Senior Advisor, Operations

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.

Role Purpose

• Provide strategic advice, coordination, and facilitation to the Chief Operating Officer, enabling effective prioritisation, decision-making, and follow-through across Operations through influence and alignment
• Ensure alignment between strategy, leadership direction, and execution to accelerate Operations’ performance.

Dimensions of the Role

• Act as principal strategic advisor to the Chief Operating Officer, ensuring coherence, prioritisation and timely delivery across the department.
• Coordinate planning and performance (workplans, reviews, risk tracking), ensuring clear accountability, visibility of progress, and course correction across Operations, as required.
• Lead coordination of the COO’s internal and external engagement pipeline, speeches, briefs and positioning materials and drafts input for leadership.
• Exercise influence across Operations to align priorities, unblock delivery issues, and drive outcomes—without direct line management authority.
• Drive the leadership operating rigour and coherence, including agenda-setting, decision tracking, and follow-up to ensure timely execution.
• Track and rive strategic initiatives on behalf of COO in lien with strategic priorities

Accountabilities

• Provide timely, evidence-informed strategic counsel to the COO, synthesising complex inputs into clear decisions and actions.
• Proactive alerting of emerging issues or areas requiring action for course correction  
• Lead the end-to-end preparation and strategic alignment of leadership engagements, ensuring clear objectives, messaging coherence, and follow-through actions.
• Ensure high-quality planning, monitoring and learning across Operations, aligning departmental priorities, milestones and performance indicators.
• Coordinate cross-organisational initiatives with the Executive Office to align CEO and Operations priorities and partnerships.
• Enable effective information flow and decision-making across Operations, ensuring issues are escalated, resolved, and do not stall delivery.
• Develop forward-looking agendas, briefings, and strategic analysis on priority and emerging issues to inform leadership discussions and action.
• Ensure that Plan International’s global policies for Safeguarding Children and Young People and Gender Equality and Inclusion are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures

Key relationships

• The Chief Operating Officer (line manager)
• Operations leadership and wider team
• Finance Business partner
• P&C Business Partner
• Office of CEO

Technical expertise, skills and knowledge required

Essential

• Experience providing senior advisory support in complex global organisations
• Strong critical thinking with proven ability to synthesise complex discussions into clear recommendations for senior leaders.
• Experience supporting senior leaders to make equity‑aware, values‑aligned decisions in complex contexts.
• Advanced stakeholder engagement and relationship management skills
• Strong strategic writing skills (briefings, speeches, narratives, presentations) and outstanding organisation and prioritisation.
• Proven ability to drive execution and maintain momentum across complex, matrixed organisations.
• Strong problem solving skills

Desirable

• Knowledge of international development, humanitarian action and trends affecting girls’ and children’s rights.
• Management Consulting skills

Location: The location of this role can be flexible where Plan International has an office* that can employ on behalf of the Global Hub and you have the pre-existing right to work and live. Working hours that align with the UTC timezone are preferred.  

Type of Role: 6 month fixed term contract

Reports to: Chief Operating Officer

Closing Date: Tuesday 21st July

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.