Senior Evaluation Manager for Sponsored Research

About this role

For over 35 years, Youth Villages has transformed the lives of children and families nationwide through innovative, research-based programs focused on preserving and restoring families.
As a national leader in children’s mental and behavioral health, we serve more than 47,000 youth, young people, and their families annually across 29 states and Washington, D.C. Our proven treatment models drive long-term success in child welfare, juvenile justice, and mental health systems. At Youth Villages, we do what works — partnering with others to expand our impact and advocate for meaningful, lasting change.
We're seeking purpose-driven individuals who are passionate about making a difference. With a dedicated team of more than 5,000 staff, Youth Villages is committed to investing in and supporting our employees by offering opportunities to build a fulfilling career through professional growth, personal development, and a mission that matters— helping children and families live successfully.
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Position Overview:
Youth Villages is seeking a strategic, highly organized Senior Evaluation Manager for Sponsored Research to lead complex evaluation initiatives that support program improvement, service expansion, and child welfare system change. Reporting to the Director of Research, the person in this role will provide scientific and project leadership for evaluations conducted in partnership with external researchers, ensuring that studies address meaningful organizational questions, use rigorous and appropriate methods, and produce findings that can inform implementation, scaling, practice, and policy.
The Senior Evaluation Manager for Sponsored Research will serve as Youth Villages’ primary liaison with external evaluation partners as part of one or more externally funded projects and will integrate evidence across evaluations, administrative data analyses, implementation findings, and other sources. A key responsibility will be synthesizing this evidence into comprehensive products that explain what is changing, how strategies are being implemented, whether expected results are occurring, and what can be learned to strengthen future efforts.
This is a remote position, with occasional travel required for meetings, presentations, conferences, and other dissemination activities.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

I. Provide Strategic and Scientific Leadership for Evaluation

• Develop and manage evaluation learning agendas that identify priority questions, evidence needs, measurement strategies, and major milestones.

• Ensure evaluations address specific strategic, programmatic, implementation, practice, or policy questions.

• Provide scientific guidance on evaluation design, measurement, quantitative and qualitative methods, analytic approaches, and interpretation.

• Critically evaluate methodological approaches, assumptions, findings, and limitations and facilitate resolution of methodological questions with research partners.

• Ensure evaluation partners have the programmatic, operational, organizational, and system context needed to design studies and appropriately interpret findings.

• Identify emerging evaluation needs and work with partners to refine research questions, measures, and analytic approaches as findings and priorities evolve.

II. Lead Sponsored Evaluation Partnerships and Projects

• Serve as Youth Villages’ primary liaison with the external evaluator for the Intercept Scaling and Practice/Policy Change investment.

• Coordinate evaluation activities across Youth Villages teams, external evaluators, research partners, and other collaborators.

• Manage project plans, timelines, deliverables, dependencies, responsibilities, decisions, and communications across multiple evaluation workstreams.

• Ensure partners receive timely feedback, decisions, contextual information, data coordination, and access to appropriate Youth Villages staff and stakeholders.

• Maintain clear documentation of research questions, methodological decisions, findings, open questions, and next steps.

• Proactively identify competing priorities, barriers, and delays and assess implications for commitments, staffing, budgets, and timelines.

• Lead regular partnership check-ins and contribute to assessment of partnership effectiveness and progress toward shared goals.

III. Integrate Evidence Across Sources

• Integrate findings across evaluation studies, administrative data analyses, implementation measures, qualitative research, and other evidence sources to develop a comprehensive understanding of progress and outcomes.

• Coordinate with colleagues leading complementary research and evidence-building initiatives to align questions, measures, timelines, and interpretation where work intersects.

• Examine evidence across multiple levels, including implementation, program outcomes, organizational and system change, and broader child welfare outcomes.

• Help distinguish whether unexpected findings may reflect the strategy itself, implementation, underlying assumptions, measurement, or contextual factors.

• Identify areas of convergence, inconsistency, and remaining uncertainty across evidence sources and work with research partners to determine appropriate next questions.

• Lead development of integrated evaluation products that synthesize findings across research partners and data sources.

IV. Translate Evidence into Organizational Learning and Action

• Help teams use evaluation findings to assess whether strategies should be continued, strengthened, adapted, or reconsidered.

• Translate findings into clear implications for implementation, scaling, program improvement, practice, policy, and future research.

• Develop presentations, executive summaries, reports, and other evidence products for leadership, practitioners, funders, public-system partners, and other non-technical audiences.

• Coordinate interpretation and dissemination of findings across research…