Science Director, MEL Core

About the role

The successful candidate will lead the Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) Core, a service and infrastructure core that supports monitoring, evaluation, analytic specification, and data-collection excellence across all CMI programs.

Responsibilities

• Lead the MEL core as a centralized service unit providing measurement, evaluation, and analytic infrastructure across the Child Mind Institute.
• Establish institution-wide standards for measurement validity, reliability, fidelity, and data-use quality.
• Ensure MEL Core's services align with needs spanning Science, Clinical Programs, School and Community Partnerships, Global Programs and Product/Engineering teams.
• Design and support evaluation plans for school-based, community-based, digital, and clinical programs, including implementation quality, feasibility, and outcome measurement.
• Guide product-evaluation frameworks for tools such as HMTK, PPTK, Curious, Mirror, and Kandoo.
• Partner with program leadership to identify measurement gaps and build tailored evaluation workflows.
• Oversee development of shared measurement instruments and data-collection workflows used throughout the Child Mind Institute.
• Work with engineering and data teams to ensure MEL's data infrastructure supports, interoperable, and scalable program evaluation.
• Maintain SOPs, documentation, and training to support implementation.
• Specify analytic approaches, outcome frameworks, and statistical requirements for diverse program evaluations.
• Ensure credible interpretation of findings, consistency of analytic methods, and alignment with the Child Mind Institute standards.
• Build templated evaluation packages, dashboards, and reporting structures for repeated institutional use.
• Be a scientific and methodological partner to clinical teams, educational program leads, product managers, School & Community staff, and R&E teams.
• Collaborate with external partners (schools, community organizations, researchers, agencies) to maintain reasonable evaluation standards.
• Mentor MEL staff, including analysts, evaluation specialists, and project managers.
• Produce clear, clear written and oral summaries of evaluation outputs for leadership, funders, and program partners.
• Contribute to external presentations and publications.
• Translate complex evaluation data into actionable guidance for non-technical audiences.

Requirements

• Masters in psychology, neuroscience, measurement science, public health, evaluation science, or related field.
• 6+ years of experience in program evaluation, measurement development, or data/analytic oversight.
• Demonstrated ability to work across multiple program types (clinical, community, digital, educational).
• Strong methodological skills in evaluation design, outcomes measurement, and applied statistics.
• Excellent communication skills and comfort working with diverse partners.

Qualifications

• Experience in program evaluation, measurement development, or data/analytic oversight.
• Ability to work across multiple program types (clinical, community, digital, educational).
• Strong methodological skills in evaluation design, outcomes measurement, and applied statistics.
• Excellent communication skills and comfort working with diverse partners.

Skills

• Strong methodological skills in evaluation design, outcomes measurement, and applied statistics.
• Excellent communication skills and comfort working with diverse partners.

Benefits

Our great compensation package and benefits include medical insurance, 401(k), paid parental leave, dependent care, discounted tickets and entertainment perks programs.

Pay

The salary range for the position is posted. Factors such as candidate's work experience, education/training, job-related skills, internal peer equity, as well as market and business considerations affect the salary offered within this range. In addition, this salary may be subject to a geographic adjustment (according to a specific city and state and depending on the role), if an authorization is granted to work outside of the location listed in this posting.