Strategic Education Grants & Investments Officer

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Washington; On-site; USD 190,000 - 295,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Foundation benefits

Job summary

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is seeking a strategic program leader to manage a portfolio of grants and contracts aimed at improving student outcomes. You will design and scale innovative education investments, collaborate with researchers, schools, districts, and partners, and ensure affordable, high-quality solutions.

This 11-month limited-term opportunity offers foundation benefits and the chance to influence education policy and practice at scale.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent demonstrated experience.
• Significant experience leading complex initiatives with budget responsibility.
• Experience with grant design/development and management with an investor’s approach.
• Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located.

Responsibilities

• Negotiate and manage a complex portfolio of program-related grants and contracts that advance solutions from early-stage development, validation, commercialization, and implementation at scale.
• Support the development and validation of new models, tools, platforms, and solutions that advance student outcomes and meet key criteria of affordability, usability, and other dimensions of quality.
• Design investments to improve availability and transparency of market information around digital content and tools that ensure that key partners have access to up-to-date information on product quality, pricing, and use cases.
• Identify gaps in current digital product availability and quality, develop and manage investment mechanisms to catalyze product development and improvement.
• Cultivate an active ecosystem of entrepreneurial product developers, ensure strong feedback loops between innovative practitioners, researchers, and the developer community.
• Evaluate and support the development of business models for organizations and companies that design and deliver solutions that serve the needs of the field in a scalable and sustainable manner.
• Foster a user-centered design approaches to help understand incentives for and needs of end users, institutional decision makers, practitioners, developers, distributors, funders, and policy makers in ways that improve the impact of the priority solutions.
• Help catalyze additional sources of capital, including philanthropic, public, and private funding that contribute to the scaling of innovation and the growth and the sustainability of proven solutions.
• Manage collaborative and trusting partner relationships in ways that ensure productive feedback loops between partners and the foundation around shared goals.
• Provide technical guidance and insights to colleagues cross the U.S. program on research and development related topics in education.
• Review letters of inquiry and grant proposals and provide clear, concise, and insightful written analyses and recommendations for funding.
• Consult with grantees and other partners to improve impact of projects and ensure grants are meeting strategy goals.
• Manage and implement a program that aligns with foundation strategy and is operationally integrated with other foundation programs.
• Contribute to the design of new strategies, collaborations, and implementation plans to ensure long-term sustainability and impact.
• Represent the foundation to key program-related external Constituencies, as appropriate, on committees related to area of expertise and responsibilities of the position.
• Support inclusive culture through modeling behaviors and actions; raise issues in a timely fashion to appropriate colleagues.

Skills

Grant management

Stakeholder engagement

Education policy

Research & evaluation

Fundraising strategy

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent demonstrated experience

Tools

Grant management software

Job description

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is seeking a strategic program leader to manage a portfolio of grants and contracts aimed at improving student outcomes. You will design and scale innovative education investments, collaborate with researchers, schools, districts, and partners, and ensure affordable, high-quality solutions.

This 11-month limited-term opportunity offers foundation benefits and the chance to influence education policy and practice at scale.