Deputy Director, Solutions Insights Lab

Title: Deputy Director, Solutions Insights Lab

Reports to: Chief Managing Director, SIL

Position Type: full time, exempt

Compensation: $100,000 - $120,000

Location: remote, U.S. based

Timeline

Application deadline: Sunday March 22nd 5:00 PM EST

Application review: 3/23 - 3/27

Interviews: 3/30-4/15

Start date: Late April - Early May

Background:

Organizations tackling complex social challenges face persistent barriers: fragmented knowledge, missed opportunities to learn from peers, and critical gaps in understanding what truly works at scale. The Solutions Insights Lab (referred to as SIL or the Lab) addresses these challenges by combining the investigative rigor of journalism with rigorous thematic analysis. An initiative of the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), the Lab helps funders, policymakers, and practitioners make smarter decisions by uncovering what's working, what isn't, and where the next opportunities lie.The Lab's approach goes beyond traditional case studies. Our team of journalists conducts targeted interviews with changemakers across networks, then our researchers analyze these conversations to identify patterns, contradictions, and actionable insights. We synthesize findings into searchable knowledge platforms, create systems maps that reveal how ecosystems function, and design engagement strategies, from curated events to multimedia productions, that accelerate the spread of effective innovations. As a result, our clients gain clarity on what's worth scaling, funders direct resources to proven approaches, and insights move beyond individual organizations to shape entire fields.

Role Purpose:

The Deputy Director is responsible for the operational integrity and systemic scalability of the Solutions Insights Lab. This role has a bird's-eye view of the Lab's projects, with specific focus on infrastructure and interdependencies related to capacity planning, budgets, project deliverables, and workflow. The Deputy Director runs operations and formalizes processes across projects for the Lab and its integration points with other Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) programs and systems. Beyond oversight, the Director is a process innovator, building resilient infrastructure and clear protocols that allow the editorial and research teams to focus on generating high-quality insights while ensuring the Lab's growth is both ethical and efficient.

In this role the Deputy Director will anchor operational and organizational coordination—creating clear project plans, managing day-to-day workflow across multiple projects, coordinating timelines and deliverables, and ensuring strong communication across the team. They strengthen internal systems and workflows that enable the Lab to scale: improving coordination between work streams, developing templates and project infrastructure, maintaining cross-project knowledge management systems (for example, a shared Insights Library, coding templates, consistency across interview guides), and creating clarity, structure, and accountability across roles. The role ensures that the Lab operates as a coordinated portfolio of projects rather than separate and disconnected streams, helping consolidate insights and support thought leadership on how individual projects' insights intersect and contribute to the Lab's overarching knowledge sharing. The Director also contributes to strategic leadership, working closely with the Chief Managing Director to shape and advance priorities, plan ahead, and build the systems the Lab needs as it grows.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• People Management: Lead, manage, and hold accountable the Lab Manager and Research Manager.
• Lab Strategic Operations & System Development
• Maintain and improve Lab operational processes ensuring clarity and compliance in well-integrated workflows and accessible systems across team and clients.
• Design lightweight, human-centered processes that support speed, rigor, and adaptability.
• Oversee documentation of internal processes to support onboarding, continuity, and institutional memory.
• Develop and maintain a relational map that identifies the institutions, foundations and other partners, as well as the specific contacts, associated with each Lab engagement
• Balance experimentation with operational efficiency—knowing when to pilot and when to standardize.
• Partner with leadership to translate strategy into operational reality, enabling the Lab to do its best work and scale with an eye on infrastructural needs.
• Support learning loops by surfacing what’s working, what’s not, and where internal systems need to adapt.
• Provide the team with real-time visibility into timelines, milestones, bandwidth, and risks across all engagements.
• Design and oversee knowledge-management systems that make templates, frameworks, interview guides, insight analysis and deliverable structures easy to access, update, and reuse.
• Oversee the organization and upkeep of the Lab’s internal document storage system, ensuring materials are well-structured, easy to locate, and aligned with shared naming and filing conventions.
• Cross-Organizational Operations, Integration & Strategic Foresight Ensure operational coherence across Lab programs, managing interdependencies between research, communications, and external engagements.
• Serve as an operational bridge between the Lab’s client-facing research and SJN’s broader journalism support programs
• Proactively identify interdependencies and lead collaborative project management to ensure that the Lab’s specialized workflows, resource needs, and timelines are seamlessly synchronized with SJN’s broader workflow, shared technical infrastructure, and cross-departmental grant obligations.
• Finance + Governance Compliance & Risk Management
• In collaboration with the leadership, finance and development teams ensure Lab budgeting, forecasting, and financial tracking.
• Monitor project-level budgets to ensure alignment with funder requirements and organizational priorities.
• Support grant financial reporting and compliance, working closely with finance and development and consultants as needed.
• Work with SJN’s Finance and People & Culture teams to ensure the Lab meets legal, ethical, and compliance obligations, including data stewardship, contracts, and reporting.
• Identify operational risks (financial, reputational, logistical) and proactively address them.
• Select, implement, and manage tools for collaboration, knowledge management, finance, and project tracking.
• Internal Communications
• Support the operational execution of SIL research engagements, ensuring timelines, deliverables, and coordination with partners are met.
• Act as an internal hub between researchers, journalists, funders, and external collaborators capturing operational needs and resolving bottlenecks, while also proactively sharing insights and knowledge across projects and team members including consultants.
• Develop and manage standardized project templates, timelines, and handoff processes to increase efficiency and quality.
• Ensure partner engagements are operationally smooth, transparent, and aligned with the Lab’s and SJN’s values.
• Lead and support public and client-facing work for the Lab through presentations and networking efforts at conferences to expand the Lab’s influence, including attending and presenting at convenings and funder gatherings. Produce written work that translates complex operational systems into accessible, mission-aligned narratives.

