Operational Safeguarding Manager
Role Summary
Join Médecins Sans Frontières as an Operational Safeguarding Manager, leading teams to enhance organizational safety and effectiveness in humanitarian operations.
About the Organisation
Médecins Sans Frontières is an independent, international medical and humanitarian organization that provides care to people in need, people affected by natural or man-made disasters, and victims of armed conflict, without discrimination and without regard to race, religion, creed or political affiliation (MSF Charter).
The MSF movement is built around 5 operational centers supported by 24 sections and offices worldwide. MSF Operational Center Geneva (MSF OCG) is one of these centers.
In this role, you manage a function or multi-team area by overseeing people, resources, and operational priorities. You translate strategies and policies into operational plans, structure team activities, and resolve complex issues that span multiple tasks or workstreams. You ensure coherence in how work is carried out and strengthen collaboration across teams. This role carries full people-management responsibility.
- Lead functional delivery, ensuring coherent results across teams and alignment with organizational policies.
- Set objectives, structure teamwork, and manage performance to achieve functional priorities.
- Allocate resources and balance competing demands to support effective delivery.
- Resolve complex or cross-team issues and ensure consistent use of policies, processes, and standards.
- Strengthen cross-team collaboration and represent the function in coordination forums.
- Develop team capability through coaching, feedback, and supportive development planning.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the operational implementation of safeguarding across all programs, ensuring that safeguarding principles and technical standards, safeguarding risk assessments, and mitigation measures are effectively embedded into day-to-day operations.
- In collaboration with the flying team, guide and provide technical support to program teams in developing, operationalizing, and monitoring the implementation of the Mission Behavior Fundamentals, ensuring these measures are consistently applied and effectively integrated into operation department and programs including safe recruitment, safe programming, detection and local reporting mechanisms for patients, care takers and communities’ members
- Mobilize, coordinate and deploy dedicated flying teams and provide technical safeguarding support in the rollout of the Mission Behavior Fundamentals and safeguarding priorities, in collaboration/concertation with the operational teams.
- Develop a program support model with dedicated locally appointed safeguarding human resources that ensures projects benefit from technical safeguarding expertise at both project and coordination levels.
- Ensure that local program dedicated resources are supported by both coordination and the flying referents through technical guidance and oversight of safeguarding implementation.
- Work in synergies and in a functional mode with the OCG head of safeguarding to ensure coherence and alignment with OCG positioning technical safeguarding standards, and organizational priorities
- In collaboration with flying SFG staff and Country teams to produce detailed country-level safeguarding situational and risk analyses to inform strategic decision-making, propose prioritization of safeguarding actions according to organizational safeguarding objectives and operational context, and provide operational oversight of the implementation and effectiveness of safeguarding measures.
- Represent the Operations Directorate in internal and external meetings requiring operational and technical safeguarding input, analysis, or coordination related to the OCG Safeguarding Plan at programme level. Support any internal communication requesting the accountability of ops department in regards to safeguarding.
Minimum Requirements
- Education*
- Master Degree or equivalent in a field relevant to this profile (e.g. law, social or organizational sciences, psychology, social work etc.) an asset
- Experience*
- 5 to 10 years of experience in humanitarian projects management in MSF.
- Similar validated experience in technical expertise in the related field, preferably in non-governmental, charity or international organisations.
- Languages*
- Fluency in English and French are required
- Knowledge of another language (Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish) is considered an advantage.
- Skills & Personal Abilities*
- Project management, organization & accountability
- Management, Integrity & Ethical Judgment
- Risk Assessment & Mitigation
- Compliance & Policy Adherence
- Leadership, team management, active listening and organizational skills.
- Delegation
- Cultural sensitivity
Eligibility Criteria
Open to qualified candidates with relevant experience, but no explicit information on sponsorship or eligibility for international applicants.
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