Chief Operating Officer

The Organisation

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We believe in the power and potential of every child but know this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. And it is girls who are most affected.

Working together with children, young people, supporters and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges girls and vulnerable children face. We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood and we enable children to prepare for and respond to crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national and global levels using our reach, experience and knowledge.

For over 85 years, we have rallied other determined optimists to transform the lives of all children in more than 80 countries.

We won’t stop until we are all equal.

The Opportunity

Plan International is entering an inspiring new chapter in our journey. As part of our operating model review, we are evolving our Leadership Team structure to strengthen how we lead and deliver together. This transformation builds on a strong foundation and positions us to be more agile, cohesive, and impact-driven. Our new leadership model fosters faster decision-making, clearer accountability, and a culture of collaboration and empowerment across all levels.

If you are passionate about driving performance and shaping the future, this is your opportunity to make a real difference. We are deeply ambitious for our organisation—courageous in holding ourselves and others to account, yet humble in our approach.

Our vision is bold: to become the thought leader and the go-to for girls in crisis. In a sector facing unprecedented challenges, we need leaders who are strong, steady, and resilient—ready to navigate storms and emerge stronger. If you share this ambition and have the courage to lead with integrity and transform the lives of girls worldwide, join us to help shape the future of Plan International.

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) ensures Plan International is resilient, well governed, and future ready. As a strategic enterprise leader, the COO shapes the Leadership Team agenda and sets the organisation’s enterprise approach to how Plan International operates, governs itself, and evolves to deliver impact at scale. The role fosters inclusive decision making and collective leadership, while ensuring that strategy is translated into delivery through strong systems, accountable leadership, and efficient, risk-aware operations across regions and country programmes.

The COO provides strategic oversight of the organisation’s enterprise enabling environment and global services, ensuring coherence between global standards and country-level realities. Through this enterprise leadership, the role strengthens organisational effectiveness, performance, and accountability, and enables impact and growth in a complex and changing sector.

The COO holds strategic accountability for organisational integrity and performance culture, embedding global values and behaviours and ensuring operational excellence supports Plan International’s mission and strategic priorities. The role brings enterprise foresight and adaptive capacity, enabling the organisation to evolve its operating model over time while remaining robust, compliant, and values led.

As a member of the Leadership Team, the COO actively shapes and champions a culture of collective responsibility for the overall strategic direction of Plan International Inc, consistently modelling Plan International’s values and behaviours, underpinned by feminist leadership principles, as One Plan, shared values.

About You

Successful applicants will bring extensive senior leadership experience in global operations, governance, or enterprise-level service delivery within complex international organisations and the demonstrated ability to lead strategic execution, drive cross-functional coordination, and enable organisational performance across diverse operational domains.

You will bring deep expertise in organisational resilience, safeguarding, and integrated risk management, with a track record of embedding these frameworks into operational practice. Experience navigating federated, networked, or decentralised organisational models is also essential to support both global coherence and local relevance.

This role requires outstanding stakeholder engagement and influencing skills, with the ability to build trust, foster strong cross-functional collaboration, and lead across culturally and geographically diverse contexts.

Please contact the Talent Acquisition team at careers@plan-international.org for a full role profile.

Location: The location of this role can be flexible where Plan International has an office* that can employ on behalf of the Global Hub, however, locations closest to Plan's point of impact are preferred.

Reports to: Chief Executive Officer

Closing Date: Friday 20th February

*Plan International has offices in the following locations: Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin,, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, China, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Finland, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the very heart of everything that Plan International stands for.

We want Plan International to reflect the diversity of the communities we work with, offering equal opportunities to everyone regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

Plan International is based on a culture of inclusivity and we strive to create a workplace environment that ensures every team, in every office, in every country, is rich in diverse people, thoughts, and ideas.

We foster an organisational culture that embraces our commitment to racial justice, gender equality, girls’ rights and inclusion.

Plan International believes that in a world where children face so many threats of harm, it is our duty to ensure that we, as an organisation, do everything we can to keep children safe. This means that we have particular responsibilities to children that we come into contact with and we must not contribute in any way to harming or placing children at risk.

A range of pre-employment checks will be undertaken in conformity with Plan International's Safeguarding Children and Young People policy. Plan International also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this scheme we will request information from applicants previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.

Please note that Plan International will never send unsolicited emails requesting payment from candidates.