Chief Operating Officer (COO)

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Job titleReporting to

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Years of e xperience

15+ years

Location

One of RTV’s operational hubs

Terms

Full-time

About Raising the Village

Raising The Village’s mission is to build and strengthen pathways out of ultra-poverty through an approach guided by data, designed with communities, and scaled by partnerships. We work with last-mile communities to implement solutions that raise incomes, sustain impact, and chart sustainable pathways to possibility within 24 months. To date, we have supported more than two million people in Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with support from our partners and our team in North America. Find out more about our programs and impact at www.raisingthevillage.org .

Why join RTV

Raising The Village is building one of the most ambitious and innovative approaches to ending ultra-poverty in rural Africa. Through its integrated development model and partnerships with governments and communities, RTV helps last-mile communities build sustainable pathways out of poverty. The COO will play a central role in this next chapter — building operational systems, and infrastructure needed to expand impact across Sub-Saharan Africa.

This is a rare opportunity to scale a proven model that combines community-driven development, data systems, and technology to improve the lives of millions.

Role description

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) provides strategic and operational leadership for RTV’s global operations, ensuring the organization has the systems, people, and infrastructure needed to scale its mission to end ultra-poverty in last-mile rural communities across sub-Saharan Africa.

RTV is expanding its impact through a range of programs and service delivery approaches. Across these approaches, RTV integrates program methodology, operational systems, and data- and technology-enabled tools to support consistent implementation, learning, and scale across different operating environments.

The COO will play a central role in strengthening and scaling RTV’s core operational capabilities, ensuring the organization can grow rapidly while maintaining the quality, accountability, and impact that define its work. Working closely with the CEO and senior leadership team, the COO will oversee and align field operations, digital platforms, and data systems to function as a coordinated system that supports program delivery at scale. This role drives operational excellence, disciplined execution, and cross-functional alignment with a clear focus on enabling adjacent initiatives such as Venn and Programs.

The COO is accountable for end-to-end operational performance for Procurement, Facilities, Fleet, IT (excludes Venn), Legal, Health & Safety, and Operational Planning (excludes Programs). The role ensures that the organization operates efficiently, responsibly, and with the resilience required to expand across multiple countries.

Key responsibilities

Strategic leadership & organizational scale

• Provide overall leadership for RTV’s global operations, ensuring strong alignment between strategy and execution.
• Build and manage the operational systems required to scale the areas of responsibility outlined above.

Organizational operations

• Oversee operations and ensure operational systems enable efficient logistics, strong program delivery, and cost-effective implementation across multiple countries.
• Ensure compliance with donor requirements, internal policies, and national regulatory frameworks.

• Build operational systems that support rapid growth and multi-country expansion.
• Develop operational playbooks and replication frameworks to support expansion into new regions and partnerships.
• Strengthen coordination between programs, operations, finance, and technology teams.
• Provide leadership and mentorship to operational leaders and country teams, and establish an internal talent management pipeline to support demand.

Technology infrastructure & platform operations

• Support continuous improvement of operational infrastructure supporting digital systems, including deployment, procurement, device management, field connectivity, vendor management.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to ensure effective implementation and utilization of digital tools across internal teams and external partners.
• Support the reliability and performance of digital platforms with a focus on enabling consistent functionality in rural and low-connectivity environments.
• Lead and strengthen cyber security practices across RTV, ensuring the protection of systems, data, and digital infrastructure through effective risk management and implementation of security best practices.

Data governance & security