Program Manager, Tanzania

Role overview

Vital Strategies is a global public health organization working to improve health systems and reduce major causes of illness, injury, and death. Its work spans 73 countries and focuses on data-informed government action, evidence-based policy, and strategic communications. The organization prioritizes areas such as non-communicable diseases, tobacco control, road safety, obesity prevention, overdose prevention, environmental health, and vital statistics system strengthening. It also emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion, and encourages applications from candidates with a wide range of lived experiences.

Program context

This role sits within the lead poisoning prevention initiative, which is being expanded in low- and middle-income countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The program aims to work with government partners to improve health system capacity, deepen local expertise on childhood lead exposure, and support practical, cost-effective policy responses.

What you will do

The Program Manager will provide technical and epidemiological support for lead poisoning prevention work in Tanzania, including oversight of field research and blood lead surveillance activities. The role requires close coordination with environmental health scientists, epidemiologists, clinicians, public health professionals, statisticians, and senior government officials.

• Support the design and implementation of the lead poisoning prevention program alongside cross-functional teams.
• Help strengthen the capability of government and non-government staff involved in program delivery.
• Contribute to the development of a surveillance framework, standard operating procedures, and ethical approval processes.
• Train and supervise field surveillance teams, while tracking their activities.
• Help organize technical sessions, journalist training, and policy-related discussions.
• Support policy analysis and facilitate training for health officials, frontline workers, journalists, and other stakeholders.
• Build and maintain relationships with government, non-government, academic, research, health, and environmental stakeholders.
• Act as a focal point for key partners in coordination with the supervisor.
• Track data collection, safeguard data quality, and manage datasets with assigned colleagues.
• Carry out field monitoring through regular visits to surveillance sites.
• Work with senior epidemiologists to clean, analyze, and report surveillance data.
• Prepare presentations, technical documents, and plain-language summaries for both specialist and public audiences.
• Share findings with stakeholders and promote the use of data for planning and policy decisions.
• Oversee and support a small distributed team.
• Assist with start-up tasks, logistics, contracting, expense tracking, activity reporting, and procurement.
• Coordinate payment processing for team members and vendors with Finance and Operations teams.
• Submit program and financial updates, as well as project reports for Tanzania.
• Work with partner organizations to coordinate initiative activities.
• Perform additional duties as assigned.

Qualifications and experience

• A master’s degree in public health, epidemiology, environmental science, biostatistics, demography, public administration, or a closely related field is required.
• Applicants should have strong familiarity with public health systems, disease surveillance, environmental and health risk assessment, and evidence-based advocacy.
• The role calls for excellent organization, the ability to juggle multiple deadlines, and the confidence to work independently while coordinating across teams.
• Strong communication skills are needed to explain technical information to varied audiences in both the native language and English.
• Candidates should be able to interpret public health data, draw useful insights, and help shape policy recommendations.
• Comfort working through challenges, adapting to changing program needs, and finding practical solutions is important.
• Solid working knowledge of Microsoft Office is expected.
• Experience working across diverse cultural, generational, ethnic, racial, educational, and social backgrounds, with a commitment to inclusion, is valued.
• Applicants should have at least 6 to 7 years of experience in epidemiology, environmental health, global health, and/or program implementation.
• Experience supporting national-level surveillance programs or managing large health surveys is required.
• Experience working with government health departments, regulatory agencies, and public health facilities is required.
• Hands-on experience with data tools such as R, Stata, SAS, Excel, or visualization platforms such as Shiny and Tableau is required.
• Experience conducting training sessions is required.
• Experience supervising a small team of 2 to 3 staff and coordinating with national-level stakeholders is required.
• Additional value will be given to candidates with experience managing complex data flows, presenting scientific and health information to mixed audiences, and using platforms such as Monday or Airtable.

Working conditions

This is a full-time position that may be based remotely from Dodoma, Tanzania. The role is open to Tanzanian nationals and candidates who hold a valid Tanzanian work and residence permit. The selected candidate will be employed through Vital’s Employer of Record arrangement. Travel within Tanzania for meetings and field visits is expected as needed, with occasional international travel for meetings.

Compensation

The annual salary for this role is TZS 94,000,000 to TZS 114,000,000.