Knowledge and Communications Lead

ABOUT YLABS

YLabs is a leading global design and research organization working to improve health and economic opportunity for young people aged 10–24. Founded in 2016 at the Harvard Innovation Lab, YLabs operates across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Central America in partnership with youth to design products and services addressing key challenges in sexual reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, mental health, financial inclusion, and climate resilience.

THE ROLE

YLabs is seeking a Knowledge and Communications Lead who will drive the narrative for one of our largest partnerships: a multi-year collaboration with a global foundation testing new approaches to programs for young people across Africa.

In practice, that means you are in the room. You'll join the working calls, follow the thinking as it happens, and produce from it the same week. A research deck on Monday, a leadership brief on Wednesday, an uptake package on Friday. You will read the experiment design documents and the RFPs, and write the next ones. When a sixty-page report needs to become a six-page summary for a board, you decide what gets cut and what stays.

You will also decide how this work sounds. Right now the narrative is spread across different teams and countries. You bring it into one unified voice and keep it consistent, so a report from Ethiopia and a toolkit from Nigeria read like they came from the same organization.

You are a writer first, with editorial judgment and enough technical fluency to work hand in hand with researchers, designers, and project leads. You decide what earns its place, what needs restructuring, and how to position the work for the audience.

JOB TYPE

This is a full time position within the Design Department (Job Level: P5 - Lead). The role is scoped for 40 hours per week and is ideally based in East Africa, though candidates within the GMT+0 to GMT+4 time zone on the African continent may also apply. Candidates must be willing to travel up to 50% of the time for field sprints and stakeholder alignment The initial contract term is 12 months, with the possibility of extension.

PAY RATE

The pay range for this position is $45,000–$61,818 USD. This range is regionally benchmarked against the P5 level within YLabs’ Africa salary bands.  YLabs pays all full-time staff salaries in the local currency of the staff member’s permanent work location. 

LOCATION

This is a fully remote role open to candidates in sub-Saharan Africa.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Real-Time Distillation

• Attend partner calls, capture the substance, and produce content from it without a re-briefing.
• Turn live thinking into decks, briefs, blogs, and reports on a quick timeline.
• Draft, edit, and finalize standing communications products including research decks, summary reports to leadership, quarterly and annual reports, and toolkit content.

Narrative and Voice

• Own and evolve the core narrative for the partnership so that every new asset, across countries and workstreams, sounds like it’s coming from one unified voice.
• Codify how the work is described, in language that holds up in front of leadership and partners.
• Maintain a consistent voice across a varied portfolio and train project teams to use it.

Technical Writing and Editorial Judgment

• Read, review, and write RFPs, experiment design documents, research protocols, and playbooks.
• Take dense internal documents and decide what earns its place, what needs clarity, and what needs restructuring.
• Provide content architecture across deliverables from how a report is organized, what a deck needs to say first, how a toolkit reads to someone who has never seen it.

Systems and Collaboration

• Work with the Graphic Designer to define templates and a short style guide so that new assets can be produced quickly and consistently.
• Build a reusable library of core language, descriptions, and framing that project teams can draw on.
• Engage proactively with project leads, researchers, and designers across the portfolio to ensure content is accurate, timely, and aligned with the work.

Required Competencies 

• Strategic Communication: Advanced understanding of how communications advance organizational and partner priorities. Leads, implements, and evaluates content strategy across a complex portfolio. Champions systems and processes that produce consistently high-quality work on time, with minimal supervision.
• Editorial Judgment: Decides what a document needs to say, in what order, and for whom. Cuts, restructures, and positions without being asked. Holds a standard for clarity and applies it to their own work and others'.
• Technical Fluency: Reads research protocols, experiment designs, and RFPs without being thrown. Asks the right questions of subject matter experts and translates their answers into plain language.
• Autonomy: Requires no instruction on routine work and operates independently on complex assignments. Makes editorial decisions and stands behind them.
• Collaboration & Communication: Works across research, design, and program teams with ease. Manages input from multiple stakeholders without losing the thread. Trains and involves others in strategic communication.
• Ownership: Sees the full portfolio, anticipates what will be needed, and produces it before it is asked for.
• Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI): Models culturally competent ways of working; recognizes and addresses personal and structural biases; writes in ways that elevate rather than flatten the voices of young people and communities.

QUALIFICATIONS 

Required:

• Minimum of 7 years of professional experience in strategic communications, editorial, knowledge translation, or technical writing, with at least 3 years in international development, philanthropy, or social impact.
• Demonstrated experience distilling complex research, program models, or technical material into clear content for senior audiences.
• Portfolio showing a range of formats: reports, decks, briefs, blogs, and at least one technical or research-based document.
• Experience working hand in hand with researchers, designers, or program teams.
• Experience building and maintaining a consistent voice across multiple products or teams.
• Exceptional written English, with the ability to write fast without losing quality.
• Comfort with ambiguity and shifting priorities across a live portfolio.

Nice to have:

• Experience with foundation or institutional funder audiences.
• Experience with design research, human-centered design, or experimentation methodologies.
• Experience writing or reviewing RFPs and proposals.
• Experience living and working in sub-Saharan Africa.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

This posting will be open until filled. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis with an expected start date as soon as possible; all applications submitted within the posting period will be reviewed by our Hiring Committee. YLabs recognizes the effort that goes into submitting an application; only successful  candidates will be notified of their application status once the hiring process begins.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines. All YLabs offers of employment are conditional on satisfactory background check and criminal record clearances.

Compensation: $45,000–$61,818 USD