Senior Program Officer, AI, Modeling, and Quantitative Methods, Gender Equality

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 Gender Equality (GE) Division's mission is to ensure women and girls in Africa and South Asia can enjoy good health, make their own choices, earn their own money, and be leaders in their societies. When women and girls have an equal chance to thrive and lead, everyone benefits.

Within the GE Division, the Data and Technology Adoption team (DATA) strengthens decision-making to improve the health and well-being of women and girls. Operating as both an investment maker and a functional service provider, the team works across three strategic pillars: providing deep functional expertise to program strategy teams (PSTs) and regional country offices (RCOs) to accelerate impact; developing public goods and platforms with high impact potential and multi-PST relevance; and exploring and incubating new paths to improve women's and girls' health outcomes. This role sits across two of DATA's initiatives: AI Readiness & Innovation, which develops user-experience design intelligence, AI product evaluation frameworks, and frontier innovation; and Modeling & Measurement, which builds locally owned analytics and modeling capacity in low- and middle-income institutions and sustains critical women's health measurement investments.

The application deadline for this role is May 13, 2026 at 11:59pm Pacific Time.

Your Role

As a Senior Program Officer, AI, Modeling, & Quantitative Methods, you will serve as a technical leader at the intersection of frontier AI, data science, and gender equality, helping the foundation navigate a fast-moving field and direct investment where it can meaningfully improve the health and well-being of women and girls in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Working at the intersection of AI, data science, and global health, you will advance a portfolio of investments aimed at accelerating progress toward ending preventable maternal and child deaths.

This role sits at the center of efforts to ensure AI systems are designed, evaluated, and deployed with equity, safety, and real-world impact at the forefront. You will engage directly with frontier AI labs and technology companies, critically assess how AI tools are being built and benchmarked, and translate those developments into clear strategic guidance for division and team leadership.

Partnering across the foundation and with in-country teams, and with external technical partners, you will shape a portfolio spanning AI-powered health products, applied modeling, and women's health measurement, influencing not only how impact is measured but what gets built, for whom, and on what terms.

What You’ll Do

• Serve as the DATA team's primary AI technical voice: tracking frontier AI developments, translating their implications for gender equality and women's health, and advising GE leadership on where the field is headed, what matters, and where GE can lead.
• Engage credibly with frontier AI labs and major technology companies on behalf of the foundation: assessing partnership opportunities, informing advocacy positions on equity and safety, and identifying where GE engagement can shape how AI systems are built and evaluated for LMIC populations.
• Provide investment-grade technical diligence on AI proposals, evaluating feasibility, cost, provider selection, and build-vs-buy tradeoffs; advise on where foundation investment is needed versus where the field is likely to advance on its own.
• Incubate research in understudied areas that affect women's maternal and child health outcomes, and the use of large language models to improve health information delivery in low-literacy settings.
• Shape the design, testing, and evaluation of AI-powered products for vulnerable populations with emphasis on influencing what gets built and how (not only measuring what exists) including advising on data requirements, model architecture choices, and end-user fit.
• Critically assess how AI systems are being measure