The Gates Foundation is the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. The K-12 Teaching and Learning team works to ensure that all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status, have access to high-quality instructional materials and supports that improve learning outcomes. The team advances a strategy centered on AI-enabled full-stack solutions that combine rigorous curriculum with intelligent tutoring and personalized learning.
The Senior Program Officer leads the foundation's investments to build and scale modern mathematics curriculum for high school students, leading to equitable access and adoption across the country. This includes supporting the development and sustainable scaling of advanced math course options such as data science, statistics, and quantitative reasoning. The role also involves working with multiple partners and philanthropists to steward a multi-phase initiative to modernize the core high school math sequence, targeting more than one million students annually by 2035.
Key responsibilities:
- Work with potential and current grantees in grant making and managing.
- Lead execution of an initiative to modernize high school math, including publisher and field engagement on modern expectations for Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II, with clear milestones, progress tracking, and early risk surfacing.
- Manage investments with standards and assessment partners to develop a field-endorsed set of prioritized high school math expectations, building consensus among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.
- Execute a tiered engagement strategy through external partners with national reach to advance state standards modernization and curriculum reform at scale.
- Design and lead a publisher engagement strategy, influencing the business models, incentive structures, and product roadmaps of major K-12 publishers.
- Develop a campaign approach and expand a co-funder coalition of philanthropic, public, and private partners.
- Synthesize complex field intelligence on standards, state policy, publisher dynamics, and co-funder landscapes into clear insights for leadership decision-making.
- Build and sustain senior-level relationships with state education leaders, national standards organizations, publishers, researchers, and co-funders.
- Collaborate across the K-12 team and with Advocacy and System Improvement, Data and AI, and other strategy teams.
Requirements:
- Advanced degree or equivalent demonstrated experience.
- Significant experience in K-12 education policy, standards development, or curriculum strategy, with expertise in the high school math landscape.
- Experience with grantmaking as a grantee or program officer, including developing proposals and understanding grant budgets.
- Significant experience managing complex, multi-workstream initiatives with multiple external partners, in environments requiring influence without direct authority.
- Experience developing and implementing campaign strategies or field-building efforts in K-12 education reform, including coalition development and co-funder engagement.
- Knowledge of the K-12 publisher ecosystem and experience influencing publishers toward evidence-based instructional approaches.
- Excellent written and oral communication skills.
The salary range is $190,100 to $294,700 USD; for Seattle and Washington, DC the range is $209,100 to $324,100 USD. Employment is contingent on a successful background check.
Closing date: 2026-10-02
HOW TO APPLY:
Apply online through the Gates Foundation Workday careers portal. Applications are accepted until 12 PM/Noon Pacific Time on Friday, October 2, 2026. Relocation assistance is offered for a hired candidate not living within commuting distance of the Seattle or Washington, DC office; remote work from a US state may be considered in some instances. Unrestricted work authorization in the US is required, and no immigration sponsorship is provided.
https://gatesfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Gates/job/Seattle-WA/Senior-Program-Officer--Modernized-High-School-Math_B021770-1/apply