Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving peoples health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all peopleespecially those with the fewest resourceshave access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life
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Senior Program Officer, Digital Public Infrastructure
- Job TypeFull Time
- QualificationBA/BSc/HND , MBA/MSc/MA
- Experience10 years
- LocationNairobi
- Job FieldProject Management 
Your Role
- We seek an experienced and driven Senior Program Officer, DPI, who will collaborate strategically to co-develop and co-manage one or more portfolios of grants and contracts requiring grant management skills, monitoring, and evaluation, to support the development and scaling of DPIs in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a topical expert, you will be a technical advisor to other foundation programs seeking to implement their solutions with a DPI approach. You will also work collaboratively with a global team to contribute to refine and track progress against the team’s strategic vision. The role will require working with a diverse range of internal colleagues/teams, technical and scientific partners, governments, multilateral institutions across a wide array of domains and expertise. International experience, strategy development, communications, partnership development, and deep technical expertise are crucial for success in this role.
- The postholder will be based in Nairobi, Kenya, and report to the Director, Economic Opportunity, Africa, in close collaboration with the Director, DPI.
What You'll Do
- The selected candidate will be responsible for the following tasks:
Co-develop, manage, and execute a portfolio of relationships, grants and contracts to advance DPIs within the context of a globally matrixed team, contributing to economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Apply a rapid ‘risk-adjusted’ approach to develop a portfolio-level strategy that supports a) the testing and development of promising DPIs; b) the scaling of proven DPIs and; c) extracts learnings that can benefit internal and external stakeholders. Ensure the strategy is aligned to the overall team goals.
- Negotiate, execute, and manage a complex portfolio of grants or performance-based contracts. Review letters of inquiry and grant proposals and provide clear, concise, and insightfully written analyses and recommendations for funding.
- Consult with internal program co-owners, grantees, and other partners to maximize project impact and ensure grants are meeting strategy goals; this may include conducting site visits, providing operational guidance, and convening meetings of key stakeholders.
- Co-develop, manage, resource, and implement a program that aligns with foundation strategy and is operationally integrated with other foundation programs across the matrix; contribute to the design of new strategies, collaborations, and implementation plans to ensure long-term sustainability and impact.
- Advise the foundation leadership on areas related to your expertise, including writing and producing briefings, reports, updates, and other materials.
Represent the foundation to key program-related external constituencies, as appropriate, on committees related to the area of expertise and responsibilities of the position.
- In alignment with other internal program teams, work with partner organizations (e.g., technical experts, researchers, etc.) and key government partners to support data-driven decision making and long-term capacity building efforts on inclusive digital strategy within government.
- Develop anchor partners for digital collaborations and ecosystem development, both at the national level and in foundation priority states within countries, while staying aligned with the overall strategy.
- Serve as a point of contact on issues for internal and external collaborators, working within the complex matrix-style organization across the foundation.
Provide technical expertise to other foundation programs seeking to implement digital strategies aligned to a DPI approach.
- Provide input and review on all to other foundation teams and programmatic focus areas interested in implementing DPI.
- Lead the intake process, provide expertise on decisions related to digital public goods and the DPI approach, technical architecture of solutions, understanding of open source solutions within the DPI stack.
- Manage a bench of subject matter experts that can provide deeper technical assessment.
Contribute to building a cohesive, high-impact, cross-foundation team focused on innovation and scaling of inclusive DPI in priority geographies and ensuring sustainability of the supporting ecosystem.
- Model the values and practices of a culture that promotes inclusivity, rigor, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
- Work closely with both the Seattle-based DPI team and the regional and country teams to advance shared work
- Other duties as assigned.
Your Experience
- We are looking for a recognized global professional with deep expertise about DPIs in low-and middle-income countries. Additional knowledge and skills include:
- Advanced degree required with 10+ years of demonstrated experience in a senior technical advisory role in Africa, ideally for tech companies, government, consultancy, think tanks, NGOs or similar.
- Depth of technical, economic, and political understanding of the DPI ecosystem in Africa and how it is evolving in priority geographies - including key trends, barriers, and opportunities to test high impact use cases for under-resourced and underserved populations.
- Depth of knowledge of low-and-middle income contexts, as well as the experience of historically marginalized groups (e.g. women, poor, rural).
- Experience with social impact investing and an eye towards impact for marginalized groups, scale, and sustainability.
- Can collaborate effectively and with diplomacy to produce high-quality, high-impact outputs in a matrixed organization.
- Excellent strategic thinker and strategy development experience.
- Experience managing grant portfolios and an understanding of the role of donors in advancing DPI efforts, is desirable.
- Demonstrated ability to organize/prioritize work and meet deadlines within a fast-paced environment with multiple and competing demands.
- An innovative thinker who is hands-on and willing to go as deep or broad as necessary to achieve outcomes.
- Demonstrated ability to question and challenge colleagues in a constructive manner.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English, able to effectively synthesize information to reach diverse audiences and create consensus.
Method of Application Interested and qualified? Go to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on gatesfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com to apply