Must-Have Skills and Strengths:

• Operational Excellence in Mission-Driven Contexts: Demonstrated experience running operations in a start-up and/ or social entrepreneurship environment. Ability to translate values (equity, trust, rigor, learning) into day-to-day operational practices. Strong project and workflow management skills, with a track record of keeping multiple moving pieces aligned. Proven track record of navigating both fee-for-service (client-facing) and grant-funded environments, with the ability to manage the distinct reporting and operational requirements of each.
• Systems Thinking with Human Judgment: Ability to see the whole system—people, processes, funding, partners—and understand how changes in one area ripple across the organization. Strong instinct for right-sizing systems: knowing when structure enables impact and when it becomes friction. Comfort operating in complexity and ambiguity.
• Global Development Fluency: Background in international development with a deep professional familiarity with the international development and social entrepreneurship ecosystems, including where SIL plays a role.
• Financial Acumen & Stewardship: Solid understanding of nonprofit, grant-based and fee-for-service financial operations, including budgeting, forecasting, and funder compliance. Comfort working with financial data to support strategic decisions—not just tracking expenses. Strong sense of stewardship over resources, balancing fiscal discipline with mission ambition.
• People-Centered Leadership: Deep respect for the human side of operations—workload, morale, clarity, and psychological safety. Ability to support diverse teams of staff, contractors, journalists, and researchers. Clear, empathetic communicator who can navigate tension, resolve bottlenecks, and build trust across roles and power dynamics. Comfortable working within and strengthening a highly collaborative, relational team culture with shared responsibility for outcomes.
• Oral and Written Communication: Comfortable leading high-stakes client presentations, articulating the Lab’s theory of change, and enthusiastic about showcasing and networking for the Lab at conferences. Exceptional written skills creating everything from high-level grant proposals and reports to internal process playbooks that are intuitive, accessible, and mission-aligned.
• Partner & Stakeholder Management: Experience coordinating across external partners, funders, and collaborators with differing priorities and constraints. Strong follow-through on commitments and clear expectations with partners.
• Technical and Tool Fluency: Practical experience selecting and managing tools for collaboration, finance, knowledge management, and project tracking. Ability to assess tradeoffs between new tools and existing workflows. Comfortable with technology while keeping tools in service of the work, not the other way around.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with social entrepreneurship, social innovation, or impact-focused organizations
• 7-10 years of experience working in a leadership role in a fast-paced environment, including managing direct reports.
• Experience communicating social impact through storytelling or narrative.
• Experience with collaborative creative processes involving multiple stakeholders or network partners.
• Leadership experience in a mid-size nonprofit or private venture ($3M–$10M budget) where you have successfully scaled operations during a period of organizational growth.
• A deep understanding of the current challenges facing the international development ecosystem and a passionate commitment to the role that solutions-oriented research plays in strengthening capacity for change.
• Ability to travel.
• Knowledge of social science research methods, particularly qualitative methods and how interviews, coding, synthesis, and insight development move through a pipeline.
• Experience supporting teams through change and ambiguity, including evolving priorities, shifting timelines, or new tools and systems.
• Fluency in a second language.
• Knowledge of international development landscapes and the social, economic, and environmental challenges communities navigate globally.

Benefits: 100% premiums covered by SJN for medical insurance, access to dental and vision insurance, 20 days paid vacation, 3 floating personal days, 10 sick days, 8 paid holidays, the last week of December off, work schedule flexibility, a remote work stipend.