Technical Advisor III– Emergency Program Response (EPR) Generalist

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

 

About CRS 

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. CRS works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. CRS’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance and peacebuilding. 

 

The Humanitarian Response Department (HRD) provides leadership and support to CRS emergency programming. The HRD strengthens CRS’ impact through high quality, innovative programs; improved technical and management capacity at the field level; and active engagement in global efforts to promote excellence and learning in humanitarian response. The HRD has technical staff that supports emergency program planning, rapid response, and capacity strengthening of staff and partners worldwide.

 

Job Summary:  

You will contribute to strategy development in Emergency Response and Recovery at a regional or global level and provide technical advice and leadership in program quality and management aspects of Emergency Response and Recovery at a regional or global level, including as a focal point for a geographic area as needed, in line with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and industry best practices to Technical Advisors and Country Program (CP) teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming to the poor and vulnerable. Your expertise, advice and influence will significantly contribute to determining how effective, adaptive and innovative CRS’ Emergency Response and Recovery programming is across a region or regions. 

 

This includes:

• providing rapid deployment leadership focused on program quality and management for breaking and ongoing humanitarian responses, including emergency programming in conflict-affected areas as well as responses to natural disasters such as floods, drought or food crises; 

• guiding CPs and partners on humanitarian funding opportunities and supporting humanitarian proposal design/development, in coordination with regional teams and HRD sectoral technical advisors;

• engaging with PIQA, Business Development and regional colleagues to bring a humanitarian lens to discussions on broader program quality initiatives

• Contribute to agency‑wide risk management efforts by conducting holistic risk assessments and providing technical leadership to CP teams on effective risk mitigation.

• Contribute to knowledge management and learning through the collection and analysis of lessons learned and best practices in ERR and CRS’ risk assessment/mitigation activities in high-risk field contexts to facilitate improvements in decision-making and contribute to the Emergency Response and Recovery learning agenda. 

 

Roles and Key Responsibilities: 

• Contribute to the design, advocate for, and ensure implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools, and best practices in Emergency Response and Recovery that effectively engage partners, donors, and governments. Ensure a cross-sectoral approach that integrates gender, protection mainstreaming, and disaster risk reduction.

• Provide technical solutions globally, for regional and/or CP teams for strategic planning and how to best apply and adapt program design and implementation standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools, and risk management in emergency response and recovery, particularly for emergency coordination, program quality and management. 

• Take on acting emergency leadership roles and support the set up and/or management of emergency field offices, teams, humanitarian programs as requested during field deployments.  Support and/or provide leadership for operational functions such as security, staffing, supply chain/logistics, finance, IT/communications and administration, as needed.

• Contribute to HQ, regional, and country program staff efforts to pre-position CRS for strategic growth opportunities in Emergency Response and Recovery. Provide technical guidance in proposal development and project design with a focus on complex projects to ensure innovative programming solutions and technical excellence. Support CPs to appropriately staff project teams.

• Oversee and lead the delivery of capacity strengthening initiatives in Emergency Response and Recovery programming globally for staff and partners through helping develop learning and training strategies and agendas/curriculums; organizing and/or f