Technical Advisor II – Food Security, Livelihoods and Markets

Position duration: (Tentative July 1, 2026 – December 31, 2027)

Project Overview

Catholic Relief Services is implementing a global emergency response initiative designed to deliver timely, lifesaving humanitarian assistance in rapidly evolving crises worldwide. Over 18 months, the program enables fast, flexible action to address urgent needs arising from sudden shocks and protracted emergencies. It supports critical humanitarian sectors through context-appropriate assistance while emphasizing operational readiness, locally led implementation, accountability to affected communities, and safe, dignified programming. The initiative strengthens the organization’s ability to respond at speed and scale in complex and resource-constrained environments, ensuring help reaches people most in need when it matters most. This role will support cash readiness efforts of Country Programs and partners, as well as provide technical support for ongoing programming, and new emergency programs, related to cash, market-based programming, and emergency food security and livelihoods.

Job Summary  

This position is embedded in the Humanitarian Response Department (HRD) Market-based Rapid Response and Recovery (MBRRR) Team. The HRD MBRRR Team is the agency lead for Cash & Market-based Programming and the emergency Food Security & Livelihoods Sectors. As part of this team, the Technical Advisor II will provide technical advice, guidance, and support to a wide range of program design and implementation issues with a focus on larger projects in the area of food security and livelihoods and markets in line with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to regional and Country Program (CP) teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable. The incumbent’s technical knowledge, advice and guidance will contribute to determining how effective, adaptive and innovative CRS’ food security and livelihoods and market based programming is. 

Roles and Key Responsibilities 

• Contribute to the development and implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools, and best practices in food security and livelihoods that effectively engage partners, donors and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating gender, protection mainstreaming, and disaster risk reduction.
• Provide technical solutions to regional and CP teams, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply program design and implementation standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools, and M&E, ensuring high-quality implementation.
• Contribute to regional and CP efforts to pre-position CRS for growth opportunities in food security and livelihoods. Lead or contribute to the development of the technical design for large and/or complex proposals, including defining appropriate monitoring systems and indicators. 
• Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities and technical requirements into CRS’ approach.
• Contribute to capacity strengthening initiatives in food security and livelihoods programming for staff and partner through helping develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculums, conducting trainings and workshops, and mentoring and coaching to CP staff.
• Contribute to knowledge management and learning through collecting and analyzing program data, evaluating strategic projects, assisting with measuring program impact, capturing and sharing lessons learned and best practices, and research and internal reports.
• Establish and maintain relationships with donors, peer organizations, research and other institutions. Participate in forums in food security and livelihoods to collect and share best practices and promote CRS’ work.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities  

• Knowledge of and ability to apply program monitoring and evaluation best practices, including applying data collection tools and methodologies, data analysis, and data presentation.
• Strong relationship management skills with ability to influence and get buy-in from people not under direct supervision and to work with individuals in diverse geographical and cultural settings.
• Good strategic, analytical, problem-solving and systems thinking skills with capacity to see the big picture and ability to make sound judgment
• Knowledge of and ability to conduct market assessments and response analysis to inform modality decisions across different areas of programming, particularly in emergency rapid-onset humanitarian contexts.
• Strong understanding and application of technical principles and concepts i