Technical Advisor I-– Emergency Program Response Generalist

Position duration: (Tentative July 1, 2026 – December 31, 2027)

About CRS

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding. 

The Humanitarian Response Department (HRD) provides leadership and support to CRS emergency programming. The HRD strengthens CRS’ impact through high quality, innovative programs; improved technical and management capacity at the field level; and active engagement in global efforts to promote excellence and learning in humanitarian response. The HRD has technical staff that supports emergency program planning, rapid response, and capacity strengthening of staff and partners worldwide.

Job Summary 

You will provide technical advice and support to a range of program design and implementation issues in the area of Emergency Response and Recovery in line with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to Country Program (CP) teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable. Your advice, knowledge, and support will contribute to determining how effective, adaptive and innovative CRS’ Emergency Response and Recovery programming is across the globe.

Roles and Key Responsibilities

• Support the development and contribute to the implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools and best practices in Emergency Response and Recovery that effectively engage partners, donors, and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, protection mainstreaming, and disaster risk reduction.

• Provide technical solutions to CP teams, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools and M&E, helping to ensure high-quality implementation.

• Contribute to, and in some cases lead the development of the technical design for proposals. Support the process of preparation, design, submission and approval of project concepts and full-fledged proposals. As needed, act as a technical writer on proposal development teams. Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities and technical requirements into CRS’ approach.

• Support capacity strengthening initiatives in Emergency Response and Recovery programming for staff and partners through helping develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculums, conducting trainings and workshops, and coaching.

• Collect and analyze program data, capture and share lessons learned and best practices for specific projects to facilitate improvements in decision-making and contribute to the Emergency Response and Recovery learning agenda.

• Contribute to maintaining relationships with donors, peer organizations, research and other institutions, participate in forums in Emergency Response and Recovery to collect and share best practices and promote CRS’ work.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities  

• Proficient in MS Office packages (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Web Conferencing Applications, information and budget management systems, knowledge-sharing networks.

• Knowledge of technical principles and concepts in Emergency Response and Recovery. General knowledge of other related disciplines to ensure a proper cross-sectoral approach.

• Experience in project design and proposal development. Experience in writing content for proposals.

• Knowledge of capacity-strengthening best practices.

• Experience with program monitoring and evaluation and analysis.

• Experience and skills in networking and relations with donors, peer organizations, and faith-based civil society partners. Understanding of partnership principles.

• Strong relationship management skills with ability to influence and get buy-in from people not under direct supervision and to work with individuals in diverse geographical and cultural settings

• Good strategic, analytical, problem-solving and systems thinking skills with capacity to see the big picture and ability to make sound judgment

• Good technical writing skills

• Presentation, facilitation, training, mentoring, and coaching skills

• Proactive, resourceful and results-oriented

Preferred Qualifications 

• Master's Degree in International Development, Disaster Management or related field is an advantage.

• Located in or able to cover UTC +0 – UTC +4 time zones.

Required Languages: Proficiency (verbal and written) in English and French. Proficiency in additional languages a plus.

Travel: Must be willing and able to travel up to 50% (i.e., 6 months out of the year) ; duration of a deployment will generally be from 1 to 3 months, depending on the needs of the country program/partner. Candidates should have the capacity to live and work in difficult/stressful environments and serve wherever agency needs dictate 

Supervisory Responsibilities: May be assigned temporary supervisory responsibilities during field deployments, as needed