Associate Head – Impact Program

Location: Bengaluru

Department: Research and Impact

About Karya:

Why was Karya on the cover of the Time Magazine , highlighted by Satya Nadella , and invited to present its work to Sundar Pichai one on one? 

In part, because Karya is on a mission to provide AI enabled earning and learning opportunities to communities with high talent, but low access to opportunities. Karya achieves this while also delivering high quality, timely, and price competitive data to its clients.

Karya builds high quality datasets for large companies like Google and Microsoft, while providing ethical work opportunities and fair wages to its workforce.

Karya’s workers make nearly 20 times the Indian minimum wage and through our one-of-a-kind digital work platform, we have delivered over 40 million digital tasks and have positively impacted over 100 thousand workers. In the coming years, our goal is to rapidly scale our impact by bringing economic opportunities to millions of underserved users in India. With a rapidly growing global presence, we are also looking to expand our client base in the Indian market by partnering with leading Indian enterprises.

Location & Reporting:

This role is based in Bangalore with moderate travel (up to 40%) to rural locations across India. The post will report to Co-Founder & Chief Impact Officer - Safiya Husain. The Associate Head– Impact Program will have the opportunity to build and lead Karya’s community focused operations, with a goal of doubling incomes for every program participant within one year. 

Key responsibilities include:

1. Lead program strategy and delivery

• Own the two-year plan for the Impact Program, starting from February 2027 
• Ensure that program delivery is timely and executed with high-quality
• Hold the bar for impact and income gains: a 50%+ income gain as the minimum, doubling as the goal

1. Reach the right workers and communities

• Build partnerships with NGOs, tribal and language groups, disability organisations and women’s collectives
• Design worker selection that reaches the people who need the income most

1. Design work, pay and skilling

• Work closely with Ops, Learn and Tech teams to design work packets that build skills and pay fairly
• Shape a pay model that fits the budget, and a path from grant-funded work to market work
• Ensure 60%+ of workers certified in two or more digital skills

1. Deliver on the ground, at scale

• Lead field teams across 5+ states managing a cohort of ~10,000 workers.
• Get each onboarding wave ready on time: ensuring high quality partners, training, first work packets and support
• Impactful and worker first delivery of program

1. Look after workers beyond income

• Bring in services such as government schemes, health insurance and financial literacy 
• Pilot experiments in dignified work and worker voice

1. Measure, learn and report

• Partner with MERL to track income, engagement, certification and retention
• Own the donor relationship and reporting

1. Build and manage the team and budget

• Hire and lead the program team
• Manage budget and tradeoffs, contributing to fundraising initiatives as required for the program. 

 

Who you are

• 8+ years in livelihoods, skilling or women’s economic empowerment, including 2+ years leading programs at scale
• Experience delivering multi-state programs with grassroots partners
• Comfort with budgets, data and donor reporting
• Experience leading distributed field teams
• Fluency in English and at least one other Indian language, excellent communication skills

Strong differentiators

• Experience in digital or platform-based livelihoods, or tech for social good
• Background in graduation-approach, ultra-poor or disability-inclusion programs
• Experience designing pay or incentive models for low-income workers

 

Mindset

• Ambitious for the people we serve
• Comfortable with ambiguity
• Listens to workers and changes course with evidence
• Cares about dignity for workers, not just income and bottom-line metrics
• A role model of Karya values with the ability to inspire action and motivate team members to act on organizational priorities in-line with our values and ethos.