Programme Manager
Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade
📍Wellington (NZ) 🕔 Full Time
💰 $124,471 to $172,387 NZD/year ⏳ 28/11/2025
Lead planning and performance of humanitarian programme, ensuring delivery against strategic goals and quality standards. The Programme Manager is part of the humanitarian team in the Partnerships Humanitarian and Multilateral Division. The team manages a circa $290m programme of humanitarian preparedness and response activities. The team also leads on New Zealand’s international humanitarian action policy, strategic thinking and advocacy, coordinates New Zealand’s all of government responses to offshore humanitarian events, is responsible for multi country disaster preparedness initiatives across the Pacific, and leads the Ministry’s humanitarian partnerships and engagement with multilateral organisations and NGOs. You will be responsible for:
Coordinating drafting of the Humanitarian Four-Year Plan
Ensuring the humanitarian programme is managed in line with quality management standards
Coordinating annual reflection, other periodic reporting on the plan, and team contributions to MFAT’s annual statutory and organisational reporting
Ensuring humanitarian activities deliver on intended outcomes as articulated in the Four-Year Plan. This includes monitoring and analysis of spend on different outcomes and developing, maintaining and supporting the team to implement a monitoring evaluation research and learning (MERL) system and timely and effective activity monitoring and activity completion assessments
Overseeing, developing and refining forecasting, monitoring and reporting systems on spend across the programme
Managing some activities and contributing to the response readiness of the Humanitarian Team
For more detail you can view a copy of the position description here.
Who are we looking for? - Mā wai te mahi nei?
We’d like to hear from you if you have the following skills and experience:
Significant experience overseeing portfolios of complex project/programmes through all phases of the programme cycle
Experience assessing and reporting on programme performance
Significant experience managing and maintaining quality assurance systems and processes within a team
Experience of governance and accountability frameworks
Coaching and on-the-job training experience
Experience building and enhancing operating systems is desirable.
Relevant qualification such as MSP, Prince2 or PMP is desirable.
Understanding of The Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti, Te Reo Māori and Māori customs and protocols would be beneficial.
Please note: The Pacific Development Group is currently going through a change process so the requirements of the role may change.
Why MFAT? - Ngā hua o te mahi i te Manatū Aorere
We are committed to a focus on leadership, talent, training and development, and flexible work options consistent with guidance from the Public Service Commission. Check out our benefits page to find out more about why we love working here. MFAT is Rainbow Tick accredited. We value diversity and are committed to providing an inclusive culture where everyone feels supported, valued, and a sense of belonging. We welcome applications from people from a diverse range of backgrounds.
About us - Mō mātou
Our people represent New Zealand on and offshore, and in doing so make New Zealanders safer and more prosperous. By building connections with and influencing other countries and international institutions, we advance New Zealand’s interests and pursue New Zealand's values. We provide advice to the Government on the implications for New Zealand of what is happening in the world.
To Apply/Interested? - Me pēhea te tuku tono
Apply today with your CV and cover letter. For any questions, please email roger.ball@mfat.govt.nz. To be considered for this position at Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade you must be a NZ citizen, or Permanent Resident. You must be able to obtain and maintain a Confidential security clearance. Ordinarily, to obtain this level of clearance candidates must have sufficient checkable background in countries where meaningful and reliable checks can be undertaken. Where requisite checks are unable to be made, the candidate application may not be able to be progressed.
Use this online tool to self-check your eligibility for a Confidential clearance. Please note that this tool is not part of the formal security clearance process. Please let us know if you need any support or have any access requirements that will help you through the recruitment process.
Please note: This is not a Foreign Policy/diplomatic role. This is a ‘Corporate’ role (known here as a specialist role based in central Wellington, NZ. While it is not usual for specialist staff to be ‘posted’ outside of NZ, from time to time a specialist role overseas becomes available at one of our embassies, high commissions, missions or consulates. To be considered for one of these positions you would need to apply and be considered via a competitive recruitment process. If you do have an interest in an MFAT foreign policy/diplomatic career, you would be welcome to apply for this either via our graduate recruitment or mid-level foreign policy recruitment campaigns.
