Senior Program Officer, Public Goods, Digital Public Infrastructure

Tags: Environment
  • Added Date: Monday, 01 September 2025
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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, weโ€™re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The TeamThe Global Growth & Opportunity (GGO) division works to catalyze sustainable and transformative socio-economic change. In the face of inequities and market failures, GGO seeks to realize the potential of untapped markets, and ensure that economic and social benefits reach everyone. We focus on the areas of Agricultural Development; Digital Public Infrastructure; Inclusive Financial Services; Global Education, Nutrition, and Water, Sanitation & Hygiene. We seek solutions that are sustainable, transformative, and inclusive with an eye toward applying technological innovations as well as data evidence to drive change in the worldโ€™s developing countries.

The Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) team in GGO is about enabling an innovation, scaling, and technology-led model for digital transformation that is inclusive, equitable, collaborative and helps accelerate the sustainable development goals. While DPI is an evolving concept, there is a growing consensus on it being a combination of (i) foundational, modular, interoperable, reusable, and scalable digital building blocks that enable creation of technologies for public benefit such as identity, payments, and trusted data-sharing; (ii) enabling governance, regulations, and safeguards to ensure competitive markets and mitigate risks; and (iii) a community of public, private, academic, and civil society stakeholders working together to drive innovation, inclusion, and large scale impact through user-centric services and products. Several key foundational categories of DPI include identifiers, registries, electronic signatures, consent mechanisms, and AI/ML models.

Your Role

As the Senior Program Officer (SPO) on the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) team, you will report to the Deputy Director, DPI Scaling and Innovation, and be based in our Seattle, WA office. In this role, you will lead the global scaling and evolution of digital identity technologies, focusing on delivering impact for marginalized and vulnerable populations through digital infrastructure platforms based on open-source and open-standards principles.

Your work will drive the adoption of pioneering digital identity technologies while proactively mitigating risks and overcoming barriers to access, adoption, and meaningful use. A core aspect of your role will be advancing open ecosystems - including open-source code, standards, specifications, and protocols - to foster the development of digital public goods. These efforts will aim to create sustainable, adaptable, and future-ready digital technologies that improve delivery of products and services for low-income populations by lowering costs, increasing efficiencies, and opening new opportunities.

You will collaborate closely with internal teams, governments, academia, multilateral organizations, civil society, and private sector partners to build a robust, inclusive ecosystem for digital identity solutions. This includes advancing privacy and security technologies to safeguard population-scale digital infrastructure while building capacity in low-resource geographies for robust deployments. By enabling responsible deployment of these technologies, you will help unlock their potential to drive societal impact at scale.

* This position is based in our headquarters in Seattle, WA. Domestic or international relocation assistance is available for US work-authorized candidates not currently residing in Seattle, WA.

** Applications are accepted until 5 PM, Pacific Time on Monday, September 15, 2025.


What You'll Do

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