Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Lead – Trase

This role is recruited and employed by Global Canopy. The successful candidate will be contracted by Global Canopy and based at their office (or remotely in line with Global Canopy’s working arrangements), not by SEI.

Global Canopy is a data-driven not for profit that targets the market forces destroying nature. We do this by improving transparency and accountability. We provide innovative open-access data, clear metrics, and actionable insights to leading companies, financial institutions, governments and campaigning organisations worldwide.

Trase is a data-driven transparency initiative that revolutionises our understanding of the international trade and financing of agricultural commodities which drive tropical deforestation. Its unique supply chain mapping approach brings together disparate, publicly available data to connect consumer markets to deforestation and other impacts in producer countries.

Trase’s free online tools and actionable intelligence enable governments, companies, financial institutions and civil society organizations to take practical steps to address deforestation. Trase is jointly led by SEI and Global Canopy, with many further partners and collaborators.

This role will lead Trase’s monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) agenda. Working as part of Trase’s Impact Team, you will strengthen our evidence base on how Trase influences decisions of governments, businesses and civil society on commodity trade, building credibility with external stakeholders, including donors and supporting the ongoing development of our theory of change.

Trase has made a significant investment over the last decade in developing an initiative-wide culture for learning and knowledge-based decision making including an established and regularly reviewed MEL function and annual plan.

As we enter a new strategic period (2026–2030) we are seeking to further strengthen the MEL function and invest more in understanding how our data and intelligence influences decisions and the role of transparency in driving change.

Our work spans six outcomes with a focus on influencing decisions, priorities and building capacity of civil society governments and the private sector in key producer countries and export markets for forest risk commodities.

1. Monitoring, evaluation and learning strategy and implementation (20%)

• Lead the development and implementation of MEL strategy and annual work plan
• Quality assurance and coordination of MEL inputs from across the team.
• Review and maintain MEL data collection and knowledge management tools.
• Build awareness and motivation for effective MEL across the team.
• Support the role of MEL in influencing the development of Trase’s theory of change, strategy and planning.

2. Monitoring and reporting (30%)

• Strengthen Trase’s monitoring framework including using new approaches to integrate qualitative data and better understand the significance of Trase’s contributions (including change stories and outcome harvesting) across our intermediate outcomes, long-term outcomes and impact goals.
• Quarterly progress reporting of outcomes and outputs for internal management.
• Support on donor reporting including drafting narrative reports and updating results framework.

3. Evaluation and learning (50%)

Oversight of biannual external evaluations and annual review of effectiveness questions across sustainability, impact, relevance, effectiveness and efficiency.

• Support internal reviews and evaluations across Trase teams and partners.
• Strengthen Trase’s learning culture, supporting team leads on facilitating learning sessions, retrospectives and thematic evaluations on key topics and applying these lessons in planning and decision-making.
• Bring evidence and insights for proposals and the development of Trase’s theories of change.

• Bring a coaching and mentoring approach to create buy-in through influence and persuasion, foster positive relationships and build alignment on MEL.
• Solutions and action-oriented: able to prioritise effectively and work autonomously to develop and deliver strategy/tactics. Meets deadlines and proactively ensures…