Senior Program Officer, Evidence for Systems Improvement (11-month LTE*)

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 Advocacy & System Improvement team operates as an engine for sustainable impact at scale within US Program. The role of this team is not to develop or deliver solutions, but to enable systems to adopt and sustain effective practices, and to change how systems operate so those practices become standard, scalable, and durable. In this context, the solutions our colleagues develop and deliver are more likely to reach more learners, driving collective progress toward our shared goals.

Within this team, the Assessment Initiative works to advance the field’s capacity to generate credible, actionable evidence of student learning particularly for learners traditionally furthest from opportunity. The Initiative invests across two interconnected areas of work: upstream innovation in assessment capabilities, AI interpretation methodology, and the measurement science that makes AI-mediated assessment trustworthy; and the evidence infrastructure, tools, and field practices that enable schools and systems to act on that evidence in time to accelerate the pace of improvement for students.

Read more about our updated strategy here: https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/documents/usprogramoverview.pdf

Application Deadline: Friday, October 30, 2026

Your Role
You are responsible for advancing the foundation’s strategy to make evidence-driven improvement a durable practice in schools and systems investing in the broader measures of system quality, the feedback loops that surface what’s working, and the field conditions that enable institutions to act on evidence in ways that accelerate the pace of improvement, especially for systems serving students furthest from opportunity.

 

You develop and manage a portfolio of investments spanning quality frameworks for school improvement planning, AI-enabled tools that route the right signals to the right actors, and the decision routines that help schools get smarter about their improvement efforts over time. You have deep expertise in education systems, accountability, and the practice and policy landscape of school improvement, with the field credibility to work alongside state leaders, networks, and intermediaries in building the evidence infrastructure that drives sustained, faster institutional change.

*This is an 11-month limited-term opportunity with Foundation benefits. Please note that relocation assistance is not available for this position.

What You'll Do

• Develop and manage a portfolio of investments in school improvement evidence infrastructure spanning quality frameworks, AI-enabled tools, and exemplar documentation ensuring investments are coherent across the arc from evidence generation to institutional action, with an explicit focus on accelerating the pace of improvement for systems serving students furthest from opportunity.

• Advance the field’s orientation toward a richer, more equity-relevant set of measures including non-academic conditions, leading indicators, and the education-to-workforce indicators that give institutions a fuller picture of whether students are on track and invest in the frameworks and tools that help systems act on those measures rather than defaulting to lagging compliance signals.

• Lead development and stewardship of a national school improvement planning quality framework defining what a genuine improvement artifact looks like distinct from a compliance document and invest in the AI-enabled tools and technical assistance partnerships that make that standard achievable within existing state and district systems.

• Invest in AI-enabled tools that surface the right evidence signals to the right actors at the right time including early warning systems that identify school and student risk before formal accountability triggers, and workflow tools that route student-level signals into the team routines where decisions get made enabling systems to act sooner and more precisely.

• Build the evidence infrastructure for decision routines that get smarter over time investing in the frameworks, tools, and feedback mechanisms that help schools track whether their intervention choices are becoming more precise cycle over cycle, and whether the right students are receiving the right support.

• Advance trust-by-design as a non-negotiable standard across all investments ensuring that AI-enabled tools include evidence provenance, interpretability, and purpose-clarity requirements that build rather than erode educator, student, and community confidence in the evidence systems meant to serve them.

• Cultivate and sustain relationships with state chiefs, district leaders, improvement networks, and intermediaries, building the field credibility and partnership infrastructure needed to advance shared frameworks and drive adoption at scale particularly in systems with the highest concentrations of students furthest from opportunity.

• Identify, document, and disseminate exemplar states and districts where evidence-driven improvement is demonstrably accelerating codifying practices as public goods that build field belief that faster, more equitable improvement is achievable in contexts like theirs.

• Apply a rigorous equity lens across all investment areas, ensuring that evidence frameworks, AI tools, and improvement planning investments advance rather than compound inequities for learners who are Black, Latino, from low-income backgrounds, or who have been historically underserved by school improvement systems.

• Represent the foundation externally as a credible voice on evidence for school improvement, engaging with state accountability networks, research partners, technical assistance providers, and co-founders to advance shared standards and catalyze additional investment in the field.

• Synthesize portfolio learnings and strategic insights for foundation leadership and division colleagues, connecting investment-level evidence to the broader theory of action with clarity and a systems-level perspective.

• Support inclusive culture through modeling behaviors and actions; escalate issues in a timely fashion to appropriate stakeholders.

Your Experience

• An Advanced degree or equivalent demonstrated experience preferably in education policy, education systems, school improvement, or a related field.

• Significant experience developing and managing complex investment portfolios or field-level initiatives with demonstrated impact at the state, district, or network level.

• Mastery level knowledge of K-12 education systems, school improvement policy and practice, and the accountability landscape, with deep fluency in how evidence frameworks, planning tools, and decision routines function within state and district systems.

• Significant experience working with or alongside state education agencies, district leaders, and improvement intermediaries, with established field credibility and a track record of advancing shared frameworks or improvement-oriented data use at scale.

• Significant experience with AI-enabled tools and data systems in education contexts, with the ability to engage credibly with product developers, technical assistance providers, and state data leaders on both the technical and practice-change dimensions of implementation.

• Demonstrated ability to build and sustain multi-stakeholder coalitions across researchers, state and district partners, intermediary networks, and advocacy organizations, with strong informal influence and relationship-building skills in complex, matrixed environments.

• Demonstrated commitment to equity-centered approaches to school improvement and evidence use, with experience advancing fair and effective outcomes for learners traditionally furthest from opportunity.

**Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located. The Foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H-1B, O-1, L-1,  E, OPT, STEM-OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.).

The salary range for this role is $190,100 to $294,700 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle, WA and Washington D.C., where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $209,100 to $324,100 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.

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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.