Director - Programme Design & Development

To date, Magic Bus has impacted over 35 lakh adolescents and 5 lakh youth, with a strong focus on empowering girls and young women.\nFor more information, visit: https://www.magicbus.org/\nThe role of Director - Program Design & Development provides strategic leadership for the design, development, innovation, quality assurance, and continuous improvement of the organization's Adolescents Programme portfolio. The role ensures that all curricula, learning solutions, master training systems and program models are evidence based, scalable, and aligned with organizational strategy and donor expectations. The Director works closely with Program Operations, Impact team, partnerships, Collaboration & Capacity Building, Technology, and external stakeholders to create impactful solutions that improve learning outcomes for children, adolescents, educators, and communities.\nCore Competencies\nStrategic Leadership\n• Demonstrates systems thinking and the ability to develop a long-term vision for programme growth and impact.\n• Drives innovation by identifying emerging trends and translating them into strategic programme initiatives,\n• Leading change effectively to strengthen organizational performance and achieve sustainable outcomes.\n\nTechnical Expertise\n• Possesses deep expertise in curriculum and instructional design, learning sciences, competency-based education, assessment design, and adult learning principles.\n• Applies research and evidence to develop high-quality, scalable programmes\n• Leverages digital learning ecosystems to enhance learner engagement and programme effectiveness.\n\nLeadership & Collaboration\n• Builds and develops high performing teams through coaching, mentoring, and continuous professional development.\n• Effectively influences internal and external stakeholders, fosters cross-functional collaboration, and\n• Make informed, data-driven decisions to achieve organizational goals.\n\nPersonal Effectiveness\n• Demonstrates a growth and learner mindset, coupled with creativity and analytical thinking to solve complex challenges.\n• Communicates ideas clearly and persuasively, champions inclusion and equity in programme design and implementation,\n• Remains focused on delivering results and adapts effectively to changing priorities and environments.\n• Maintains high standards of integrity, professionalism, and accountability.\n\nSpecific tasks and responsibilities\nStrategic Leadership\n• Define and lead the strategic vision for adolescent programme design, curriculum innovation, and learning transformation.\n• Build a future-ready portfolio that integrates education, life skills, employability, digital literacy, and emerging skills aligned to evolving social and economic realities.\n• Drive innovation across education, employability skills, life skills, future skills, digital learning, and sports for development, ensuring programmes remain relevant, scalable, evidence-based, and responsive to the evolving needs of adolescents\n• Identify and integrate emerging trends in education, AI, climate education, entrepreneurship, workforce readiness, leadership, citizenship, and mental well-being into programme design and learning ecosystems.\n• Position the organization as a thought leader by driving research, evidence generation, innovation, and sector partnerships that strengthen programme effectiveness, influence practice, and enhance strategic impact.\n\nProgram Design\n- Lead the end-to-end design of Employability programmes, Career guidance programmes, Life skills curriculum, Social Emotional Learning, Future Skills, Functional English, Foundational Literacy & Numeracy (FLN), Digital Literacy, Entrepreneurship education and Gender and inclusion programmes\n\nCurriculum & Content Development - Oversee development of Curriculum frameworks, Facilitator guides /Manuals, Student workbooks/Magic Sheets / Activity books, Digital content, Videos, Assessments framework, Teacher resources and Blended learning modules\n\nLearning Experience Design - Drive innovative pedagogies including Experiential learning, Project based learning, Inquiry learning, Competency based learning, Play based approaches, Human centred design, AI-enabled learning, Microlearning and Gamification\n\nCapacity building strategy - Lead development of Master Trainer models, Coaching systems, Professional learning communities and Continuous professional development framework\n\nInnovation - Lead innovation initiatives including AI in education, Digital learning, Mobile learning, Career technologies and Adaptive learning systems.

Pilot new program models.\n\nProposal & Business development support - Support fundraising teams by Designing technical programme approaches, developing implementation strategies, preparing concept notes, writing technical proposals, costing programme design inputs, presenting to donors and supporting due diligence\n\nProgram Quality - Establish quality standards across programmes. Develop Design standards, curriculum standards, content review processes, quality assurance frameworks and program audit systems monitor continuous improvement.\n\nStakeholder Engagement - Engage with Donors, government departments, academic institutions, CSR partners, international agencies, technical experts and consultants. Represent the organization in external forums.\n\nTeam Leadership - Lead a multidisciplinary team.

Responsibilities include Talent development, coaching, succession planning, performance management, resource planning and cross-functional collaboration. Build a culture of innovation and excellence.\n\nDesired Competencies\n• Knowledge of child development, youth development and community programmes\n• Understand basic learning and behavioural change theory and children psychology\n• Thorough knowledge of various research tools and techniques in curriculum development • Understanding and experience of educational technology for students, staff, and teachers\n• Strong vendor management skills for ensuring projects get delivered within budget and schedule\n• Knowledge of conceptualizing and developing curriculum in the domains of education, life skills, employability and gender.\n• Familiar with social issues like child rights, gender discrimination, education, livelihood among others.\nStrong understanding and experience of gender integrated programming is desirable\n• Earlier experience in developing content and training for children or youth will be preferred\n• Experience in managing large teams\n• Dealing with External Bodies, like Government, Academics, Corporate, Research Bodies etc. • Experience of writing thought leadership pieces in print and/or digital media\n\nQualification & Work experience\n• Master's degree or more in education/Psychology/Social Work /Public Policy /Management /Development Studies/or any of the Magics Bus domain areas - a PhD is desirable.\n• Minimum 20+ years of experience managing programmes focused on education, life skills, skilling, livelihood enhancement in the social sector.\n• 8 - 10 years in senior leadership and experience leading curriculum and programme design at scale.\n• 10 to 12 years of significant past work on building programmes ground up, content and curriculum design and capacity-building in rural and urban contexts is preferred\n• Demonstrated success managing cross-functional teams and multi-state programmes.\n• Experience working with governments, CSR partners, foundations, and multilateral agencies.\n• Strong understanding of competency based education, experiential learning, assessment systems, and capacity building.\n• Familiarity with experiential and activity/sports based learning is desirable\nTeam coordination\n1.

Regional Programme teams – An ongoing collaboration within the team and create a conducive environment for sharing of information constructive criticism and suggestion on the curriculum development and session delivery.\n2. Impact Team - to understand the effectiveness of the curriculum, delivery, etc. and draw in necessary changes if required.\n3.

Sustainability Team – to ensure effective utilization of budgets for curriculum, training, and career counselling and to identify new funding sources for departmental initiatives and requirements\n4. Other support functions – to ensure adequate human resources, fund allocation & accuracy, technology enablement are in place\n\nMobility requirements:\nThe role would be based in Magic Bus Head office located in Airoli, Navi Mumbai.\nTravel to project locations is expected, including for interactions with various external stakeholders like government agencies, donors etc. as well as for representing Magic Bus in events, workshops and in different public for if required from time to time.