Clinical Advisor

Location: Stone Town, Zanzibar

Reports to: Zanzibar Country Director

Employment type: Full-time

Candidate type: Tanzanian preferred; all applicants welcome to apply

Start Date: June or July 2026

Purpose

The Clinical Advisor is a clinical and public health expert embedded within D-tree's Program Unit. This role serves as a clinical backbone across D-tree's portfolio–proactively shaping program design and implementation to ensure clinical rigor, coherence, and quality across programs in Zanzibar, mainland Tanzania, and Malawi. The Clinical Advisor brings together clinical credibility, public health program experience, and a commitment to health systems strengthening to ensure D-tree's programs translate into real improvements in health outcomes, patient experience, and health system sustainability.

The role is physically based in Zanzibar, where clinical support is focused in the near term, while also serving as a clinical resource and thought partner to D-tree's Tanzania and Malawi country teams and contributing to global strategy and business development. This geographic focus reflects current organizational needs and may evolve over time.

Reporting and Collaboration

This role is part of D-tree's Program Unit and is based in Zanzibar. The Clinical Advisor reports to the Zanzibar Country Director, with matrix management to the Director of Programs.

Key Responsibilities

Clinical Support to Zanzibar (60%)

The Clinical Advisor will serve as D-tree's clinical lead across the Zanzibar portfolio, proactively identifying opportunities to strengthen clinical quality and coherence across D-tree's Zanzibar efforts. Across this portfolio, the Clinical Advisor will:

• Own clinical quality and program fidelity–ensuring that D-tree's programs reflect sound clinical standards and that workflows, protocols, and provider expectations are grounded in evidence and adapted to the local context

• Proactively engage program and technology teams as a clinical resource and thought partner–anticipating where clinical input is needed, helping non-clinical staff understand clinical context, and ensuring program design decisions are clinically grounded

• Build and maintain trusted relationships with CHWs, health facility staff, supervisors, district health teams, and clinical partner organizations–deeply understanding how programs are functioning on the ground, surfacing what is and isn't working, and ensuring stakeholders feel heard

• Serve as a recognized clinical counterpart to the Ministry of Health–actively contributing to shaping clinical standards, pathways, and protocols, and strengthening government ownership of D-tree's clinical programming

• Serve as the clinical lead for quality oversight in collaboration with the Senior Program Manager and broader Zanzibar team–assessing whether health workers are performing as clinically expected, whether the program is on track toward intended health outcomes, and driving targeted quality improvement efforts based on what data and field experience reveal

• Lead clinical capacity building for the Zanzibar team and, where relevant, other country teams on priority clinical areas relevant to D-tree's programming

• Contribute to documentation and dissemination of program results

Tanzania and Malawi Advisory Support (30%)

Serve as a clinical and technical thought partner to D-tree's Tanzania and Malawi country teams as they design and implement new programs aligned with D-tree’s 2025-2028 Strategy. This includes:

• Support country teams in defining what quality care looks like at each level of the health journey for their focus health area–identifying where current care pathways fall short, what improvements are needed, and which health outcome indicators are both a priority and realistically influenced by the intervention

• Provide clinical input at the proposal and concept note development stage, ensuring that new program designs are clinically grounded from the outset

• Collaborate with country teams to translate clinical inputs into intervention design decisions, including workflow changes, digital tool requirements, and training content

• Help country teams navigate clinical questions and design choices as they arise, drawing on lessons from across D-tree’s portfolio, where relevant

• Recognize when a program requires specialized clinical expertise beyond the scope of this role–whether due to health area, bandwidth, or need for local expertise–and support the country team in sourcing the right support; this may include scoping the role, drafting a JD, leading recruitment, and providing orientation to the D-tree program context

Global Clinical Expertise and Strategic Contribution (10%)

• Bring clinical credibility and expertise to D-tree's global strategy discussions, particularly as D-tree expands our work to new health areas and beyond the community health level

• Support fundraising and business development efforts by contributing clinical framing, evidence of impact, and technical narratives for proposals and donor engagement

• Serve as an internal clinical resource for staff across the organization–helping non-clinical colleagues understand clinical context and strengthening the clinical grounding of D-tree's overall approach

Qualifications

Required

• Medical doctor (MD) or registered nurse, with active licensure; MPH or equivalent graduate training in public health strongly preferred

• At least 5–8 years of experience in public health programs, with proven experience in East Africa required and deep familiarity with East African health system context

• Demonstrated ability to work at the intersection of clinical care and health systems strengthening

• Experience leading or supporting program implementation at the community health worker and/or health facility level, preferably in partnership with government

• Strong analytical and learning orientation–able to use data and evaluation findings to drive program improvement

• Excellent communication skills, including ability to work effectively with clinical providers, government counterparts, and non-clinical program staff

Preferred

• Experience with continuum of care, integrated care, or collaborative care models

• Demonstrated experience applying digital health tools in low-resource settings; candidates with experience in clinical decision support, AI-assisted tools, or data-driven quality improvement preferred

• Experience in pediatric health, maternal/child health, or primary care

• Tanzanian national candidates

• Swahili language fluency

What Makes This Role Distinctive

This is not a primarily advisory role–it is a doing role with genuine clinical ownership. The Clinical Advisor will serve as D-tree's senior clinical voice across a diverse and active portfolio, with accountability for clinical rigor and the quality of D-tree's programs. At the same time, the role sits within D-tree's global Program Unit, meaning the person hired will have visibility into–and the opportunity to influence–how D-tree designs clinical programming across the organization.

Salary Range & Salary Placement:

The salary range for this role is Tsh 168,000,000 - 210,000,000 per year. While salary offers typically begin at the lower end of the range, candidates who bring strong, directly relevant expertise and exceptional value may be placed higher within the range, in line with D-tree’s compensation approach and internal equity considerations.

Application information

To apply for this role, please click the link (here) and follow the instructions. Applications that do not meet these requirements will not be considered. Please note that by applying to this position, you consent to your name being checked against a terrorist watch list prior to an offer of employment.

The application deadline is 6 May, 2026.