): adopting a “tight on values, loose on delivery” approach to our work; working as a team to collectively set our vision and priorities; and thinking hard about who makes which decisions, and why - we don’t default to “decision-making from the top”.

You can read more about what it feels like to work in a self-managed environment in this blog by Carmella, who is part of our Global Hub team. 

What you’ll be doing

As a Senior Program Manager in the CPI ANZ team, you’ll be working closely with the rest of the team, spreading your time across research, thought leadership, programs and team building. Our work at CPI is a blend of thinking and doing - we spend part of our time developing and sharing new ideas, and part of our time working with partner organisations to apply these ideas in practice. If you want to get a better sense of what we do, you can visit our CPI ANZ landing page.

Senior Program Managers across all CPI Regional teams are expected to:

• Independently hold, manage and develop key client relationships

• Take a lead role in developing and drafting project proposals and other activities related to business development

• Lead large, complex, multi-stakeholder programs and/or research projects and ensure deliverables are of a very high standard

• Shape how we work together as a team and our organisational culture 

• Offer trusted advice and support to team members (e.g. through mentoring)

More specifically for this role, we’re also looking for someone who will contribute to CPI ANZ’s thought-leadership.The Senior Program Manager will be expected to publish blogs which explore CPI’s key themes and represent CPI ANZ at public-facing events. 

We expect applicants for this role will have 7+ years work experience.

The person we’re looking for will

• Be passionate about CPI’s vision for reimagining government

• Be comfortable leading research projects, and running programs, as well as projects which incorporate both research and programmatic elements (which most do!)

• Have outstanding written and communication skills

• Have a strong understanding of how government works

• Have excellent organisational skills and experience with balancing competing priorities

• Have excellent interpersonal skills, including feeling confident building new relationships, and negotiating challenging conversations with stakeholders and partners, if necessary

• Be highly self motivated and capable of taking initiative and working autonomously

• Demonstrate an empathic and humble leadership approach

• Think beyond the task at hand, and draw connections between their work and other pieces of work and priorities across global CPI teams

• Be a strategic thinker, who will actively contribute to shaping the development and vision of the ANZ team, and CPI more broadly

• Be comfortable with ambiguity and the complexity of our work, where anything is possible but not always known in advance

• Feel excited about joining an international organisation and be willing to make the effort needed to build relationships and stay connected with colleagues in different timezones

• Be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, and in ways which look quite different to a 9am-5pm style of job

• Be curious and eager to learn

• Feel excited about the idea of working in startup environment and with a very small team

• Be committed to exploring and experimenting with self management, even if this sometimes feels a bit confusing!

We are interested in candidates who have skills or expertise which are particularly relevant to our vision. This includes experience and familiarity with complexity and systems theory; co-design skills; experience working with relational methods; learning design expertise; experience working in government; and experience with complexity-informed evaluation approaches. However, while these skills will be considered a valuable asset, they are not essential and we certainly welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds with unconventional skills or experience that may still be relevant and valuable to our work.

We look forward to receiving your application via the Applied platform . If you have any questions about this position or for information, Rebecca Hunt, Global People and Operations Coordinator, is happy to help.