Gates Foundation
Senior Advisor, AI Strategy & Ecosystem Partnerships
Gates Foundation, Seattle, Washington, us, 98127
Senior Advisor, AI Strategy & Ecosystem Partnerships
Join to apply for the
Senior Advisor, AI Strategy & Ecosystem Partnerships
role at
Gates 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, including comprehensive medical, dental, vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation‑paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in employee communities.
Team & Mission The Global Health team harnesses technological advancements to tackle health challenges in low‑and‑middle‑income countries. The Foundation’s mission is to use AI to reduce the digital gap in LMICs, focusing on ethical, fair use of AI in health, education, and agriculture. The AI Taskforce leads cross‑functional AI initiatives, developing strategy, supporting workstreams, advising Program Strategy Teams, and informing foundation investments in AI.
Your Role The Senior Advisor will provide strategic guidance on the Foundation’s AI agenda and build high‑trust, high‑impact relationships with leading technology companies (Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta). Translate modern software/cloud capabilities and new AI tooling into ethical, cost‑effective programs that improve outcomes for underserved and disadvantaged populations, especially in LMICs.
Responsibilities
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.
Serve as the primary relationship owner with senior counterparts at Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta.
Negotiate and manage MOUs covering model/compute credits, technical enablement, evaluation/red‑team support, pricing, data safeguards, and social‑impact pilots.
Advise cross‑functional foundation workstreams (program/engineering, security, legal, communications, country offices) and clear blockers quickly.
Define vendor‑agnostic reference architectures for data ingestion, retrieval, privacy‑preserving analytics, observability/telemetry, and human‑in‑the‑loop workflows tailored to LMIC constraints.
Advise on technical due diligence and RFPs for initiatives such as virtual doctor for self‑care in HIV and pregnancy.
Embed equity‑by‑design practices: participatory/co‑design with local partners, accessibility, language inclusion, harm minimization, safety incident response, data minimization, sovereignty, and transparent documentation.
Ensure partner engagements include guardrails on data use, consent, and privacy; evaluate systems for safety and fairness across subgroups.
Turn ambiguous opportunities into scoped programs with OKRs, timelines, budgets, and measurable outcomes (e.g., cost per successful self‑care episode, safety incident rate).
Publish quarterly ecosystem scorecards and an annual “State of AI for Impact” brief.
Craft board‑ready narratives and external remarks; represent the Foundation in senior forums with AI labs, multilaterals, and governments.
Coach internal teams on partner management and technical topics; model collaborative, low‑ego engagement.
Maintain strict independence in vendor evaluations; manage disclosures and recusals as needed.
Qualifications
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 and SQL, 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.
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, government data).
Track record with localization and accessibility at scale (multilingual, low‑resource environments).
Open‑source/community engagement (tooling, standards, or deployments).
Salary The salary range for this role is $328,400 to $509,000 USD. For Seattle and Washington D.C. locations, the range is $358,000 to $554,800 USD.
Hiring Requirements Employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Candidate Accommodations For disability accommodations during 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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Senior Advisor, AI Strategy & Ecosystem Partnerships
role at
Gates 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, including comprehensive medical, dental, vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation‑paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in employee communities.
Team & Mission The Global Health team harnesses technological advancements to tackle health challenges in low‑and‑middle‑income countries. The Foundation’s mission is to use AI to reduce the digital gap in LMICs, focusing on ethical, fair use of AI in health, education, and agriculture. The AI Taskforce leads cross‑functional AI initiatives, developing strategy, supporting workstreams, advising Program Strategy Teams, and informing foundation investments in AI.
Your Role The Senior Advisor will provide strategic guidance on the Foundation’s AI agenda and build high‑trust, high‑impact relationships with leading technology companies (Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta). Translate modern software/cloud capabilities and new AI tooling into ethical, cost‑effective programs that improve outcomes for underserved and disadvantaged populations, especially in LMICs.
Responsibilities
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.
Serve as the primary relationship owner with senior counterparts at Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta.
Negotiate and manage MOUs covering model/compute credits, technical enablement, evaluation/red‑team support, pricing, data safeguards, and social‑impact pilots.
Advise cross‑functional foundation workstreams (program/engineering, security, legal, communications, country offices) and clear blockers quickly.
Define vendor‑agnostic reference architectures for data ingestion, retrieval, privacy‑preserving analytics, observability/telemetry, and human‑in‑the‑loop workflows tailored to LMIC constraints.
Advise on technical due diligence and RFPs for initiatives such as virtual doctor for self‑care in HIV and pregnancy.
Embed equity‑by‑design practices: participatory/co‑design with local partners, accessibility, language inclusion, harm minimization, safety incident response, data minimization, sovereignty, and transparent documentation.
Ensure partner engagements include guardrails on data use, consent, and privacy; evaluate systems for safety and fairness across subgroups.
Turn ambiguous opportunities into scoped programs with OKRs, timelines, budgets, and measurable outcomes (e.g., cost per successful self‑care episode, safety incident rate).
Publish quarterly ecosystem scorecards and an annual “State of AI for Impact” brief.
Craft board‑ready narratives and external remarks; represent the Foundation in senior forums with AI labs, multilaterals, and governments.
Coach internal teams on partner management and technical topics; model collaborative, low‑ego engagement.
Maintain strict independence in vendor evaluations; manage disclosures and recusals as needed.
Qualifications
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 and SQL, 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.
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, government data).
Track record with localization and accessibility at scale (multilingual, low‑resource environments).
Open‑source/community engagement (tooling, standards, or deployments).
Salary The salary range for this role is $328,400 to $509,000 USD. For Seattle and Washington D.C. locations, the range is $358,000 to $554,800 USD.
Hiring Requirements Employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Candidate Accommodations For disability accommodations during 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.
#J-18808-Ljbffr