Chief Operating Officer

Plan International Uganda

About Plan International Uganda

Founded in 1937, Plan International is a development and humanitarian organisation that works together with children, young people, supporters and partners to strive for a just world, where we are all equal. To do this we tackle the root causes of the challenges and inequalities that children and young girls face. We’re there for children from birth until adulthood and we enable children to prepare for and respond to crises and adversity. To fulfil the promise of the 2030 Global Goals, our 5-year Global Strategy is designed to deliver significant change for girls and boys, putting a special emphasis on gender equality. We see clear links between fulfilling children’s rights, achieving gender equality and ending child poverty. Every girl and boy has the right to be healthy, educated, protected, valued and respected in their own community and beyond. We support these rights from when children are born to when they reach adulthood. We work to ensure that girls and boys know their rights, and have the skills, knowledge and confidence to fulfil them. This approach inspires and empowers children and communities to create long-lasting change.

Job Description

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) ensures Plan International is resilient, well governed, and future ready. As a strategic enterprise leader, the COO shapes the Leadership Team agenda and sets the organisation’s enterprise approach to how Plan International operates, governs itself, and evolves to deliver impact at scale. The role fosters inclusive decision making and collective leadership, while ensuring that strategy is translated into delivery through strong systems, accountable leadership, and efficient, risk-aware operations across regions and country programmes.

The COO provides strategic oversight of the organisation’s enterprise enabling environment and global services, ensuring coherence between global standards and country-level realities. Through this enterprise leadership, the role strengthens organisational effectiveness, performance, and accountability, and enables impact and growth in a complex and changing sector.

The COO holds strategic accountability for organisational integrity and performance culture, embedding global values and behaviours and ensuring operational excellence supports Plan International’s mission and strategic priorities. The role brings enterprise foresight and adaptive capacity, enabling the organisation to evolve its operating model over time while remaining robust, compliant, and values led.

As a member of the Leadership Team, the COO actively shapes and champions a culture of collective responsibility for the overall strategic direction of Plan International Inc, consistently modelling Plan International’s values and behaviours, underpinned by feminist leadership principles, as One Plan, shared values.

Responsibilities

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) ensures Plan International is resilient, well governed, and future ready.
As a strategic enterprise leader, the COO shapes the Leadership Team agenda and sets the organisation’s enterprise approach to how Plan International operates, governs itself, and evolves to deliver impact at scale.
The role fosters inclusive decision making and collective leadership, while ensuring that strategy is translated into delivery through strong systems, accountable leadership, and efficient, risk-aware operations across regions and country programmes.
The COO provides strategic oversight of the organisation’s enterprise enabling environment and global services, ensuring coherence between global standards and country-level realities. Through this enterprise leadership, the role strengthens organisational effectiveness, performance, and accountability, and enables impact and growth in a complex and changing sector.
The COO holds strategic accountability for organisational integrity and performance culture, embedding global values and behaviours and ensuring operational excellence supports Plan International’s mission and strategic priorities. The role brings enterprise foresight and adaptive capacity, enabling the organisation to evolve its operating model over time while remaining robust, compliant, and values led.
As a member of the Leadership Team, the COO actively shapes and champions a culture of collective responsibility for the overall strategic direction of Plan International Inc, consistently modelling Plan International’s values and behaviours, underpinned by feminist leadership principles, as One Plan, shared values.

Requirements

Successful applicants will bring extensive senior leadership experience in global operations, governance, or enterprise-level service delivery within complex international organisations and the demonstrated ability to lead strategic execution, drive cross-functional coordination, and enable organisational performance across diverse operational domains.
You will bring deep expertise in organisational resilience, safeguarding, and integrated risk management, with a track record of embedding these frameworks into operational practice. Experience navigating federated, networked, or decentralised organisational models is also essential to support both global coherence and local relevance.
This role requires outstanding stakeholder engagement and influencing skills, with the ability to build trust, foster strong cross-functional collaboration, and lead across culturally and geographically diverse contexts.