Director, Emergency Response Delivery

Director, Emergency Response Delivery

GiveDirectly (GD) aims to reshape international giving and millions of lives by providing cash grants directly to the worlds poorest. The Brookings Institution estimates that $70B of cash transfers would be required to eliminate the poverty gap; the aid sector currently spends $135B each year, much of it on evidence-free interventions. GiveDirectly wants to change that, establishing cash transfers as a benchmark for foreign aid as the index fund is a benchmark for the financial industry and in the process accelerating the end of extreme poverty.

GD has raised over $1B since launching in 2011, delivered cash to more than 1.5 million people in 15 different countries. Weve also supported large-scale, experimental research that indicates strong recipient impact of our programs. As a result, GD has been celebrated as one of the most innovative non-profit companies by Fast Company, while the growing cash transfer movement (and GDs leading role within it) have been featured in the New York Times Magazine, This American Life, Foreign Affairs, and The Economist.

Our culture is candid, analytical, agile, and non-hierarchical. Our global team of ~150, and country operations teams of ~650, together come from 21 different countries speaking 69 different languages. From software engineers to seasoned humanitarian workers, former management consultants to public servants, researchers to field operations its an incredible group of people.

Our values are central and deliberately opinionated. We genuinely center the people we serve in our decision making, and strive to build an ambitious, dynamic and high performing environment. We strongly encourage you to read through our values carefully, if they reflect how you like to work and energize you, this could be a great fit.

We work hard to create an environment in which all our team members can thrive, succeed and grow. We support flexibility, take care of each other, have fun, and create professional growth opportunities.

Location: This role is fully remote but must overlap with an East Africa timezone by at least 3 hours. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visas in the U.S. or U.K. at this time.

About this role

The Director, Emergency Response Delivery will lead the delivery of GiveDirectlys emergency response programming globally, ensuring we deliver rapid, dignified, and evidence-based cash relief to people affected by crises. Youll oversee end-to-end program delivery across diverse contexts from conflict displacement to climate disasters ensuring our systems and teams can scale quickly while upholding GiveDirectlys core principles of transparency and respect. Youll partner closely with other directors and leads reporting to the Senior Product Director: Emergency Response to design and operationalize the organizations emergency response strategy, translating vision into action through world-class execution, preparedness, and continuous improvement in the field.

This is a senior leadership role for someone who thrives in fast-moving, complex settings and wants to help redefine how humanitarian aid is delivered.

Reports to: Senior Product Director, Emergency Response

Level: Director

Travel Requirement: Up to 60% international travel for emergency response, field visits and partner engagement.

What youll do

1. Lead Global Emergency Response Delivery

• Oversee implementation of Emergency Response programs from activation, program design, cash delivery, followup and closure.
• Collaborate with the rest of the Emergency Response product function to establish and continuously improve operational standards for field execution (e.g., targeting, verification, payments, M&E, etc).
• Manage multiple simultaneous deployments, ensuring delivery speed and recipient experience meet our program standards.
• Serve as the directly responsible individual (DRI) for cash delivery during active responses, coordinating across functions to unblock issues in real time.
• Ensure alignment with GDs standards, including protection, data security, financial procedures and safeguarding.

2. Build and Manage the Emergency Response Delivery Team

• Recruit, train, and coach a high-performing team capable of repeatedly deploying on short notice.
• Develop clear career pathways, performance goals, and preparedness benchmarks.
• Create and maintain deployment rosters, surge pools, role profiles and equipment standards.

3. Drive Organizational Preparedness

• Lead the development and continuous improvement of delivery operational playbooks, SOPs, and readiness tools.
• Partner with Product, Tech and Global Support Services teams to ensure systems readiness and improvement by contributing to the prioritization of investments and solutions.
• Track and report on readiness metrics.
• Ensure a culture of learning and continuous improvement by leading regular lessons learned processes and supporting a prioritization of people, process and technology investments to improve Emergency Response speed and quality.

4. Ensure Safety and Risk Management

• Act as the global safety focal point for Emergency Response delivery operations.
• Oversee staff security and duty of care during deployments, in partnership with GDs Safety & Security and People teams.
• Oversee risk assessments before and during field activations.
• Support after-action reviews and continuous improvement of safety protocols.

5. Represent GiveDirectly and Strengthen Partnerships

• Engage with external humanitarian partners, donors, and coordination clusters as a representative of GDs operational delivery capabilities.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders (Product, Legal, Finance, Partnerships) to ensure operational feasibility and compliance.
• Contribute to donor reporting, proposals, and communications by sharing operational insights and field impact stories.

What youll bring

• Deep commitment to GiveDirectlys values and belief in the dignity and autonomy of people living in poverty.
• 10+ years of experience in humanitarian programming, with significant time spent in field-based roles managing multi-country or large-scale operations.
• Significant experience working in challenging humanitarian contexts and overseeing security and risk management frameworks.
• Excellent judgement in fast-paced crisis settings.
• Strong understanding of humanitarian systems, including coordination mechanisms (UN clusters, INGO networks), donor engagement, and response frameworks.
• Proven experience designing and managing cash and voucher assistance (CVA) or similar direct aid programs.
• Demonstrated leadership, problem solving, and critical thinking in high-pressure, uncertain environments.
• A willingness to reimagine humanitarian and emergency response assistance approaches and technologies.
• Excellent cross-cultural communication and ability to lead diverse, distributed teams.
• Commitment to fostering inclusivity and equity, both internally and externally.
• Fluency in English (required), additional languages such as French preferred.

Compensation

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third-party salary aggregator to calculate competitive pay based on role, location, and cost of living. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure equity across roles.

• The United States base salary for this role is $154,000
• The Kenya base salary for this role is $120,000

This role is fully remote, so if you are not based in one of these countries, we will share a local benchmark during the hiring process.