Mobilisation & Partnerships Senior Lead

The HLA is seeking a strategic and partnership-oriented leader in new role. The role is central to how we connect people, organisations and expertise across the humanitarian sector—overseeing our global consultancy roster, strengthening equitable partnerships, and ensuring that local and national actors can access the leadership and learning support they need before, during, and after crises.

In this role, you will:  

• Provide strategic oversight for the HLA’s consultancy roster, ensuring it remains a dynamic and responsive mechanism for supporting humanitarian leadership and crisis response.
• Strengthen engagement with local, regional, and international partners, ensuring that collaboration extends beyond funding relationships and actively contributes to collective leadership efforts.
• Ensure that expertise is effectively mobilised, working with networks, rosters and partner organisations to improve accessibility to humanitarian learning and leadership opportunities.
• Support the development of equitable partnerships, ensuring that the HLA’s approach to working with local actors reinforces their agency and decision-making power, rather than perpetuating extractive models of engagement.
• Contribute to funding sustainability, identifying opportunities to strengthen cost-recovery models, diversify revenue streams, and align the HLA’s work with emerging donor priorities.
• Advocate for a shift in how leadership expertise is mobilised in humanitarian settings, working with partners and sector leaders to influence policy, funding models, and capacity development approaches.

About you  

We are looking for someone with the following experience, competencies and skills 

• Direct experience of contributing to the mobilisation of humanitarian expertise, such as managing or delivering through rosters, surge mechanisms, or regional leadership networks, ideally in ways that connected people to timely leadership, learning, or crisis response support.
• A strong track record of developing and maintaining partnerships with national and local actors, where collaboration is structured, accountable, and grounded in shared goals, not just relationship management but delivering through partnerships in practice.
• Ability to think strategically and systemically, including identifying where partnerships, mobilisation efforts, or resourcing models can shift leadership closer to crisis-affected contexts.
• Demonstrated experience aligning partnership or mobilisation work with organisational strategies and funding opportunities, including contributing to proposals, working within donor frameworks, and supporting sustainable delivery models.
• Confidence working across diverse geographies and cultures, with experience building respectful relationships that centre the knowledge, agency and priorities of local actors.
• Experience working across multiple teams or departments, contributing to cross-functional delivery and helping build joined-up ways of working across strategy, programmes, operations, and business development functions.
• Good working knowledge of leadership and capacity strengthening in humanitarian settings, with specific insight into what’s needed to support locally led leadership in crisis contexts.
• A visible commitment to equity and inclusion, including examples of how you have advocated for underrepresented groups.
• Strong communication and influencing skills, including experience preparing external materials (e.g. for partners, donors, or networks), contributing to strategic conversations, and sharing learning.
• Experience of contributing to financial management, including helping shape project budgets, aligning delivery to cost recovery models, and ensuring work is delivered responsibly within resource constraints.

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.