Programme Director - Global Finance, Trade & Diplomacy

Our Guiding Star: Building Resilience QCF was established in 2019 by the founders of Quadrature Capital https://quadrature.ai/, Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya, out of a recognition of the persistent poverty, inequality, and human suffering that shape our societies. Our founders were already active philanthropists in these areas, and came to understand how climate would compound them, driving food insecurity, deepening displacement, and pushing the most vulnerable into crisis. This realisation led them to establish QCF with a focus on climate as the defining challenge of our time. In 2025, the founders and QCF decided to bring the Foundation's climate funding together with other private philanthropic funding streams across poverty, inequality and human suffering under an expanded Foundation remit. QCF’s updated mandate is based on our core belief: that acute human suffering now, and cascading climate risks ahead, are interconnected crises that threaten the stability of societies everywhere. This demands action both downstream, to address poverty and inequality and help people secure their lives and dignity today; and upstream, to build the conditions that make lasting climate and societal transformation possible and durable for tomorrow. This understanding frames the vision of the Foundation: “A just and resilient world, where those most affected by intersecting crises have the power to shape their own futures.” We focus on three interconnected challenges that undermine resilience. - Human security; Protecting survival and dignity in the face of acute threats, including conflict, natural disasters and climate shocks. - Poverty and inequality; Addressing persistent economic exclusion and unequal access to opportunity, by tackling the structural drivers of injustice. - Climate risk; Responding to escalating threats to lives and livelihoods from climate impacts, which will intensify without a fast, fair transition. Our purpose is to trust and resource those closest to the work to: - Secure today - securing the survival and dignity of those in conditions of acute vulnerability, through urgent poverty and humanitarian response; and - Transform tomorrow – creating the enabling conditions for a just, low-carbon and resilient future. The role QCF is looking for a Programme Director (PD) to define and lead QCF’s Global Finance, Trade & Diplomacy (GFTD) portfolio. The premise is that resilient societies depend in part on how capital is raised and allocated, how institutions shape public and private investment, and whose interests are reflected in trade and diplomatic arrangements. The role connects global reforms to practical resilience outcomes in QCF’s priority regions and programmes. The portfolio brings together three overlapping fields: 1. Private markets, finance and business: including the incentives that shape investment in natural, physical, human and knowledge capital; 2. Public and development finance, including reform and strengthening of national and international institutions; and, 3. Trade and diplomacy frameworks that can support more resilient outcomes for a wider range of stakeholders. These are established fields with active partners and other funders. The PD will identify where QCF can make a distinctive contribution, strengthen work already under way and make clear choices about the boundaries of its mandate. The PD will take senior accountability for strategy, capital allocation, ecosystem relationships and portfolio outcomes. They will strengthen engagement with an existing group of around 15–20 partnerships, shape an initially eight-figure, multi-year grant portfolio, and work with partners on opportunities for institutional change. The role will also bring specialist insight to QCF’s regional and thematic portfolios and build an effective team and operating rhythm. Key accountabilities (the WHAT) 1. Set the mandate and strategic direction - Define the GFTD mandate and contribution to QCF’s resilience strategy, working with the Managing Directors, Impact & Insights and portfolio colleagues to agree scope, outcomes, priorities and boundaries. - Map the three fields, their political and economic dynamics, key actors, funders, existing initiatives and gaps; distinguish opportunities for QCF to back, connect, influence or step away from. - Build an 18-month roadmap and a longer-term portfolio architecture, making the role of grant capital, partnerships, policy engagement and specialist support to other portfolios explicit. - Use a Horizon 1, 2 and 3 view to distinguish established work that merits strengthening, adjacent opportunities and longer-term shifts, without treating mature fields as experiments for their own sake. - Prepare clear, decision-ready strategy and capital-allocation papers for Executive and Trustee discussion, including options, assumptions, resource implications and the case for QCF’s additionality. 2. Build and actively manage the grant portfolio - Take senior accountability for portfolio outcomes, partner selection, grant recommendations, capital allocation and material strategic trade-offs within QCF’s governance framework. - Review the existing 15–20 partnerships, strengthen engagement where QCF can add value, and identify gaps, concentrations and opportunities to adapt or consolidate support. - Shape an initial eight-figure, multi-year grant pipeline across the overlapping ecosystems, assessing potential impact, partner capacity, additionality, risk, timing and the balance between depth and breadth. - Decide how active a grantmaking model QCF should operate in these fields. Test the indicative five-year scenario of 20–30 grants at roughly $3–30 million each against team capacity, partner needs, available capital and alternatives, including collaboration with other funders. - Set clear criteria to start, continue, adapt, scale or stop commitments. Work with the Programme Manager and Finance, Legal and Portfolio Operations to ensure decisions are executed with proportionate diligence and reliable oversight. 3. Steward ecosystems and strategic partnerships - Build trusted relationships across the existing funder and practitioner ecosystems in corporate and supply-chain reform, development finance and multilateralism; understand where agendas converge and where they differ. - Work with partners, funders, policy actors, businesses, investors, governments and multilateral institutions to identify shared opportunities and complementary roles for QCF. - Strengthen field infrastructure, leadership and partner capability where that will advance change; avoid duplicating established efforts or making QCF the centre of coalitions led by others. - Assess whether partnership models beyond conventional grantmaking, including public-finance or quasi-commercial approaches, fall within the agreed mandate and can be supported responsibly with colleagues in Legal, Finance and Investments. 