Senior Learning and Experiments Manager

Johannesburg, South Africa | Posted on 09/29/2025

Smart Start is a successful national network of NGOs and partners that is realising quality, affordable early learning for all children aged three to five. We are achieving this by scaling a network of and building a platform for providers, achieving specific ecosystem transformations with governments and partners, and promoting early learning as a priority societal cause.

Purpose

The Senior Learning and Experiments Manager will play a critical role in strengthening Smart Start’s capacity for learning, adaptive management, and programme improvement. This role will lead the design and implementation of developmental evaluations and rapid experiments to enhance programme effectiveness and responsiveness. The Senior Learning and Experiments Manager will synthesise insights to support leadership and staff in sense-making and decision-making and foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation across Smart Start and its network.

The Senior Learning and Experiments Manager is responsible for designing and facilitating reflective practices, learning loops, and adaptive management processes to drive programme improvements and strategic coherence. This role will enable Smart Start to become a more adaptive, data-informed organisation, co-creating the conditions for network-wide rapid learning and collective intelligence.

· Together with the SDI team head, drive the design and execution of developmental evaluations and nimble experiments to improve effectiveness and responsiveness.

· Develop and implement fit-for-purpose monitoring and evaluation frameworks that align with Smart Start’s strategic goals and learning priorities.

· Establish and refine key performance indicators (KPIs) and feedback mechanisms to track programme progress and impact.

· Support teams to design and implement rapid-cycle learning and experimentation processes to test and adapt programme models.

· Ensure that evaluation findings and experimental insights are synthesised into actionable recommendations.

· Together with the SDI team head, drive the development and management of monitoring frameworks and tools to track programme performance and network-wide impact.

· Enhance the use of data dashboards and performance reports to support real-time decision-making.

· Enable data collection, analysis, and interpretation across Smart Start’s network.

· Build capacity across teams to engage with performance data, identify gaps, and take corrective action.

· Facilitate alignment between MERL frameworks and funder expectations, reporting needs, and organizational strategy.

· Synthesise data and insights to support leadership in sense-making, decision-making, and action-taking.

· Enable teams to apply systems thinking approaches to understand complex programme dynamics and improve strategic alignment.

· Promote coherence and alignment between monitoring, evaluation, learning, and strategy, seeking to ensure that Smart Start’s theory of change is embedded into how decisions are made.

· Collaborate with the Data, Sense-Making, and Insights Team to strengthen data governance, integrity, and accessibility.

· Support the development of data feedback loops that enable real-time learning and adaptation.

· Build team and partner capacity to engage with and interpret data for programme improvement and strategic decision-making.

· Ensure that MERL data is integrated into organizational decision-making and strategy development.

· Co-create the conditions for network-wide rapid learning, iterative experimentation, and collective intelligence.

· Drive the use of insights from MERL activities to inform programme design, scaling decisions, and innovation.

· Develop feedback mechanisms to ensure that insights from experiments and evaluations are used to improve programme models.

· Foster a culture of disciplined innovation and structured experimentation across the…