The posting
Your mission
MAIN PURPOSE The Child Protection Senior Specialist is a technical advisory role, providing high-quality, practical child protection expertise and support to War Child Alliance country offices and partners across all regions and country clusters.
Working under the strategic leadership of the Child Protection Lead, the Senior Specialist serves as a key day-to-day technical focal point for child protection programming, supporting country teams and partners to design, implement, adapt and strengthen quality child protection interventions in humanitarian, development and protracted crisis contexts.
The role has a particular responsibility for supporting the introduction, rollout, implementation and quality assurance of War Child's child protection Evidence-Based Methodologies (EBMs), focusing on Seeds, VoiceMore and Stretch. This includes proactively engaging country offices and partners to build awareness and understanding of the methodologies, assessing readiness and suitability for implementation, facilitating training, providing coaching and mentoring, and accompanying teams through implementation and learning processes.
Beyond the EBM portfolio, the Senior Specialist provides thematic and technical advisory support to wider child protection programming, ensuring alignment with international standards, evidence, contextual needs and good practice.
Although the position sits within War Child's country cluster structure for organisational purposes, its technical mandate is global, with responsibilities extending to all War Child Alliance country offices and partners according to organisational priorities, technical needs and available capacity.
The Senior Specialist works closely with other thematic teams, MEAL, Research & Development, Humanitarian and Partnerships colleagues to ensure consistent, coordinated and high-quality technical support.
Clusters:
- Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine
- Syria, Jordan, oPt, Colombia, Global
- DRC, Uganda, CAR, South Sudan, Sudan, Chad
CORE RESPONSIBILITIES
- Provide high-quality, practical child protection technical advice and accompaniment to War Child Alliance country offices and partners across all regions and country clusters, supporting programme design, implementation, adaptation and quality assurance.
- Act as a key day-to-day technical focal point for country teams and partners, providing guidance across the wider child protection portfolio, including case management, systems strengthening, integrated programming and the application of international standards, under the overall thematic leadership of the Child Protection Lead.
- Support the introduction and rollout of War Child's EBMs, including Seeds, VoiceMore and Stretch, building awareness and understanding of the methodologies, assessing suitability and implementation readiness, and supporting country offices and partners with planning and implementation.
- Deliver and facilitate technical trainings, workshops and other learning activities, alongside providing ongoing coaching, mentoring and practical accompaniment to strengthen staff and partner competencies and ensure quality implementation.
- Support the contextualisation and adaptation of EBMs, ensuring alignment with core methodology principles and quality standards, and contribute to the development and improvement of training materials, learning pathways, implementation guidance and partnership packages.
- Support War Child Alliance's transition towards 100% partner-led child protection programming, working with country offices and Partnerships colleagues to identify, assess and engage suitable partners, including assessing technical capacities, programme quality, safeguarding and implementation readiness.
- Develop and support tailored partner capacity-strengthening and technical accompaniment plans, enabling partners to increasingly independently design, deliver, adapt, monitor and sustain quality child protection programming, including EBMs.
- Support the development and review of child protection strategies, proposals, technical guidance and implementation plans, ensuring alignment with evidence, contextual needs and good practice.
- Work with country teams, partners, MEAL and other technical colleagues to monitor programme quality, identify challenges, capture learning and inform continuous improvement and responsible scaling of EBMs and wider child protection programming.
- Collaborate with other thematic teams, Research & Development and Partnerships colleagues to coordinate technical support, share learning and ensure consistency and coherence across country programmes.
Each staff member is responsible for contributing to creating a culture committed to our mission, vision, internal safeguarding standards, JEDI ((Social) Justice Equity Diversity Inclusion) principles and the CHS (Core Humanitarian Standard) framework and are expected to actively promote this in their work.
ROLE-SPECIFIC OR CONTEXT RESPONSIBILITIES
- Serve as a key day-to-day technical contact for country offices and partners on child protection programming and the assigned EBM portfolio, working under the overall thematic leadership of the Child Protection Lead.
