Senior Program Officer, Digital Public Infrastructure Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Experience: 0 to 3 Years Seattle, United States of America Apply By: 20-01-2025

The 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 interest 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 partners 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/Machine Learning models.

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 policies and technologies, focusing on delivering impact for marginalized and vulnerable populations through use cases that address inequities, inefficiencies, and inconsistencies in policy implementation through digital platforms.

Your work will drive the adoption of innovative digital identity technologies while proactively mitigating risks and overcoming barriers to access, adoption, and 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 strive to build balanced, adaptable, and future-ready digital technologies that improve delivery of products and services for low-income populations by lowering costs, growing efficiencies, and opening up 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 solutions, focusing on increasing impact through use cases. Align these strategies with broader organizational goals and emerging trends in digital public infrastructure.
• Make and lead 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.
• Scale digital identity Systems: Lead efforts to scale and implement digital identity solutions 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.
• Drive innovation: Identify and implement new use cases and emerging technologies that advance digital identity systems’ impact, scalability, and adaptability.
• Build ecosystems: Cultivate partnerships to strengthen global and local ecosystems for digital identity, emphasizing innovation, collaboration, and resilience.
• Advance user-centric solutions: Test, demonstrate, seed, and scale technologies designed with end users in mind, prioritizing inclusivity, accessibility, and responsiveness to local contexts.
• Measure and optimize Impact: Design and implement metrics to assess the societal and economic impacts of digital identity ensuring their continuous refinement and alignment with strategic goals.
• Engage partners: Build and maintain relationships with governments, academia, civil society, multilateral organizations, and private sector innovators to co-develop 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.

Your Experience:

• Advanced Degree: A graduate degree or equivalent experience in a relevant field such as engineering, computer science, and/or physical sciences that enables a deeply technical understanding of digital technologies and their deployments, risks, economics, policy, and societal implications is required.
• Technology scaling expertise: Experience in designing, prototyping, scaling, and deploying digital systems, with a strong emphasis on open-source platforms, open standards and protocols, cloud infrastructure, and AI/ML technologies. Private sector experience in leading large teams, projects, systems development and deployment efforts is preferred.
• Critical Thinking: Ability to conceptualize, create, and implement strategies in complex, dynamic environments, integrating risk mitigation and sustainability.
• Global Perspective: Professional or lived experience in low-income (LIC) and lower-middle-income countries (LMIC) is strongly preferred, with a nuanced understanding of their unique challenges and opportunities.
• Cybersecurity and Privacy: Demonstrated knowledge of cybersecurity and privacy technologies, and governance standard processes in digital infrastructure implementation.
• Partnership Development: Shown success in building and leading 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.
• Travel: Ability to travel up to 30% of time, both domestic and international
• Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.

Source: https://gatesfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Gates/job/Seattle-WA/Senior-Officer–Digital-Public-Infrastructure–DPI-_B020728