Senior Program Officer, Cold Chain Equipment (LTE)

The 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 to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The Global Development division (GD) includes a diverse range of program areas focused on finding creative ways to ensure solutions and products get into the hands of people in low-income countries. We focus on areas with the potential for high-impact, sustainable solutions that can reach millions of people. Our strategies include Emergency Response, Immunization, and Polio Eradication. A common theme across these programs is focus on innovative delivery, including an emphasis on strengthening primary health care systems. GD also encompasses our India Country Office and Africa Team. Our teams work in close partnership with these Country Office Teams to align the foundation’s health and development equity agenda with the government’s broader priorities.

Vaccines are a core priority of the Gates Foundation and can save millions of lives a year when delivered effectively. The mission of our Immunization Program Strategy Team (PST) is to urgently reach children, adolescents, and adults -- no matter where they live -- with the vaccines they need. Our goal is a world free of vaccine-preventable diseases, and we do this by working with countries, development partners, and civil society organizations, to make sure that vaccines and immunization are effectively prioritized and delivered. Robust and resilient immunization programs are critical to achieving the promise of vaccination and are a cornerstone of primary health care, and we work to ensure that there are sufficient, affordable supplies to meet demand. We seek to bring new perspectives to challenging problems as we focus on results that can be delivered at scale. All our work on vaccines and immunization contributes to ia2030, which is a vision and commitment by the global community to extend the full benefits of immunization to all by 2030.

Your Role

As the Senior Program Officer, Cold Chain Equipment, LTE, you will lead a portfolio of grants and contracts to strengthen routine immunization through increased access to higher quality and innovative cold chain equipment. You identify as a results-driven systems problem solver bringing together an understanding of equipment design and development, market dynamics, and programmatic implementation grounded on human centered design. You will establish partnerships with a broad range of collaborators to remove barriers preventing an expansion of immunization services that depend on a robust cold chain. You’ll work collaboratively with internal and external partners including the Gavi Alliance, cold chain manufactures and suppliers and country immunization programs.

This role will report to the Deputy Director, Vaccine Access on the Immunization Program Support Team. This is a 30-month Limited Term Employment position, relocation support will be provided.

What You’ll Do

• Own and manage the immunization team’s cold chain strategy and portfolio consisting of increasing the standards of existing stationary equipment and expanding the use of new and existing cold chain innovations such transportable powered vaccine storage devices and the use of freeze preventive vaccine carriers and cold boxes.
• Shape and lead a portfolio of grants and contracts to support the above strategy; ensure ongoing strategic alignment between investments in the portfolio and strong coordination of grantees/contractors in support of immunization programs and the Gavi Alliance.
• Partner with organizations who produce, procure, or guide the use of cold chain equipment to refine their strategies, enhance their approach, and build a responsive program that addresses immunization and primary health care dynamic needs in low resource settings.
• Support partners in designing systems that strengthen country programs for managing cold chain equipment including building robust maintenance and monitoring programs enabled by telemetry data where available.
• Gain a detailed understanding of partner perspectives and comp