The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The Global Health team harnesses technological advancements to tackle health challenges in low- and middle-income countries. We aim to address significant issues that lack adequate attention and resources. Our approach involves enhancing existing tool delivery and investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, digital health strategies, and advanced data analytics.

The Foundation's mission is to use the power of AI to reduce the digital gap, focusing on the ethical and fair use of AI to help low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). As Large Language Models become more advanced, we are committed to unleashing AI’s untapped potential to create development solutions in LMIC. Our initiatives are diverse, not only creating new applications for AI in decision support and chatbot interventions but also covering health, education, and agriculture sectors. Building on the success of proof-of-concept projects, we aim to make sure that the progress of AI reaches and benefits all segments of the population.

The AI Taskforce is a key, cross-functional group that leads and supports various AI initiatives. It is responsible for:

1) developing a cross-foundational AI strategy.

2) supporting the implementation of different AI workstreams.

3) playing an advisory role to Program Strategy Teams (PSTs) on their AI efforts and;

4) informing large foundation investments in AI.

This team plays an essential role in ensuring AI integration and success across our organizational framework.

Your Role

The Senior Advisor, AI Strategy & Ecosystem Partnerships will provide strategic guidance on the Foundation’s AI agenda and build high-trust, high-impact relationships with leading technology companies (including Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta). Translate modern software/cloud capabilities and the best of new AI tooling into ethical, cost-effective programs that improve outcomes for underserved and disadvantaged populations, especially in LMICs (e.g., virtual doctor/self-care support for PLHIV and during pregnancy).

What You’ll Do

Strategy advisor to leadership

• Brief the President and Chair on platform choices, partner roadmaps, and where AI-enabled software can deliver outsized impact across health, growth & opportunity, education, and government data use.
• Produce crisp decision memos with trade-offs (build/buy/partner), budget implications, risks, and success metrics; run quarterly strategy refreshes.

Ecosystem partnerships

• Serve as the primary relationship owner with senior counterparts at Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta.
• Negotiate/manage MOUs covering model/compute credits, technical enablement, support for evaluations/red-teaming, pricing, data safeguards, and social-impact pilots.
• Advise cross-functional Foundation workstreams (program/ENG, security, legal, comms, country offices) and clear blockers quickly.

Technical leadership (software/cloud first)

• Define vendor-agnostic reference architectures for data ingestion, retrieval, privacy-preserving analytics, observability/telemetry, and human-in-the-loop workflows tailored to LMIC constraints (low bandwidth, intermittent connectivity, cost ceilings, localization).
• Advise on technical due diligence and RFPs; pathways for initiatives like the virtual doctor for self-care in HIV and pregnancy.

Ethical AI for underserved populations

• Embed equity-by-design practices: participatory/co-design with local partners, accessibility and language inclusion, harm minimization, safety incident response, data minimization/sovereignty, and transparent documentation.
• Ensure partner engagements include clear guardrails on data use, consent, and privacy; ensure systems are evaluated for benefit, safety, and fairness across subgroups.

Program execution & measurement

• Turn ambiguous opportunities into scoped programs with OKRs, timelines, budgets, and measurable outcomes (e.g., cost per successful self-care episode, time-to-advice, safety incident rate, equitable performance across languages/demographics).
• Publish quarterly ecosystem scorecards and an annual “State of AI for Impact” brief.

Communication & influence

• Craft board-ready narratives and external remarks; represent the Foundation in senior forums with AI labs/clouds, multilaterals, and governments.
• Coach internal teams on partner management and technical topics; model collaborative, low-ego engagement.

Integrity & conflict-of-interest management

• Maintain strict independence in vendor evaluations; manage disclosures/recusals as needed; codify public-benefit alignment principles in agreements.

Your Experience

• 15+ years as a senior Technical Leader (or equivalent Principal/Director/VP-level program leader) delivering large, multi-team software/digital/cloud programs.
• Deep fluency with cloud platforms (Azure/GCP/AWS), APIs, data platforms, security/privacy controls, observability, and productization at scale.
• Demonstrated success owning executive-level, partner-facing relationships and complex agreements across product, engineering, legal, and security.
• Data-savvy and metrics-driven: comfortable defining instrumentation, reading dashboards/SQL-level insight, and making decisions from evidence.
• Excellent writing and executive presence; able to brief the Chair and senior external leaders.
• AI enthusiasm and literacy—eager to apply modern AI tools safely and pragmatically (direct AI research experience not required).
• Prior experience inside an AI lab or major cloud provider or building evaluation/guardrail pipelines.
• Experience in LMIC settings, public sector, or regulated domains (health, education, gov data).
• Track record with localization and accessibility at scale (multilingual, low-resource environments).
• Open-source/community engagement (tooling, standards, or deployments).

#LI-PA1

The salary range for this role is $328,400 to $509,000 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C., where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $358,000 to $554,800 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hires salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.

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