Program Manager, Rwanda

About Vital Strategies

Vital Strategies is a global public health organization focused on improving health systems and tackling major drivers of illness, injury, and premature death. Its work spans 73 countries and supports governments with evidence-based decision-making, public health policy development, and strategic communications. Current priorities include preventing non-communicable diseases, tobacco control, road safety, obesity prevention, overdose prevention, environmental health, and strengthening vital statistics systems. The organization works primarily in low- and middle-income countries across Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific.

Vital Strategies is also committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It values teams made up of people with varied lived experiences and encourages applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

About the Program

This role sits within Vital Strategies’ growing lead poisoning prevention initiative. The program aims to work with government partners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to strengthen health systems, deepen local expertise in childhood lead exposure, and support practical, cost-effective policy responses.

Role Purpose

The Program Manager will support technical work to strengthen health-system capacity for lead poisoning reduction and will help oversee field research in Rwanda. The position includes epidemiological and programmatic support, particularly for the design, rollout, and monitoring of blood lead surveillance. The role requires close collaboration with scientists, epidemiologists, clinicians, statisticians, public health professionals, and senior government stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Technical and Programmatic Support

• Work with the wider team to support the design and delivery of the lead poisoning prevention program.
• Help strengthen the capacity of government and non-government staff involved in implementation.
• Support the development of a surveillance structure, the standardization of surveillance procedures, and the process for obtaining ethical approval.
• Train and follow up on field surveillance teams.
• Help organize technical meetings and journalist training activities.
• Contribute to policy analysis work.
• Facilitate training for health officials, frontline workers, journalists, and other stakeholders.

Stakeholder Management

• Help build and maintain relationships with government and non-government partners across health, environment, academic, and research sectors.
• With guidance from the supervisor, act as the Vital Strategies representative and point of contact for key stakeholders.

Data Management

• Work with assigned team members to oversee data collection, maintain data quality, and manage datasets.
• Carry out field monitoring through regular visits to selected surveillance sites.
• Partner with senior epidemiologists to clean, analyze, and report surveillance data while maintaining high data quality standards.

Communications

• Prepare presentations, technical reports, and simplified summaries for policy audiences and the public.
• Share findings with stakeholders and encourage the use of evidence in policy and planning.

Operations and Administration

• Supervise and support a small distributed team.
• Assist with program launch activities, logistics, contracting, expense tracking, activity reporting, and procurement.
• Support payment processing for team members and vendors in coordination with Vital Strategies’ finance and operations teams.
• Prepare program, finance, and project updates for Rwanda.
• Coordinate work with partner organizations.
• Handle additional responsibilities assigned by the supervisor.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in public health, epidemiology, environmental science, a related public health discipline such as biostatistics or demography, or public administration.
• Strong familiarity with public health systems, health programming, disease surveillance, and assessment of environmental and health risks.
• Good understanding of evidence-based advocacy and working through administrative or regulatory processes.
• Highly organized, able to balance multiple priorities and deadlines.
• Comfortable working independently while coordinating across varied teams and stakeholders.
• Flexible and able to collaborate across time zones.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, with professional proficiency in the local language and English.
• Ability to interpret public health data, develop practical insights, and contribute to policy recommendations.
• Capacity to anticipate issues, solve problems, and adapt to changing program needs.
• Solid working knowledge of Microsoft Office.
• Motivation to address environmental health issues and support community well-being.
• Ability to build productive, long-term relationships across organizational levels and diverse cultural, generational, ethnic, racial, educational, and social groups.
• Clear commitment to diversity, inclusion, and a respectful learning and working environment.
• At least 6 to 7 years of experience in epidemiology, environmental health, global health, and/or program implementation.
• Experience supporting the design and monitoring of national health surveillance programs or managing large health-related surveys.
• Experience working with government health departments, regulatory agencies, and public health facilities.
• Experience with data analysis tools such as R, Stata, SAS, or Excel, and/or visualization tools such as Shiny or Tableau.
• Experience leading training sessions.
• Experience supervising a small team, with the ability to manage 2 to 3 staff members and other national-level stakeholders.
• Preferred: experience managing complex data flows.
• Preferred: experience presenting scientific or health information to varied audiences.
• Preferred: familiarity with project management tools such as Monday or Airtable.

Working Conditions

This is a full-time remote role based in Kigali, Rwanda. The opportunity is open to Rwandan nationals and candidates who hold a valid Rwanda work and residence permit. The selected candidate will be engaged through Vital Strategies’ Employer of Record arrangement. Travel within Rwanda for meetings and field visits is expected as needed, with occasional international travel for meetings.

Compensation

The annual salary range for this role is RWF 33,600,000 to RWF 43,000,000.

Equal Opportunity

Vital Strategies welcomes candidates from all backgrounds and values diversity, equity, and inclusion across its workforce.