Job Description
About the Role
If you’re a humanitarian professional who thrives on turning complex global signals into clear, forward‑looking insight, this role puts you at the centre of FCDO’s crisis anticipation. You’ll lead the Early Warning and Foresight pillar of EWAR, driving high‑quality analysis that shapes real‑time humanitarian decision‑making. You’ll oversee early warning, scenario building and risk assessments that strengthen FCDO’s situational awareness and contingency planning. As the programme evolves, you’ll also spearhead innovation in foresight methods, working closely with data and visualisation specialists to harness quantitative analysis and emerging AI tools for sharper, more actionable humanitarian foresight.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
Leadership and strategy
- Engage with FCDO stakeholders to ensure outputs meet user needs and inform decision-making.
- Shape, update and implement EWAR’s approach to early warning and foresight analysis, aligning with HEROS objectives and FCDO priorities
- Manage a team of analysts to deliver high-impact humanitarian analysis.
- Represent EWAR in cross government and external forums on humanitarian risk and analysis
Early Warning and Risk Analysis
- Ensure the production of the HEWN and its component parts is well coordinated, of a high quality and delivered to FCDO in a timely manner
- Oversee evolution of the Humanitarian Early Warning Note (HEWN) approach and methodology
- Ensure continuous monitoring of global humanitarian risks through the EWAR monthly risk cycle
- Leverage support from across EWAR, MCD and other FCDO depts to produce the HEWN and related products, collaborating closely with the other EWAR Team Leaders.
- Design and develop adhoc risk analysis to complement the HEWN as required.
Foresight and Scenario Planning
- Understand and respond to the foresight needs of FCDO, particularly HCRD
- Lead the integration of new foresight methodologies into EWAR’s analytical products
- Oversee EWAR’s scenario building methodology and ensure that appropriate levels of capability
exist within the team
- Collaborate with data scientists, meteorologists, and external experts to build mixed-methods approaches to forecasting.
- Contribute to cross-government risk processes (e.g., NSRA, CRI) with humanitarian inputs.
Risk Management
- Be aware of potential risks to effective and responsible programme management and contribute to mitigation measures according to job role
- Be familiar with and actively participate in established risk management procedures, including reporting issues against identified risks and failures of mitigation measures
- Contribute to risk assessment activities and suggest improvements
Response
- As part of the HEROS contract all teams are expected to be able to flex to respond to crises as required by FCDO. In crisis the Team Leader might be asked to work on Information and Analysis as per EWAR’s response requirements
- At these times the following may be asked of the Team Leader
- Act as HAO or Senior Analyst in a Response
- Deploy to Post or a crisis-affected areas to support FCDO crisis response
- Design and maintain the response information management and analysis toolkit.
- Provide technical guidance to deployed HAOs and IMOs during humanitarian responses.
- Act as the HSOT Response Lead when required, working closely with the Coordination Lead and the Director to ensure a coherent integrated approach to response, which is evidence-based, context- specific and tailored to the evolving demands of a disrupted humanitarian landscape.
Other duties
- The post holder will be required to deploy at very short notice to support an FCDO response for minimum of up to 4 weeks, up to 40% of the time
- Participate in HEST training and work to mitigate safety and security threats for self and others
- Fulfil role of Duty Officer on rotation, providing week-long out of hours surveillance of emergencies.
- Contribute to HEROS contract monthly, quarterly, annual contractual reporting on specialist portfolio, and provide support as requested in support of results-based reporting.
- Support business Transition and Exit Planning: Play a pivotal role in adapting to system upgrades and organizational changes, ensuring the workforce is aligned with future business needs. Lead on providing data inputs during the transition phase.
- As appropriate, engage with Palladium UKEA regional team fora and initiatives.
- This position follows Palladium’s hybrid working policy, requiring a minimum attendance of three days
in the office.
- Undertake any other duties as appropriate to the position, as requested.
Required Qualifications:
- Proven ability to lead and manage small analytical teams, fostering a learning-oriented team culture
- Extensive experience in humanitarian analysis, early warning, and information management
- Experience in performance management, including quality assurance of analytical outputs
- Demonstrated experience of qualitative or quantitative analysis and/or foresight methodologies, including scenario development and foresight methodologies, risk modelling and severity indexing, mixed-methods research, data triangulation and validation techniques.
- Experience designing and applying analytical frameworks tailored to humanitarian contexts, with demonstrated capacity to drive innovation in analytical frameworks and approaches.
- Strong ability to synthesise complex information into clear, actionable insights
- Strong understanding of humanitarian architecture, risk assessment, and operational response
- Proficiency in analytical tools such as Power BI, Python or GIS platforms is highly desirable
- Act with integrity, reliability, and respect in all interactions
- Represent Palladium positively in all professional settings
- Take ownership of tasks and responsibilities.
- Deliver work to agreed standards and deadlines.
- Follow through on commitments and raise concerns early when issues arise
The role is a Fixed term maternity cover till the end of December. Candidates must have the right to work in the UK and have lived ion the UK for the last 2 years out of 5 to meet the eligibility criteria. C
About the Organization
Project and Team Overview
The Humanitarian and Stabilisation Operations Team (HSOT) is contracted by Palladium to deliver the Humanitarian Emergency Response Operations and Stabilisation Programme (HEROS), working with FCDO’s Humanitarian Response Department (HCRD) and the Migration and Conflict Directorate (MCD), as well as multiple UK Government teams and partners in 130 countries. The team provides operational andadvisory support to meet humanitarian needs and restorestability in sudden-onset disasters, protracted crises and complex emergencies.
The Early Warning, Analysis and Reporting team is at the forefront of humanitarian information and analysis, working at the heart of government to inform humanitarian decision-making. The team monitors global events to provide early warning, alerts, and shape humanitarian responses by delivering insights through clear and targetedanalytic products. This involves overcoming a challenging information landscape through mixed method approaches as well as developing and improving methodologies that ensures decision-making is grounded in the best available evidence.
