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New Delhi, India, India
Onsite
Not Available
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 India Country Office (ICO) plays a pivotal role in advancing the Foundation’s mission through strategic engagement with government, partners, and stakeholders across sectors. As one of the Foundation’s largest and most active country programs, ICO supports a broad portfolio spanning health, gender equality, agriculture, and digital transformation. We work closely with national and state-level institutions to pilot and scale innovations, strengthen systems, and deliver meaningful impact for the people of India and beyond.Your Role
The Program Officer, AI Innovations is a critical role at the intersection of technical innovation and programmatic impact. You will work across two interconnected areas: (1) strengthening India's AI innovation ecosystem through strategic partnerships, evaluation infrastructure, and policy enablement; and (2) accelerating applied AI adoption across ICO's program teams in health, education, agriculture, and economic opportunity.
This is a highly collaborative position involving close engagement with Program Strategy Teams (PSTs) in Seattle, government counterparts, and a broad set of innovation partners across India.
This is a limited-term position (LTE) for 18 months based in New Delhi, and reports to the Senior Manager, AI Innovations, ICO.
What You’ll Do
This is a highly collaborative role and will involve working with multiple PSTs in Seattle and teams across the ICO. In this role you will:
1. Deliver impact through ai innovation in Foundation priority domains
As Program Officer, AI Innovations, you will contribute to the application of AI innovation to scale impact in the Foundation’s priority domains, across health, economic opportunities, and education, with a strong focus on sectors enabling economic opportunities, i.e. agriculture, financial services, women’s economic collectives, rural development, among others.
Engage with ecosystem partners across academia, industry, and civil society to frame problems, match solutions, and identify promising deployment pathways to enable impact through the responsible use of AI.
Support establishment of collaborations and ongoing engagements with government mission mode programs and large-scale private sector initiatives to integrate existing and emerging deep tech partners.
Identify and test low-and middle-income countries-relevant AI innovations originating from India for applicability across program areas. These could include small and purpose specific models, multi-agent frameworks, alternative training and inference architectures, energy-efficient, and edge deployable hardware among others.
Develop and test scalable approaches to the ethical sourcing of diverse, representative data for AI innovation.
Enable domain-specific data-sharing structures, including sectoral data exchanges and DPI linkages, to support responsible AI development.
2. Operationalize rigorous, contextual testing & evaluation of AI solutions
Partner with our Monitoring, Learning, and Evaluation team to establish shared evaluation infrastructure - covering benchmarks, component and architecture assessments, product audits, and process assessments - to validate AI solutions prior to programmatic deployment.
Participate in development of sector-specific AI evaluation frameworks in Foundation priority domains.
Identify knowledge, data, or tooling gaps in the settings in which we work and propose pragmatic solutions.
3. Unlock scale in AI Use-cases by establishing policy and resourcing pathways
Support development of locally relevant standards, policy structures, and public procurement guidelines for AI, as well as bias and exclusion mitigation frameworks.
Work with partners and stakeholders to develop the capacity, structures, and funding mechanisms (procurement frameworks, Request for Proposals) required to enable AI solutions to move from state pilots to multi-state scale.
Translate successful prototypes into production: tests, observability, cost and latency monitoring, failure handling, and documentation that let other people trust and reuse them.
Collaborate directly with researchers, analysts, and program staff to translate fuzzy domain problems into shippable systems.
4.Maintain & expand collaborations with government & private sector
Deepen strategic partnerships with Central & State Government AI programs, focused on unblocking utilization of public AI resources.
Engage with central and state government stakeholders to articulate and refine problem statements, evaluate level of maturity and fit for AI innovation, and connect to sectoral experts for solution matching.
5.AI prototyping & internal capacity building
Working closely with ICO program teams across health, education, agriculture, and economic opportunity, you will rapidly prototype AI solutions, operationalize responsible AI practices, and build shared resources - including evaluation archetypes and an internal learning series - to enhance collective AI literacy and programmatic impact across the Foundation.
Your Experience
We are looking for candidates who represent a balance of technical competence and alignment with Foundation values.
Education: Bachelor's or master's degree (preferably in a Computer Science/Information Technology related field, or with a specialization in an allied field).
Practical digital & AI experience: a) At least 5 years of hands-on experience in digital & AI innovation, solutions architecture, product management or related domain, with accountability for end-to-end delivery (e.g. as a project leader or specialist) in live environments, with real users at scale. b) Demonstrable work, ideally through open-source contributions, in AI enabled software development, implementing AI solutions, Machine Learning/AI modeling, AI model evaluation, Large Language Model deployment, data wrangling or similar. c) Comfort making and defending architectural tradeoffs (managed service vs. self-host, fine-tune vs. prompt, agent vs. workflow) and mentoring others through them.
Collaborative mindset: Strong teamwork and adaptability, with experience working cross-functionally in complex environments.
Creative & innovative thinking: Beyond ‘thinking out of the box’ in a lab context, having a healthy relationship with real world ambiguity as a creative space rather than a source of friction. Being able to create and innovate intentionally and with rigor and explainability.
Excellent analytical thinking and communication skills: Demonstrated ability to clearly articulate technical concepts and recommendations to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Mission-driven ethos: Deep motivation to apply AI responsibly for public good, with alignment to equitable development and global health impact.
AI for evidence generation: Demonstrated ability to use AI effectively for research, data analysis, documentation and communication.
Ability to work in a matrixed and diverse work environment, with strong consensus building skills across both technical and non-technical audiences.
Other Attributes
Comfortable in a wide range of cultural, geographic and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behaviour with a diverse range of people and a deep commitment to development issues and high standards of personal integrity.
Willingness and ability to travel domestically and internationally for up to 30% of the time.
*Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.
Application deadline: 17 July 2026
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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
We’re committed to providing an inclusive and accessible hiring experience for all candidates. If you have a disability or medical condition and need an accommodation at any stage of the application or interview process—such as an ASL interpreter, alternative interview format, or physical accessibility support—we’re happy to help. Please contact HR@gatesfoundation.org with the position number and a brief description of your accommodation needs. Requests will be handled confidentially.
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.