[Hiring] Knowledge and Communications Lead @YLabs

Role Description

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.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Qualifications

• 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.

Requirements

• 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.

Benefits

• 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.
• The pay range for this position is $45,000–$61,818 USD.
• YLabs pays all full-time staff salaries in the local currency of the staff member’s permanent work location.
• This is a fully remote role open to candidates in sub-Saharan Africa.

Company Description

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.