- Work flexibly across all country clusters, providing technical support according to organisational priorities, programme needs and agreed workplans rather than being limited to one geographic cluster.
- Work closely with the Partnerships Department to support technical components of partner engagement, onboarding, capacity strengthening and EBM rollout, ensuring clear and complementary responsibilities.\
- Support country offices and partners to identify opportunities to integrate Seeds, VoiceMore and Stretch within existing and planned child protection programming, where appropriate.
- Contribute technical inputs to proposals, donor engagement, programme reviews, annual planning and other organisational processes as required. Collaborate with colleagues across Child Protection, MHPSS, Education, Humanitarian,
- MEAL, Research & Development, Partnerships and other relevant teams to promote integrated, high-quality programming.
- Participate in external technical forums, networks and coordination mechanisms where appropriate, contributing specialist technical knowledge and implementation experience in alignment with the external engagement priorities set by the Child Protection Lead.
- Contribute to global knowledge sharing and learning across countries, including sharing promising practices and lessons from EBM implementation and wider child protection programming.
Your profile
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, EXPERIENCE
Education
- Relevant academic background in Child Protection, Social Work, Social Sciences or another closely related field.
Experience
- Substantial experience providing technical advisory support to child protection programmes in humanitarian, development or protracted crisis settings.
- Experience supporting child protection programmes across different country contexts, including providing remote and in-person technical support.
- Demonstrated experience in child protection programme design, implementation, adaptation, quality assurance and capacity strengthening.
- Strong practical experience designing, facilitating and delivering training, including participatory and competency-based learning approaches.
- Demonstrated experience coaching, mentoring and accompanying staff and partners to strengthen technical competencies and programme implementation quality.
- Experience supporting the rollout or implementation of structured programme methodologies, technical approaches or evidence-based interventions.
- Experience working with local and national partners, including strengthening partner technical capacity and supporting locally led programming.
- Experience developing or adapting technical guidance, training materials, implementation tools and learning resources.
- Experience working collaboratively across diverse, geographically dispersed teams.
- Experience supervising or technically supporting other specialists or advisors is desirable.
Languages
- Fluency in English is required for this role.
- Additional languages may be useful depending on stakeholder groups and organisational context, for example Arabic, Dari, French, Spanish, or Ukrainian
(Technical) Knowledge
- Strong technical knowledge of child protection programming, international standards and good practice, including the Child
- Protection Minimum Standards.
- Knowledge and practical experience of community-based and community-led child protection approaches, child protection systems strengthening and meaningful child and community participation.
- Understanding of evidence-based programming, quality
What we offer
Location: We operate in a global context, with team members based across multiple countries. War Child currently works in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Colombia, DR Congo, Germany, Jordan, Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territory, South Sudan, Sweden, Syria, Uganda, Ukraine (registration in progress), and Yemen. We also have offices in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Preference is given to candidates who reside in one of these locations and hold valid work authorisation. War Child does not provide relocation support.
Type of contract: This is a locally contracted position. Salary and secondary employment conditions are aligned with the applicable in-country salary scale, and local terms and conditions will apply.
How to Apply
Qualified candidates are encouraged to submit their applications (CV and motivation letter in English) by 2 November 2026. We are reviewing submissions on a rolling basis, so early applications are strongly recommended. ________________________________________________________________________________ By submitting your application you certify that all of the statements made in your application are true, complete, and correct and are made in good faith. You understand that falsifying, misrepresenting or intentionally withholding information will be grounds for rejection of your application or withdrawal of any offer of appointment or, if an appointment offer has been accepted, this will be ground for employment sanctions, such as, but not limited to, instant dismissal. In addition, you understand that you need to submit a Criminal Record Certificate and that, if you fail to submit it, no employment relationship can be established.
Disclaimer
- Only applications received via our website are processed.
- If we appoint a suitable candidate before the given closing date, we reserve the right to remove the vacancy from our website before that date. In such a case, any responses received after that time are not processed.
- It could be that during our selection process the closing date for the vacancy is extended. If so, and you have not yet heard from us, your application will remain active.
