Senior Manager Early & Primary Years

The SSD Early & Primary Years team is responsible for ensuring that the IB’s educational offerings at this stage remain relevant, flexible and responsive to real-world schooling conditions. The team provides expert guidance and leads the design of education products and pathways, including, but not limited, to the Primary Years Programme.

• Evaluate and refine new and existing educational pathways, ensuring relevance across diverse school types (e.g., private, public, hybrid, charter) and system contexts (e.g., states, districts, school groups)  
• Lead the design of early and primary years school systems design frameworks, ensuring alignment of learning, teaching, and assessment to support learning and teaching in IB and non-IB schools and school systems.
• Design contextual education models that respond to the needs of underserved, underrepresented and systemically constrained schools and school systems.
• Collaborate with the Educational Standards and Practices team and the School System Design teams responsible for ages 12–19 to design and implement strategies, policies, and processes that operationalize the IB educational philosophy across diverse global contexts.
• Make strategic decisions on the flexibility of educational offer models for early and primary years, balancing educational quality, coherence of the educational experience and to support growth and impact globally. 
• Guide the testing, refinement, and scaling of early and primary years models, drawing on evidence, pilots, research, and field feedback to inform iterative improvement.
• Provide oversight of grants and related initiatives within the Early and Primary Years portfolio that sit outside the Primary Years Programme (PYP), working in close collaboration with PYP colleagues to ensure coherence across the portfolio.
• Support the Head of Early and Primary Years in annual strategic planning and budgeting, contributing to priority setting, resource allocation, and portfolio oversight.
• Represent the IB at external events and meetings, communicating and collaborating with colleagues in the Education Office leadership teams and different offices/departments across the organization, as well as with external stakeholders to further growth.
• Applies human-centred design thinking as a decision-making lens to evolve the early and primary years educational offer. 
• Facilitates inclusive dialogue and actively surfaces diverse perspectives to inform sound decision-making. 
• Operates with a high degree of autonomy in shaping and evolving early and primary years educational offer models, within broad strategic direction and organizational frameworks. 
• Makes decisions informed by multiple and often competing stakeholder interests, including schools, education systems, policymakers, internal teams, and external partners.
• Addresses complex, non-routine problems that involve competing educational, political, cultural, and system-level considerations. 
• Translates emerging education trends, evidence, and system requirements into viable educational propositions, balancing innovation, coherence, and feasibility.
• Navigates and manages power dynamics and political sensitivities across diverse national and regional contexts.
• Influences change in a dynamic multi-cultural, cross functional environment, internally and externally. 
• Operates effectively where solutions are not predefined, using iteration, collaboration, reflection, and course correction as integral to decision-making.
• Exercises independent judgment in ambiguous contexts, while actively drawing on collective expertise from peers, partners, and subject-matter experts.
  
   

• Master’s degree in education or a closely related field (e.g., comparative education, international educational development, education policy, curriculum and instruction, early and/or primary years instruction degree).

• Academic or professional training in education systems, curriculum development, teaching and learning, or education policy is strongly preferred.

• Demonstrated experience working across public and private school systems.   

• Demonstrated experience in education management, school improvement and system-level educational change. 

• Demonstrated professional experience in early and primary years education, including engagement with schools and learning communities.

• Demonstrated experience in implementing, monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of new programmes and/or defined projects. 

• Demonstrates strategic thinking grounded in IB’s educational philosophy, with a clear focus on student learning and community impact.
• Demonstrates strategic thinking grounded in IB’s educational philosophy, with a clear focus on student learning and