4. Advance policy engagement and institutional change - Develop QCF’s policy engagement strategy in support of partners across relevant institutional settings, including G20 and G7 processes, MDB and DFI annual meetings, and global or regional business and investor networks. - Identify concrete openings to shift incentives, rules, institutional practice and capital flows toward resilient public and private investment, with attention to political feasibility and implementation. - Connect global reform to regional priorities: work with the Sub-Saharan Africa portfolio on institutions including the African Union and African Development Bank, and with UK and Europe colleagues on a coherent “UK in the World” approach. - Bring specialist insight to Resilience First Investments, JEIT, Ecosystems & Natural Resources and Climate Risk Response where institutional reform can unlock investment or improve outcomes in physical systems. - Represent QCF credibly and selectively, using convening, narrative and influence to amplify partner insight and advance agreed goals rather than pursuing visibility as an end in itself. 5. Make evidence and learning integral to strategy - Work with Impact & Insights and partners to set the portfolio’s critical learning questions, evidence needs and signals of institutional, market and societal change. - Bring together partner experience, political economy, research, foresight and portfolio performance to test the strategic logic and understand what is changing across the three fields. - Use quarterly reflection and regular portfolio reviews to revisit assumptions, assess contributions and change capital-allocation or engagement decisions when warranted. - Share learning and specialist intelligence across QCF, including the implications of global reforms for UK, African, investment and thematic portfolios. 6. Build the team and contribute to QCF as a whole - Build and develop the GFTD pod, including a Programme Manager when approved; give clear strategic direction while enabling the PM to own portfolio delivery, coordination, diligence workflows and management information. - Establish decision rights, ways of working and a disciplined rhythm for quarterly planning, monthly portfolio review, partner engagement and Executive or Trustee decisions. - Work across Impact & Insights, Finance, Legal, Portfolio Operations, PMO, Comms and Partnerships so that the portfolio uses QCF-wide systems and builds enduring organisational capability. - Contribute to QCF’s collective strategy, culture and leadership, sharing networks and judgement generously and resolving overlaps with other portfolios constructively. Ways of working (the HOW) Judgement under uncertainty - Makes sound strategic choices where evidence is incomplete, including where to concentrate capital, which institutions to engage and when to decline an attractive but unfocused opportunity. - Understands how incentives, politics, power and implementation constraints shape outcomes across markets and multilateral institutions. - Balances conviction and openness, makes trade-offs explicit and revises a position when context or evidence changes. Learning Agility - Connects partner knowledge, research, data and foresight to strategy; treats learning as part of active portfolio leadership. - Can move between private finance, public and development finance, and trade and diplomacy without claiming equal depth in every discipline. - Invites challenge and uses feedback to improve assumptions, choices and ways of working. Humility and partner mindset - Builds trust across different institutional, cultural and political settings; listens carefully to partners and those affected by decisions. - Recognises the power that comes with grant capital and public influence, and works in ways that strengthen partner leadership and existing ecosystems. - Collaborates with other funders and QCF portfolios without territoriality or unnecessary duplication. Delivery discipline and ownership - Owns strategy through to consequential grant and policy decisions, with clear priorities, decision points and follow-through. - Sets ambitious but feasible direction and holds a reliable oversight of capital, risk, capacity and partner commitments. - Works hands-on at senior level when needed while delegating delivery systems and operational coordination appropriately to the Programme Manager. Clarity, synthesis and communication - Makes complex institutional and financial issues intelligible to partners, colleagues, executives and Trustees. - Writes persuasive, evidence-grounded strategy and decision papers that set out options, uncertainty and recommended action. - Creates shared understanding across disciplines and translates global questions into practical choices for QCF’s portfolios. Organisation-first mindset - Thinks beyond the GFTD portfolio, looking for connections with regional and thematic work and sharing insight and relationships generously. - Builds reusable capability within QCF rather than concentrating knowledge and influence in one person. - Contributes to an adaptive, accountable and learning-driven organisation. What you'll bring - Substantial senior experience shaping and delivering strategy in at least one of global private markets and business reform, public and development finance, or trade and multilateral diplomacy, with enough breadth to connect all three. - A strong grasp of how finance, institutions, rules and political incentives affect investment and resilience outcomes across different geographies; able to move between system-level analysis and practical choices. - Credibility and trusted relationships with relevant practitioners, funders and institutions, and experience working through coalitions or reform processes where QCF is one contributor among many. - A record of making clear portfolio, partnership or investment choices, allocating significant resources, managing trade-offs and adapting an approach over time. Direct grantmaking experience is valuable; equivalent capital-allocation experience should show strong partner and governance judgement. - Experience working with or influencing MDBs, DFIs, ministries, investors, business networks or multilateral processes, together with an understanding of how international reforms connect to regional and national delivery. - Strong political economy and systems thinking, and the ability to draw on research, evidence, lived and partner knowledge to make decisions under uncertainty. - Excellent writing and communication, including senior strategy papers, persuasive synthesis and clear advice for executive, board or Trustee audiences. - Evidence of building capable teams, leading through others and working effectively with programme managers and cross-functional colleagues in a growing organisation. - A low-ego, partner-first approach, sound judgement about power and influence, and commitment to QCF’s mission and to the agency of those most affected by intersecting crises.