Regional Programme Officer (grant Cycle & Portfolio Coordination)

About WCS

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) saves wildlife and wild places through science-based solutions and conservation action, working in nearly 60 countries worldwide. WCS’s Central Africa & Gulf of Guinea (CAGG) program spans DRC, Republic of Congo, and Gabon, with a diverse and growing portfolio of donors and projects supported through a regional hub in Kigali.

About the Regional Programme Support Unit (RPSU)

As WCS’s regional portfolio has grown in size, geographic spread, and donor complexity, the Regional Programme Support Unit (RPSU) supports Country Offices and regional teams to design, secure funding for, and deliver high-quality projects by ensuring proposals, reports, amendments, and closeouts are clear, consistent, compliant, and aligned with organisational priorities.

The RPSU provides region‑wide coordination across key stages of the programme cycle: from concept and proposal development through implementation, reporting, amendments, and closeout. It helps promote shared systems, templates, timelines, and agreed standards that support predictable programme‑cycle processes across countries.

The RPSU also maintains a regional overview of multi‑country and regional grants, enabling early identification of risks and supporting timely corrective action. While technical, financial, and strategic ownership remains with the relevant teams, the RPSU plays a central coordinating role, connecting technical ambition, donor requirements, and organisational systems so that programmes can be delivered with confidence.

The Role

The Regional Programme Officer (RPO) helps ensure that WCS’s Central Africa & Gulf of Guinea portfolio remains coordinated, compliant, and submission-ready in a context of growing donor complexity and multi-country delivery. The role supports the translation of strong conservation ideas into dependable delivery by keeping programme management disciplined, risks visible, and commitments to donors and partners on track.

Working within the Regional Programme Support Unit (RPSU), the RPO provides day-to-day coordination of the grant cycle across an assigned portfolio of grants, donors, and country programmes. The role maintains oversight of timelines, inputs, and submission readiness, ensuring that proposals, reports, amendments, and closeouts move through predictable workflows and are internally coherent before final clearance. The RPO also ensures that donor requirements are clearly understood, reporting schedules are tracked and met, and submissions are internally consistent and aligned with approved commitments.

While Country Offices retain responsibility for technical design, delivery, and drafting, the RPO coordinates inputs, conducts first-line quality checks, and identifies delivery, compliance, or documentation risks early so they can be addressed or escalated in a timely manner. Through this work, the role strengthens programme-cycle discipline and learning across the region.

As the RPSU evolves, responsibilities within the unit may adjust, particularly if additional programme funding allows for expansion of programme support capacity. The position may also undertake other tasks as required and, on occasion, deputise for the RPSU Manager.

Key Responsibilities

• Coordinate grant-cycle workflows

• Act as the RPSU focal point for your assigned portfolio, ensuring workflows remain predictable and submission timelines are met.

• Coordinate proposals, kick-offs, reports, amendments, extensions, and closeouts by managing timelines, review sequences, internal routing, and submission readiness.

• Resolve routine coordination bottlenecks across Country Offices, technical teams, finance, operations, and HQ counterparts; escalate issues that require higher-level action.

• Manage reporting and submission packages

• Maintain a structured calendar of reporting deadlines, contractual milestones, and submission status for your portfolio.

• Coordinate the end-to-end reporting process: plan inputs, run internal review steps, ensure required annexes/evidence are included, and ensure documentation is audit ready.

• Conduct a first-line quality review of country-drafted narrative reports to improve clarity, internal consistency, and alignment with approved commitments before submission for clearance.

• Support feasibility and risk monitoring

• Identify early signs of delivery, compliance, or documentation risks (for example gaps in justification, weak evidence, unrealistic timelines, or unclear responsibilities) and propose practical options to address them.

• Escalate material compliance, reputational, or delivery risks to the RPSU Manager with analysis and recommended next steps.

• Handle donor-facing coordination

• Coordinate responses to routine donor clarification requests related to documentation and reporting (within agreed messaging), consolidating inputs from country and technical teams.

• Maintain records of programme-cycle donor communications; route strategic, policy-sensitive, or reputational issues to the RPSU Manager.

• Apply and strengthen RPSU systems and knowledge management

• Use and promote RPSU templates, SOPs, trackers, and documentation standards across your portfolio; provide feedback to improve them based on what you see working in practice.

• Maintain well-organised document structures and version control to support continuity, accessibility, and audit readiness.

• Support onboarding and practical coaching for country teams on programme-cycle processes and documentation expectations.

Qualifications & ExperienceEducation

Master’s degree in international development, international relations, conservation, public administration, or related field; or Bachelor’s degree with equivalent relevant experience.

Essential

• Minimum 5+ years of progressively responsible experience in programme coordination, grant management, donor reporting, and/or multi-donor portfolio support in an INGO, UN or similar setting.

• Demonstrated experience coordinating cross-functional inputs (technical, finance, operations, leadership) to produce timely, high-quality donor-facing documentation.

• Proven ability to manage multiple deadlines, maintain trackers, and keep processes moving.

• Strong writing and editing skills, with the ability to improve clarity and structure of documents without assuming full drafting responsibility.

Desirable

• Experience working across time zones and with multi-cultural teams; Africa regional experience is an advantage.

• Familiarity with donor compliance expectations and managing documentation for amendments/extensions/closeouts.

Languages

Excellent written and spoken English and French.

Competencies

• Coordination leadership: Ability to organise workflows, align stakeholders on timelines and responsibilities, and ensure inputs are delivered in the required format and timeframe.

• Quality discipline: Strong attention to detail, able to identify gaps, inconsistencies, or weak evidence in donor-facing documents and guide improvements.

• Judgement and escalation awareness: Able to determine which issues can be resolved independently and which require escalation, with awareness of compliance and delivery risks.

• Systems mindset: Maintains organised, traceable documentation and tracking systems that support predictable workflows and audit readiness.

• Programme awareness: Understands how programme commitments translate into operational delivery and flags potential feasibility or compliance risks early.