Deputy Director - Programmes

Nature of employment: Full-time

Reporting to: Director - Programmes

Location: Delhi & Madhya Pradesh About Peepul

Peepul is an education-focused non-profit organization committed to transforming India's education system and enabling every child to reach their full potential. We work closely with national, state, and local governments to strengthen government schools and education systems at scale. Currently, we partner with governments in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, impacting over 6.6 million students, 273,000+ teachers, and 2,400+ school leaders across 90,000+ government schools.

At Peepul, we collaborate with school systems to build the capacity of leaders, teachers, and institutions. We advocate policy improvements, support mentoring and monitoring mechanisms, and enhance student-teacher engagement in classrooms. Through our work, we have directly supported 5.94 million students, 254,000 teachers, and 1,644 school leaders across 88,711 schools in Madhya Pradesh, and 658,000 students, 19,000 teachers, and 821 school leaders across 1,500 schools in Delhi.

Our work has been recognized internationally, including receiving the Commonwealth Education Awards for Innovation and being featured in reports by respected organizations such as the United Nations and the Ministry of Education, Government of India. We are supported by leading Indian CSR partners and prominent international foundations that share our vision of ensuring excellent education for the most disadvantaged children. Driven by our core values of impact, excellence, and leadership, we are a restless, resilient, and reflective organization.

Our team of 200+ employees is passionate about creating lasting change and is rewarded competitively for their dedication. Join us in our mission to create a world where every child has equal access to high-quality education.

Learn more about our transformative work at http://peepulindia.org. The Opportunity

Peepul works at the heart of government systems to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the public schools. We partner closely with state and national governments not as implementers, but as long-term collaborators, co-designing programmes, building capacity, and strengthening the systems that enable changes at scale. Today, our work reaches ~6.5 million students, ~300,000 teachers, and 90,000+ schools across Delhi and Madhya Pradesh.

Our next phase focuses on deepening impact in existing states while building approaches that can scale across grades and contexts within the public system.

We are hiring two Deputy Directors of Programmes- one in Delhi and one in Madhya Pradesh. These are not interchangeable roles — each carries a distinct mandate, and we are looking for leaders with the conviction, intellectual rigour, and ambition to reshape systems at scale.

In Madhya Pradesh, you will own Peepul's most complex portfolio: multiple large programmes running simultaneously, embedded deep in government systems, with full accountability for driving consistent, high-quality execution at scale while navigating complexity within the system. This role requires operating through ambiguity, managing multiple moving parts, and ensuring delivery holds under pressure.

In Delhi, you will lead equally rigorous programmes while operating at the intersection of state delivery and national ambition — close to the Government of India, close to the institutions that shape education policy, and positioned to strengthen how Peepul’s work is codified, communicated and contributes to broader education thinking and practice. This role requires strong judgement on what to codify, what to scale, and how to translate programme learning into broader influence.

While both roles require strong programme leadership, they differ in context- one is anchored in scale and delivery complexity, the other in influence and visibility. Both need a leader who doesn't need to be convinced it's possible — just given the room to prove it.

Tune in to Kruti Bharucha, our CEO, as she shares insights on Scaling Education Reform Across India in the latest episode of The Impact Equation.

What You Will

Own

• Ownership of a Large, Complex Public Education System Transformation

Responsible for Peepul's entire state portfolio. This means setting up the multi-year vision, making high-stakes strategic calls, and being accountable for outcomes at scale.

Define and own the long-term strategy for the state, aligning Peepul's ambitions to state priorities and ensuring every initiative is built to embed and endure.

Hold accountability to achieve our audacious goal of system- level measurable improvements in teaching practice, student learning, and the effectiveness of system-level processes (such as training, coaching, and academic monitoring).

Make consequential decisions across programme design,