Senior Program Officer, Public Goods, Digital Public Infrastructure

Position description

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 Growth & Opportunity (GGO) division works to catalyze sustainable and transformative socio-economic change. In the face of inequities and market failures, GGO seeks to realize the potential of untapped markets, and ensure that economic and social benefits reach everyone.

We focus on the areas of Agricultural Development; Digital Public Infrastructure; Inclusive Financial Services; Global Education, Nutrition, and Water, Sanitation & Hygiene.

We seek solutions that are sustainable, transformative, and inclusive with an eye toward applying technological innovations as well as data evidence to drive change in the world’s developing countries. T

he Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) team in GGO is about enabling an innovation, scaling, and technology-led model for digital transformation that is inclusive, equitable, collaborative and helps accelerate the sustainable development goals.

While DPI is an evolving concept, there is a growing consensus on it being a combination of (i) foundational, modular, interoperable, reusable, and scalable digital building blocks that enable creation of technologies for public benefit such as identity, payments, and trusted data-sharing; (ii) enabling governance, regulations, and safeguards to ensure competitive markets and mitigate risks; and (iii) a community of public, private, academic, and civil society stakeholders working together to drive innovation, inclusion, and large scale impact through user-centric services and products. Several key foundational categories of DPI include identifiers, registries, electronic signatures, consent mechanisms, and AI/ML models.

Duties

* This position is based in our headquarters in Seattle, WA. Domestic or international relocation assistance is available for US work-authorized candidates not currently residing in Seattle, WA.

Your Role

As the Senior Program Officer (SPO) on the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) team, you will report to the Deputy Director, DPI Scaling and Innovation, and be based in our Seattle, WA office.

In this role, you will lead the global scaling and evolution of digital identity technologies, focusing on delivering impact for marginalized and vulnerable populations through digital infrastructure platforms based on open-source and open-standards principles.

Your work will drive the adoption of pioneering digital identity technologies while proactively mitigating risks and overcoming barriers to access, adoption, and meaningful use.

A core aspect of your role will be advancing open ecosystems – including open-source code, standards, specifications, and protocols – to foster the development of digital public goods. These efforts will aim to create sustainable, adaptable, and future-ready digital technologies that improve delivery of products and services for low-income populations by lowering costs, increasing efficiencies, and opening new opportunities.

You will collaborate closely with internal teams, governments, academia, multilateral organizations, civil society, and private sector partners to build a robust, inclusive ecosystem for digital identity solutions. This includes advancing privacy and security technologies to safeguard population-scale digital infrastructure while building capacity in low-resource geographies for robust deployments. By enabling responsible deployment of these technologies, you will help unlock their potential to drive societal impact at scale.

What You’ll Do

Develop and execute strategy:

Design and implement global strategies to scale digital identity technologies, focusing on increasing impact through use cases. Align these strategies with broader organizational goals and emerging trends in digital public infrastructure.

Scale digital identity Systems:

Lead efforts to scale and implement open-source and open-standard digital identity-based use cases that are inclusive, secure, and accessible for low-income, marginalized, and vulnerable populations.

Promote digital public goods and sustainability:

Champion the adoption of open-source solutions and governance models that ensure long-term sustainability, security, and global interoperability.

Mitigate risks:

Develop strategies to increase the privacy and security of digital infrastructure, strengthen cybersecurity preparedness in low-resource environments, and address potential risks of exclusion, misuse, and wasteful digital investments.

Make and manage investments:

Develop a portfolio of grants, contracts, and other investments to achieve the programmatic goals of the DPI team’s strategy and work with partners to help ensure their success in delivering impact outcomes through these investments.

Consult with grantees and other partners:

Help improve project impact and ensure grants are meeting strategy goals; this may include conducting site visits, providing operational guidance, and convening meetings of key partners.

Drive innovation:

Identify and implement new use cases and emerging technologies that advance digital identity systems’ impact, scalability, and adaptability.

Build ecosystems for sustainability:

Foster partnerships to strengthen global and local ecosystems for digital identity, emphasizing innovation, collaboration, and resilience.

Advance user-centric solutions:

Test, demonstrate, seed, and scale digital technologies designed with end users in mind, prioritizing inclusivity, accessibility, and responsiveness to local contexts.

Engage collaborators:

Build and manage relationships with governments, academia, civil society, multilateral organizations, and private sector innovators to co-develop impactful solutions and drive global adoption of open digital ecosystems.

Build Capacity:

Strengthen the capabilities of governments, local institutions, and organizations in low-resource geographies by providing technical assistance, fostering knowledge transfer, and supporting the development of local expertise to sustain and evolve digital identity systems.

Travel:

Ability to travel up to 30% of time, both domestic and international

Qualifications

Your Experience

• Advanced degree: A graduate degree in a relevant field such as engineering, computer science, and/or physical sciences that enables a deep technical understanding of digital technologies and their deployments, risks, economics, policy, and societal implications is required. This is a highly technical role and requires a strong scientific foundation.
• Technology scaling expertise: Proven experience in designing, prototyping, scaling, and deploying digital systems, with a strong emphasis on open-source platforms, open standards and protocols, cloud infrastructure, deployment of and AI/ML technologies. Private sector experience in leading large teams, projects, systems development and deployment efforts is highly preferred.
• Global perspective: Professional or lived experience in low-income and lower-middle-income countries (ideally South/Southeast Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa) is strongly preferred, with a nuanced understanding of their unique challenges and opportunities.
• Strategic thinking: Ability to conceptualize, create, and implement strategies in complex, dynamic environments, integrating risk mitigation and sustainability.
• Cybersecurity and privacy: Demonstrated knowledge of cybersecurity and privacy technologies, and architecture best practices in digital infrastructure implementation.
• Partnership development: Proven success in building and managing partnerships across diverse collaborator groups, including governments, multilateral institutions, and private sector players.
• Impact Orientation: Strong commitment to equity, sustainability, and reducing barriers for underserved populations.
• Leadership and collaboration: Ability to work in a matrixed organization and lead cross-functional teams to deliver high-impact, user-centered solutions.
• Communication skills: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex concepts to diverse audiences and build consensus.

Application instructions

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