WASH Technical Advisor, Operations and Maintenance

About Splash

Splash is an international development organization founded in 2007 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA. In 15 years, we have reached nearly 1,000,000 children in cities around the world. In 2019, we embarked on an exciting, five-year initiative, Project WISE (WASH in Schools for Everyone), focused on serving over 800,000 children in three major growth cities: Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, and Kolkata, India, with improved water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure, WASH behavior change programs, and strengthened school-based menstrual health programs. This is an exciting time for Splash as we pivot to new ways of working and aim to expand our impact to new cities across 3-5 countries.

Splash supports local leaders, institutions, and partners to drive lasting change on the ground. We believe that local capacity to solve problems at scale exists, and our job is to strategically support and magnify the impact of local governments and nonprofit and for-profit actors for the good of children and families across the cities in which we work.

Our core values guide everything we do, including every hiring decision we make. They are:

• People - People first. People second. People third.
• Quality - Beautiful products that function and last.
• Honesty - No drama, no surprises, no BS.
• Joy - Kids at heart, seeing potential everywhere.
• Mistakes - Make them, don't repeat them.

Splash values the unique skills and experiences everyone brings to the organization, and we are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible environment for everyone. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and qualified applicants for employment. To learn more, please visit .

Location: Full-time remote position, with flexibility to collaborate and travel across the US, Africa, and global partner time zones.

Position Overview
The WASH Technical Advisor, Operations and Maintenance (O&M) will translate Splash's global O&M strategy into practical, locally owned operating models. This role helps Splash move from infrastructure delivery to reliable daily school WASH services by ensuring maintenance, financing, workforce, supply chain, and accountability systems are in place before handover to counterparts, starting in Zambia, Ethiopia, and Malawi, with learning that informs future cities.

This is a manager-level role. The successful candidate will move comfortably between systems-level work with governments and utilities, service-level work with maintenance providers and supply chains, and school-level work focused on practical daily reliability.

Reports to: Senior Director, Programs

Roles and Responsibilities

Strategy implementation and work planning

• Support country teams to implement Splash's sustainable O&M strategy across country workplans, including Ethiopia, Zambia, and Malawi
• Translate the global strategy into action plans, tools, decision gates, and country-ready guidance for pilot, delivery, and exit phases
• Working closely with country-based technical staff, track O&M readiness across school cohorts, service providers, utilities, and government counterparts, adapting approaches based on implementation evidence

Government financing and institutional ownership

• Support national and sub-national O&M financing discussions, including Operating Expenses (OPEX) commitments and "who does and who pays" matrices
• Build templates for O&M roles, budgets, decision rights, escalation routes, and handover conditions
• Monitor whether government and school-level commitments are documented, actionable, and aligned with Splash's exit criteria
• Partner with country leadership to embed O&M into education, water, utility, and municipal planning processes wherever feasible

Partnerships and relationship management

• Identify and prioritize O&M partners: service providers, utilities, technical partners, and local implementers
• Advance global partner conversations into agreements covering scope, service levels, roles, and costs
• Support country teams to develop service agreements and contracts that define responsibilities, performance expectations, and handover conditions
• Manage global O&M partner relationships, tracking commitments and escalating delivery and/or performance issues

Service delivery, workforce, and supply chain

• Design O&M service models covering preventive, scheduled, and reactive maintenance
• Support country offices to implement tools for service provider performance measurement, SOPs, and maintenance schedules
• Strengthen local workforce capacity through mentoring, handover documentation, peer learning, and locally sustainable support structures
• Analyze O&M supply chain needs, with a focus on spare-parts availability, supplier reliability, and procurement standards, ensuring sustainability is built into design and contractor handover

Monitoring, learning, and collaboration

• Collaborate with the Impact team to develop lean monitoring approaches tracking infrastructure functionality, repair response times, and service provider performance
• Collaborate across program, infrastructure, finance, procurement, impact, and country teams so O&M is integrated into design rather than treated as post-construction
• Support country leadership to engage government counterparts, utilities, and schools to clarify expectations and build shared ownership

Qualifications

• 7+ years in WASH, infrastructure sustainability, municipal service delivery, public systems strengthening, operations, maintenance, or utilities.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex workstreams across government counterparts, local partners, service providers, and technical teams.
• Strong grounding in O&M systems: preventive and reactive maintenance, lifecycle costing, service standards, and handover planning.
• Track record developing tools, SOPs, workplans, dashboards, or implementation frameworks that help teams execute consistently.
• Excellent writing and facilitation skills, with the ability to make systems-level concepts practical for diverse audiences.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience required. Experience in East or Southern Africa, school WASH, or performance-based contracting strongly preferred.

The Ideal Candidate

• You are a practical systems thinker who turns strategic concepts into usable tools, routines, and decisions.
• You bring structure to ambiguity and enjoy building models that help partners own the work over time.
• You work across technical, financial, and government-facing teams without losing sight of school-level realities.
• You are motivated by infrastructure that keeps functioning long after installation.
• You are comfortable working across cultures, time zones, and levels of seniority, and you manage multiple moving pieces independently.
• You thrive in a workplace culture that is playfully professional.

Salary and Benefits
At Splash, in support of our mission, we offer benefits designed to support our employees and their families.

• Salaries and benefits for different countries will vary in line with the location of the successful candidate and depending on experience.
• Splash operates across time zones with flexible work schedules. Team members can set standard hours within their time zone but should be available for occasional off-hours work. This is balanced by a self-managed schedule allowing personal time.
• US benefits include 18 days of paid time off, increasing by 2 days each year up to 28 days, 11 paid holidays, and Wellness Fridays (reduced hours on Fridays).
• Additionally, we offer two weeks of paid time off: one during the July 4th week and one during the last week of the year.
• Medical, dental, vision insurance, and a 401(k) plan with a 3% match.

Originally posted on Himalayas