Job Introduction

BBC Media Action is the BBC’s international development charity, which uses media and communications to help reduce poverty, address development goals, and support people to understand their rights. We do this through partnering with media, civil society and others to produce creative programmes and other outputs which inform and engage audiences on key development issues. We also strengthen the media sector through building professional capacity and infrastructure of local media organisations in the countries in which we work.

BBC Media Action delivers a portfolio of projects in Sierra Leone. It seeks to expand this portfolio of work, but also to ensure that existing projects are delivered on time, on budget, to the highest standards and in accordance with BBC editorial values as well as Media Action methodologies.

Role Responsibility

This exciting and influential role will be responsible for the overall management and delivery of a range of development projects which use the power of media to tackle issues of education, media freedom, governance, health and resilience. The Senior Project Manager will oversee a diverse, multidisciplinary team to ensure the agreed targets and objectives are met; and will ensure the quality and cohesion of project outputs. Maintaining relationships with donors and ensuring accurate and timely financial and narrative donor reporting will be a key part of the role, as will identifying further funding opportunities related to meeting development priorities in Sierra Leone and taking the lead on writing successful proposals.

The Senior Projects Manager will be responsible for overseeing the overall delivery and budget management of projects, and for reporting on progress to the Country Director, partners and donors. Upon request of the Country Director, the Senior Project Manager will represent Media Action in country to key stakeholders and will ensure effective relationships and partnerships with a wide range of partners including broadcasters, NGOs, international development agencies and others.

The Ideal Candidate

• Considerable experience developing and managing large-scale, donor-funded projects in a developing-country context, preferably in Africa.
• Proven ability to develop and secure new donor-funded international development projects, including ability to develop new business ideas and present these persuasively to potential partners and funders. Proven experience writing successful donor-funded proposals that incorporate project research and development, logframes, budgets, etc.
• Strong financial management skills, with proven experience managing complex medium to large budgets for donor-funded international development projects and knowledge of the reporting requirements of donors.
• Experience managing teams, preferably within a developing-country context, and developing and improving internal management systems and processes.
• Proven ability to forge strong working relations quickly and gain the trust of local partners and counterparts (such as other NGOs, local media, donors and other stakeholders).
• Demonstrable editorial judgement skills and understanding of BBC editorial values, or demonstrable potential to acquire strong editorial skills in order to help make sensitive editorial judgements at a senior level.

Package Description

Band: D
Contract type: 2 year Fixed Term Contract
Location: Sierra Leone

About the Company

We don’t focus simply on what we do – we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you’ve read about our values and behaviours in the document attached below.

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC – whether that’s to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity. 

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise

Closing Date30 September, 2022