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Senior Officer, Strategy & Implementation Management (12 month LTE)

Gates Foundation
Full-time
On-site
Seattle, WA United States of America

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 foundation’s US Program (USP) works to ensure that people navigating US education systems and job markets can develop the knowledge, skills, and agency needed to thrive in their communities such that race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status are no longer predictors of educational attainment and economic mobility and security.

The USP Office of the President (OOP) endeavors to promote collective ownership and integration of our work, transparency, leadership, intellectual dialogue, and continuous learning and improvement.

Within USP OOP, a centralized Strategy, Planning, and Management team operates to provide strategy, business, and operations support to multiple US program strategy teams and cross-cutting functions. Our mission is to:

Ensure optimal impact of division programs and operations, and high standards of stewardship through performance management and the strategic allocation of resources.

Deliver division-wide support to program teams to bolster capacity and drive the implementation and associated change management of programmatic and operational initiatives.

Partner with program teams to ensure alignment of strategic priorities (programmatic and operational) and actively establish understanding of USP progress and learning across USP and foundation leadership.

Your Role

You are responsible for supporting the strategic and operational aspects of cross-divisional initiatives and division priorities that advance our 2045 ambitions. This includes support of strategic planning, annual planning and budgeting, initiative pipeline and portfolio management, measurement and evaluation, business analysis, and the coordination of strategies across the foundation. You play a central role in enabling alignment and integration across divisions—driving coherence, surfacing commonalities, and ensuring shared accountability for outcomes.

You also support the foundation’s leadership in monitoring, reporting, and adapting strategies tied to our long-term ambitions. In this role, you will look across program strategy teams—to surface insights that are not visible when looking at each portfolio in isolation. You’ll help us compare investments on different timelines, at different stages of maturity, and with different metrics of success, building frameworks that enable more coherent decision-making at the division level. Your focus may include cross-divisional planning and analysis, facilitation of strategic decision-making, development of frameworks for outcomes and progress measurement, and ongoing alignment of initiatives to our 2045 goals. In doing so, you help ensure that the foundation’s collective efforts are coordinated, adaptive, and ground-breaking.

*This position is a limited-term position for 12 months. Relocation will not be provided.

What You’ll Do

  • Support cross-divisional planning and strategy processes (annual planning, strategy reviews, financial/operational cycles, and progress tracking) to align with division priorities and goals.

  • Design and lead special initiatives and division portfolios with clear goals and indicators of progress; ensure execution, learning, and adaptation.

  • Support decision-making by developing tools, dashboards, and analyses that surface insights, track performance, and enable leadership to make informed, timely choices. Provide scenario analyses and decision trees that help leadership allocate resources more strategically.

  • Assess current and emerging education technologies, models, and players for usability, scalability, and strategic fit. Translate findings into clear implications for leadership choices, resource allocation, and investment strategies.

  • Advise and partner with leadership to strengthen strategy, planning, and operational processes, ensuring alignment, accountability, and collaboration across divisions.

  • Identify and elevate cross-cutting insights, commonalities, and opportunities for shared learning and coherence across teams and initiatives.

  • Serve as a connector between teams to ensure shared understanding of strategic goals, alignment of outcomes, and coordination of planning and assessment cycles across divisions.

  • Facilitate process improvements and change management to address inefficiencies, improve staff productivity, and promote effective use of tools and systems.

  • Lead and support high-profile initiatives across the foundation, including executive/stakeholder engagement, project management, and outcome delivery.

  • Ensure measurement, learning, and evaluation objectives are achieved and embedded in strategy execution.

  • Foster an inclusive culture, modeling collaboration, supporting equity, and surfacing issues for resolution.

Your Experience

  • A Bachelor’s degree or equivalent demonstrated experience. Master’s preferred.

  • Strategic Leadership & Planning: Demonstrated mastery in strategy development, portfolio management, and execution planning for complex initiatives.

  • Decision-Making & Framing: Expert at structuring ambiguity and framing complex choices into clear, actionable decisions. Skilled at surfacing trade-offs, clarifying risks and implications, and providing decision-ready insights that align stakeholders around priorities, resources, and equity outcomes.

  • Market & Technology Evaluation: Skilled at evaluating education technology products and models—whether surfaced by teams or emerging in the market. Able to assess usability, scalability, and strategic fit, and translate findings into clear implications for leadership decisions and philanthropic investments. Technology investor experience a plus

  • Project & Change Management: Proven ability to lead cross-functional and cross-divisional initiatives, redesign business processes, and drive change management to improve efficiency and impact.

  • Partnerships & Collaboration: Track record of building and managing strong internal and external partnerships, navigating conflict, and fostering consensus to advance shared goals.

  • Communication & Influence: Exceptional written and verbal skills, with the ability to synthesize complexity, develop decision-useful insights, and engage senior leaders effectively.

  • Equity & Systems Change: Deep commitment to advancing equity through strategy and systems-level work, ensuring diverse perspectives and outcomes are centered

*Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.

#LI-SC2

The salary range for this role is $169,700 to $254,500 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 $185,500 to $277,400 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.