Job Title: Director – Behavioral Insight Unit
Location : Patna/Remote
Band/Grade: 3A
Department RMLE
Last updated on: 16/02/2026
Degree of Travel required to: 25-30% travel to project locations
Project Background
Working closely with the Bihar state government, Piramal Swasthya Management and Research Institute (PSMRI)-led Bihar State Transformation Program is catalyzing sustainable health system change for years. The effectiveness of these interventions is expected to be enhanced, if tailored basis healthcare providers’ behavioral insights generated by a dedicated unit supporting the endeavors of Piramal Foundation. Diversity of geography and context collectively impact decisionmaking and therefore there is a need to look at contextually relevant insights across various regions/locations.
The Behavioral Insight Unit (BIU) will contextualize existing behavioral theories and frameworks to the health and nutritional relevance in Bihar. It will generate provider/community/domain-specific behavioral insights to improve public healthcare and nutritional service providers’ behavior, develop and test scalable and sustainable solutions to strategically integrate them into the implementation plan for the state. This will help the Bihar State Transformation Program to support the state to achieve targeted Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn & Child Health & Nutritional (RMNCHN) outcomes to reduce mortality, morbidity & malnutrition through strategic catering of predominantly rural but sporadically urbanized, socially vulnerable & often unstable, frequently flood-affected population of Bihar.
Purpose of Job
Director – Behavioral Insight Unit will be an ecosystem-shaping expert, a thought leader with excellence and credibility in the Behavioral Research, related efficient Monitoring, & Evaluation (M&E) methods, efficient and proficient in conceptualizing, guiding and supervising the development and implementation of state-of-the-art behavioral research processes to generate insights for all RMNCHN domains with specific focus on state priorities.
At the institutional level, this entails designing and implementation of Behavioral Research for developing appropriate framework, solutions and their M&E, curating results-based approach and conducting research studies of good quality and high ethical standards. S/he will provide technical leadership and guidance to program teams and partners to ensure that behavioral components of all research and implementation projects are adequately monitored and evaluated. The role encompasses conceptualizing, designing, executing, synthesizing and disseminating learning through behavioral research and related MLE for insight generation via:
• Immersion, ideation, solutioning & evaluation, conducting measurements of impact of solutions designed, reflecting key learning questions, partnering with global and national behavioral experts and relevant academia.
• Leading efforts to demonstrate the progress and impacts of BIU clearly to showcase the trajectory towards measurable achievements with internal and external stakeholders and generate insights for course-corrections and improvements.
• Leading initiatives to build capacities within the BIU team and beyond to be proficient enough to understand, contribute to the development and utilize behavioral insights for healthcare providers towards sustainable improvement in service delivery for those who need RMNCHN services, across geographies & contextual vulnerabilities.
Key stakeholders
External
Government, Donor, Partners, Academia
Internal
Senior management & staff of PF
Reporting structure
Role directly reports to
Core Team member
Positions that report into this role
Senior RMLE Manager - BIU
Essential Qualifications
Master’s degree/PhD/equivalent in Behavioral Science/Management Science/Nutrition/Rural Development/ Epidemiology/Public health/Biomedical Science/Health Management and allied
Essential Experience
• Minimum 8-10 years of experience in any of the above fields with a specific focus on Behavioral Research & M&E, Qualitative/Quantitative analytics, Health and Nutrition
• Experience of providing technical assistance to government programmes (health/nutrition) and the government information systems will be preferred
• Experience of scientific communications in the form of scientific manuscripts/policy briefs/presentations on behavioral research at national/international platforms
• Experience of conceptualizing, managing and spearheading end-to-end digital platforms & tools for behavioral research in health will be an added advantage
• Experience in leading/managing/building state/National level at-scale public health behavioral research and evaluation teams will be an added advantage.
Essential Skills
• Knowledge of the major evaluation and behavioral research methodologies (qualitative, quantitative, mixed method, and impact measurement), MLE processes, data quality control and analytical methodologies
• Advanced Proficiency in MS Office & SAS/SPSS/Stata/R/Python/Atlas-Ti/En-Vivo skills
• Very strong data analysis and visualization skills, analytical thinking and eye for detail
• Fluency in English (reading, writing & oral communication) is a prerequisite. Knowledge of other languages spoken in India would be great additions
• Ability to effectively communicate, network and negotiate with a diverse range of stakeholders
(internal and external), to achieve behavioral research, M & E objectives
• Ability to work independently & team environment with problem-solving skills
• Ability to multitask in a fast-paced environment, set priorities, and meet deadlines
• Team Management – ensuring healthy working relations among team members & good working environment on a level playing field, display of motivational leadership skills
• Liaising – maintain effective, trustworthy & cordial relationship with all stakeholders
• Problem-solving skills – Ability to derive and implement strategic and effective solutions to emerging systemic and human-centric problems
Key Roles/ Responsibilities
Providing Strategic Leadership to the Behavioral Research Unit
• Immersing in and synthesizing on the collective wisdom, conceptualizing and designing the behavioral frameworks, aligning with theories of change, designing log-frames, behavioral insight generation methods, aligning M & E as well as Impact Measurement processes and indicators, developing robust operational, analytical & dissemination plan and execute all.
• Generating required buy in through appropriate liaising & trust-building with all stakeholders (internal/external) to ensure the evidence to action pathway for the BIU generated insights.
Spearheading the functionality of the BIU
• Spearheading & supervising all steps to operationalize all above: starting from literature review, framework and indicator finalization, instrument development and implementation, analysis and interpretation, solution designing and testing, synthesizing and productization.
• Implement appropriate research quality assurance process & periodic quality audits
• Lead integration of generated behavioral insights into program implementation path
• Spearhead research-based knowledge product development on the insights generated
• Field visits to project geographies to monitor all the activities of BIU
Reporting
• Institutionalizing & spearheading regular reporting of progress & insights to all stakeholders
• Ensuring reporting details, quality & accuracy are aligned with agreed result framework
Larger Research and MLE team member role
• Working closely with the larger Research & MLE team of PF/PSMRI to contribute as required
• Supporting the Research and MLE Core Team Members in addressing overall RMLE needs.
Pls click on this link to apply: https://forms.gle/571hrE2Xo2aDo5r49, last date to apply: 15-Mar-26