Humanitarian Needs Assessment Specialist

The Organisation

Plan International is an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We believe in the power and potential of every child but know this is often suppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. And it is girls who are most affected.

Working together with children, young people, supporters and partners, we strive for a just world, tackling the root causes of the challenges girls and vulnerable children face. We support children’s rights from birth until they reach adulthood and we enable children to prepare for and respond to crises and adversity. We drive changes in practice and policy at local, national and global levels using our reach, experience and knowledge.

For over 85 years, we have rallied other determined optimists to transform the lives of all children in more than 80 countries.

We won’t stop until we are all equal.

The Opportunity

We are seeking an experienced Humanitarian Needs Assessment Specialist to strengthen the quality, consistency and impact of needs assessments across our humanitarian portfolio.

In this highly dynamic role, you will support Country Offices to design and implement high-quality, principled humanitarian needs assessments in real time—ensuring Plan International is well positioned to design effective programmes, secure funding and respond to the needs of the most at-risk children, especially girls.

This role involves significant global travel and deployments to humanitarian crises, often at short notice.

Key Responsibilities

You will:

• Develop and maintain user-friendly tools, guidance and methodologies for rapid and multi-sectoral needs assessments.
• Ensure gender, child protection, disability inclusion and age considerations are central to all assessments, in line with Sphere and Core Humanitarian Standard requirements.
• Support Country Offices to deliver high-quality assessment reports suitable for donors, clusters and peer agencies.
• Design and deliver needs assessment training to build organisational capacity.
• Work closely with MERL and Digital teams to promote the use of digital data collection tools and alignment with monitoring and evaluation systems.
• Deploy to Country Offices (up to 4 months at a time) to directly support assessment design and implementation.
• Represent Plan International in inter-agency coordination forums, including IASC-related networks.
• Support fundraising, advocacy and influencing teams by translating assessment data into compelling insights and products.
• Strengthen alignment with donor requirements, including ECHO submissions during HIP cycles.
• Produce an annual global overview of assessments and emerging humanitarian trends.
• Ensure safeguarding, child protection, and gender equality policies are fully embedded in all areas of work.

About You

You are an experienced humanitarian professional who thrives in complex and fast-moving environments. You bring both technical expertise and a collaborative, capacity-building mindset.

Essential experience and skills:

• Extensive experience leading or supporting humanitarian needs assessments across diverse emergency contexts, including rapid-onset crises.
• Strong expertise in gender analysis and integrating protection and inclusion into assessments.
• Experience developing and delivering training.
• Familiarity with donor expectations and humanitarian standards (Sphere, CHS, CPMS, INEE).
• Experience using digital tools for data collection and analysis.
• Strong analytical, coordination and report-writing skills.
• Ability and willingness to deploy at short notice and work in challenging environments.

Desirable:

• Experience contributing to funding proposals or donor submissions.
• Experience developing advocacy or influencing messaging from assessment findings.
• Experience working with partner organisations.
• Fluency in English; French, Spanish or Arabic is an asset.

Working Conditions

This is a global, deployment-heavy role. You will spend approximately:

• 50% of your time in-country during the first year
• Up to 75% in subsequent years

Deployments may be to insecure or disaster-affected contexts. Plan International provides security training, wellbeing support and pre-deployment briefings to support staff in these environments.

Location:  This can be flexible where Plan International has an office* that can employ on behalf of the Global Hub and you have the pre-existing right to work and live. This role requires up to 75% travel. 

Type of Role: 2-year fixed term contract   

Reports to: Head of Global Rapid Response & Readiness Unit

Salary:   We will be happy to disclose the salary and applicable benefits to applicants as part of this process, however, please kindly note that the salary and employment benefits will be set according to your location and therefore it is not possible to include full details here.  

Closing Date: 22nd June 2026

Anticipated 1st round interview: Week commencing 29th June

*Applicable locations include: Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, China, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Finland, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, US, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe  

Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the very heart of everything that Plan International stands for.

We want Plan International to reflect the diversity of the communities we work with, offering equal opportunities to everyone regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

Plan International is based on a culture of inclusivity and we strive to create a workplace environment that ensures every team, in every office, in every country, is rich in diverse people, thoughts, and ideas.

We foster an organisational culture that embraces our commitment to racial justice, gender equality, girls’ rights and inclusion.

Plan International believes that in a world where children face so many threats of harm, it is our duty to ensure that we, as an organisation, do everything we can to keep children safe. This means that we have particular responsibilities to children that we come into contact with and we must not contribute in any way to harming or placing children at risk.

A range of pre-employment checks will be undertaken in conformity with Plan International's Safeguarding Children and Young People policy. Plan International also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this scheme we will request information from applicants previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.

Please note that Plan International will never send unsolicited emails requesting payment from candidates.