Senior Evaluation Officer

Senior Evaluation Officer (APS 5/6)

Evidence and Evaluation Support - Child and Family Evidence

Ongoing/Non-ongoing - Part-time or Full-time

Based in Melbourne, VIC

We are seeking highly motivated individuals with demonstrated skills and experience in evaluation methods, capability building, design and delivery. If you have relevant evaluation and monitoring experience in the Child and Family sector, this might be the role for you.

About us

The Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS, or 'the Institute') is the Australian Government's key research body in the area of family wellbeing. It is an independent statutory authority established in 1980 under the
Family Law Act 1975
. It is also home to the Australian Gambling Research Centre (AGRC), established under the
Gambling Measure Act
2012 which builds the evidence base on gambling-related harm. The Institute is an agency within the portfolio of the Department of Social Services (DSS).

Our mission is to conduct high-quality, impartial research into the wellbeing of Australian families, to inform government policy and promote evidence-based practice in the family services sector. We conduct research, provide independent advice and communicate findings to government policymakers, service providers, researchers and the community about factors affecting family wellbeing. Through our research, we contribute to developing policy and practice to promote the wellbeing of families in Australia.

Our team

The Child and Family Evidence program at AIFS synthesises and translates evidence for decision-making in service settings about what works for children and families and supports practitioners to build their individual and organisational capability to use evidence in practice and undertake program and service evaluations.

The Evidence and Evaluation Support (EES) team leads on a range of evaluation functions within AIFS. These include:

• Working with Families and Children Activity providers to build their capability to use evidence in their practice

• Working with child and family services to build evaluation readiness and to design and implement monitoring and evaluation activities

• Working with other commonwealth or state and territory government agencies to deliver program, system and service evaluations and reviews.

Position Requirements

Evaluation Officers in the EES team support the planning, implementation, and reporting of evaluation activities for projects and programs, and work with child and family service providers to build evaluation and monitoring capability. These tasks include:

• Evaluation capacity building and stakeholder engagement: supporting child and family service providers to use evidence and evaluation in their program delivery and undertaking high-quality research and evaluation projects focusing on a range of issues relevant to child and family wellbeing and/or policy design and delivery.

• Program, system and service evaluation: supporting the design, implementation, and management of evaluation frameworks and processes across projects and programs

• Knowledge translation tasks including literature searches, synthesising existing research and the writing and preparation of publications, reports, short articles, webinars and other materials

This role requires skills and experience in evaluation methods and evaluation capability building. Subject matter experience in one or more topic areas relevant to AIFS projects (for example child and family services, community development, domestic and family violence, family policy) is also preferred.

Position duties

Under the direction of the Evaluation Manager, this role entails contributing to several elements of the work delivered by the EES team, including:

• Supporting evaluation projects, including maintaining project records, drafting reports and overseeing updates to website and newsletter content.
• Contributing to the development of theory of change and program logics, evaluation frameworks, data collection instruments, ethics applications and other monitoring and evaluation materials as needed.
• Undertaking research data collection and analysis
• Supporting high quality evaluation reports and other deliverables
• Contributing to high-quality research synthesises and communicating the findings through the writing and preparation of publications, reports, short articles and other materials.
• Providing support to child and family services to encourage good evaluation practice and the use of evidence-informed programs and practices.
• Contributing to the development of tools, resources and other capability building activities to assist sector professionals to build their capability to undertake evaluation and/or develop and implement evidence-informed programs and practices.
• Building and maintaining productive stakeholder relationships and contributing to other core research and dissemination functions at the Institute.

Key to this role is a sound understanding of both the needs of the child and family sector and demonstrated experience in evaluation capability building, design and delivery.

Key Selection Criteria

• Professional expertise
• Delivering on objectives and achieving results
• Stakeholder management
• Communication skills
• Leadership
• Values and understanding our organisation

For a comprehensive overview of the selection criteria, please see the Position Description for more information.

Position Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible for engagement, applicants
must be Australian citizens
unless special approval is provided in exceptional circumstances. For example, applicants with permanent resident status who have applied for Australian citizenship may be considered for engagement.

Conditions of engagement including probation, health and character clearances (including police records check, Working with Children Check and security clearance) may apply to this position.

Terms

The Senior Evaluation Officer role may be offered as a part-time or full-time, ongoing or non-ongoing position at the APS 5 or 6 level. This will be with an annual salary range of between $85,039 to $105,910 (pro-rata for part-time) depending on the skills and experience of the successful candidate, plus 15.4% superannuation. Our salaries and conditions of employment are set out in our
Enterprise Agreement.

Application information

Please visit:
Work with us | Australian Institute of Family Studies
for full application requirements.

For your application to be considered, please:

1. Complete the application form.

2. Submit your Resume and a cover letter (maximum 2 pages) addressing the selection criteria as outlined on the position description.

Applications for this position close at
11.59 PM on 27 October 2025.

Contact:
Human Resources

Contact Phone
:

Contact Email
:

Position notes

AIFS is committed to providing an inclusive and diverse workplace. We encourage applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people with disability, mature age people, those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, people who identify as LGBTQIA+, and people with parenting and/or caring responsibilities.

We provide a collaborative and family-friendly work environment that supports the wellbeing and professional development of our diverse workforce. Benefits include workplace health and wellbeing initiatives and events, a hybrid flexible work arrangement policy, a good health promotion allowance and Christmas closedown period with no deduction from leave credits.