WASH Technical Advisor, Operations and Maintenance

Location: Full-time remote position, with flexibility to collaborate and travel across the US, Africa, and global partner time zones.

The WASH Technical Advisor, Operations and Maintenance (O&M) will translate Splash’s global O&M strategy into practical, locally owned operating models. This role helps Splash move from infrastructure delivery to reliable daily school WASH services by ensuring maintenance, financing, workforce, supply chain, and accountability systems are in place before handover to counterparts, starting in Zambia, Ethiopia, and Malawi, with learning that informs future cities.

This is a manager-level role. The successful candidate will move comfortably between systems-level work with governments and utilities, service-level work with maintenance providers and supply chains, and school-level work focused on practical daily reliability.

Reports to: Senior Director, Programs

• Support country teams to implement Splash’s sustainable O&M strategy across country workplans, including Ethiopia, Zambia, and Malawi
• Translate the global strategy into action plans, tools, decision gates, and country-ready guidance for pilot, delivery, and exit phases
• Working closely with country-based technical staff, track O&M readiness across school cohorts, service providers, utilities, and government counterparts, adapting approaches based on implementation evidence

• Support national and sub-national O&M financing discussions, including Operating Expenses (OPEX) commitments and “who does and who pays” matrices
• Build templates for O&M roles, budgets, decision rights, escalation routes, and handover conditions
• Monitor whether government and school-level commitments are documented, actionable, and aligned with Splash’s exit criteria
• Partner with country leadership to embed O&M into education, water, utility, and municipal planning processes wherever feasible

• Identify and prioritize O&M partners: service providers, utilities, technical partners, and local implementers
• Advance global partner conversations into agreements covering scope, service levels, roles, and costs
• Support country teams to develop service agreements and contracts that define responsibilities, performance expectations, and handover conditions
• Manage global O&M partner relationships, tracking commitments and escalating delivery and/or performance issues

• Design O&M service models covering preventive, scheduled, and reactive maintenance
• Support country offices to implement tools for service provider performance measurement, SOPs, and maintenance schedules
• Strengthen local workforce capacity through mentoring, handover documentation, peer learning, and locally sustainable support structures
• Analyze O&M supply chain needs, with a focus on spare-parts availability, supplier reliability, and procurement standards, ensuring sustainability is built into design and contractor handover

• Collaborate with the Impact team to develop lean monitoring approaches tracking infrastructure functionality, repair response times, and service provider performance
• Collaborate across program, infrastructure, finance, procurement, impact, and country teams so O&M is integrated into design rather than treated as post-construction
• Support country leadership to engage government counterparts, utilities, and schools to clarify expectations and build shared ownership

• 7+ years in WASH, infrastructure sustainability, municipal service delivery, public systems strengthening, operations, maintenance, or utilities.
• Demons…