Project Associate / Project Manager - High Potential Students

CSF is seeking a Project Associate / Project Manager to support the implementation of the High Potential Students workstream in Telangana, focusing on strengthening government school systems and supporting high-potential students from underserved communities.

Location: Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Responsibilities

• Support the execution of key programme priorities under the Telangana High Potential Students workstream, especially across Institutes of Excellence in KGBVs.
• Build and manage working relationships with diverse stakeholders, including state government teams, KGBV/IOE teams, school leaders, programme partners, educational nonprofits, vendors and internal CSF teams.
• Coordinate with implementation partners to monitor and review programs across EdTech, assessments, academic enrichment, and career pathways, ensuring effective progress tracking, timely identification of gaps, and appropriate follow-through on action items.
• Support stakeholder convenings, partner check-ins, review meetings and government updates by collating data, preparing materials, documenting discussions and tracking next steps.
• Maintain programme trackers, timelines, meeting notes, action-item logs, data templates and other tools required for day-to-day monitoring and review.
• Manage timelines and deliverables for assigned workstreams to ensure that activities are on track and aligned with project objectives.
• Prepare clear written outputs, including field visit notes, meeting minutes, update emails, review notes, progress summaries, presentations, reports and internal briefing documents.
• Provide timely updates to internal teams and CSF leadership on implementation progress, key insights, risks, opportunities and areas for course correction.
• Support rigorous data cleaning, validation and analysis to identify trends, implementation gaps, inconsistencies and areas requiring follow-up or course correction, while also supporting the development and maintenance of dashboards, trackers and other data platforms for programme monitoring and review.
• Conduct targeted field visits to schools and institutions to gather operational and academic insights, understand implementation realities and document observations.
• Document key learnings, field insights, implementation challenges and emerging practices to inform reviews, reporting, programme improvement and future scale-up.
• Identify, assess and escalate implementation risks and bottlenecks in partner delivery, school-level execution, data availability or communication, while supporting proactive issue resolution.
• Collaborate with internal teams to ensure smooth project delivery, timely communication of progress and follow-through on agreed priorities.
• Support emerging priorities and time-sensitive tasks that may arise from government stakeholders, programme partners or internal teams, with the ability to respond quickly, organise next steps and drive closure in a dynamic work environment.

Requirements

• 0 to 2 years of post-qualification work experience for the Project Associate role, or 2 to 5 years of post-qualification work experience for the Project Manager role, preferably in the education sector, development sector, programme management, EdTech implementation, assessments, school-system reform, or government-facing projects.
• Strong project management skills or demonstrated ability to manage timelines, trackers, follow-ups, action items and multiple priorities simultaneously.
• Good writing and oral communication skills, with proficiency and fluency in English and Telugu.
• Good project delivery skills, including the ability to coordinate with partners, schools, government teams and internal colleagues to drive execution and ensure closure on deliverables.
• Ability to work with student-level, school-level, assessment, platform usage or programme monitoring data to derive implementation insights and support reviews.
• Strong documentation and reporting skills, including the ability to prepare meeting notes, progress updates, field visit reports, review materials and concise internal briefs.
• Strong growth and learning mindset, with attention to detail, ownership of assigned tasks, problem-solving orientation, agility to take up emerging priorities, and willingness to travel within Telangana.