Program Officer, AI Innovations (18-month LTE)

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofitfighting 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 were committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The India Country Office (ICO) plays a pivotal role in advancing the Foundations mission through strategic engagement with government partners and stakeholders across sectors. As one of the Foundations largest and most active country programs ICO supports a broad portfolio spanning health gender equality agriculture and digital transformation. We work closely with national and state-level institutions to pilot and scale innovations strengthen systems and deliver meaningful impact for the people of India and beyond.

The Digital Innovation & AI team at the ICO advances digital & AI innovation by partnering with governments research institutions and the private sector to develop and scale affordable high-impact assets & solutions - DPGs DPIs and AI-enabled tools - while strengthening Indias research ecosystem and promoting responsible inclusive AI adoption across sectors such as health education gender and agriculture to improve outcomes for vulnerable populations.

For AI solutions to have meaningful impact at scale focused innovation will be needed to overcome the barriers that prevent them from scaling in resource-constrained contexts. Our team leverages the Foundations resources and its ecosystem position as a trusted innovation leader and knowledge partner to governments and private sector leadership directing innovation toward solving shared problems by investing in shared enablers such as knowledge commons and digital public goods.

Your Role

The Program Officer AIInnovationsis a critical role at the intersection of technical innovation and programmatic impact. You will work across two interconnected areas: (1) strengthening Indias AI innovation ecosystem through strategic partnerships evaluation infrastructure and policy enablement; and (2) accelerating applied AI adoption across ICOs program teams in health education agriculture and economic opportunity.

This is a highly collaborative position involving close engagement with Program Strategy Teams (PSTs) in Seattle government counterparts and a broad set of innovation partners across India.

This is a limited-term position (LTE) for18 months based in New Delhi and reports to theSenior Manager AI Innovations ICO.

What Youll Do

This is a highly collaborative role and will involve working with multiple PSTs in Seattle and teams across the this role you will:

1. Deliver impact through ai innovation in Foundation priority domains

As Program Officer AI Innovations you will contribute to the application of AI innovation to scale impact in the Foundations priority domains across health economic opportunities and education with a strong focus on sectors enablingeconomic opportunities i.e. agriculture financial services womens economic collectives rural development among others.

• Engage withecosystempartnersacrossacademiaindustry and civilsocietyto frame problems match solutions andidentifypromising deployment pathways to enable impactthrough theresponsible use of AI.

• Support establishment ofcollaborationsand ongoing engagementswithgovernment mission mode programs andlarge-scaleprivate sector initiativestointegrate existing and emerging deep tech partners.

• Identifyand test low-and middle-income countries-relevant AI innovations originating from India for applicability across program areas. These could includesmalland purpose specificmodelsmulti-agent frameworksalternativetrainingand inference architectures energy-efficientandedge deployablehardwareamong others.

• Develop and test scalable approaches to the ethical sourcing of diverse representative data for AI innovation.

• Enable domain-specific data-sharing structures including sectoral data exchanges and DPI linkages to support responsible AI development.

2. Operationalize rigorouscontextual testing & evaluation of AI solutions

• Partner with our Monitoring Learning and Evaluationteam toestablishshared evaluation infrastructure - covering benchmarkscomponentand architecture assessments product audits and process assessments - tovalidateAI solutions prior to programmatic deployment.

• Participate in development ofsector-specificAIevaluation frameworksin Foundation priority domains.

• Identifyknowledge data or tooling gaps in the settings in which we work and propose pragmatic solutions.

3. Unlock scale in AI Use-cases by establishing policy and resourcing pathways

• Support development of locally relevant standards policy structures and public procurement guidelines for AI as well as bias and exclusion mitigation frameworks.

• Work with partners and stakeholders to develop the capacity structures and funding mechanisms (procurement frameworks Request for Proposals)requiredto enable AI solutions to move from state pilots to multi-state scale.

• Translate successful prototypes into production: tests observability cost and latency monitoring failure handling and documentation that let other people trust and reuse them.

• Collaborate directly with researchers analysts and program staff to translate fuzzy domain problems into shippable systems.

& expand collaborations with government & private sector

• Deepen strategic partnerships withCentral & State Government AI programs focused on unblockingutilizationof public AI resources.

• Engage with central and state government stakeholders to articulate and refine problem statementsevaluate level ofmaturityand fitfor AI innovationand connect to sectoral experts for solution matching.

prototyping & internal capacity building

Working closely with ICO program teams across health education agriculture and economic opportunity you will rapidly prototype AI solutions operationalize responsible AI practices and build shared resources - including evaluation archetypes and an internal learning series - to enhance collective AI literacy and programmatic impact across the Foundation.

Your Experience

We are looking forcandidateswhorepresenta balance of technical competence and alignment with Foundation values.

• Education:Bachelorsor mastersdegree (preferablyina Computer Science/Information Technology related field or with a specialization in an allied field).

• Practicaldigital &AIexperience:a) At least5years of hands-onexperienceindigital & AIinnovation solutions architecture productmanagementor related domainwith accountability for end-to-end delivery( a project leader or specialist)in live environmentswith real users at scale.b) Demonstrable workideally through open-source contributionsinAI enabled software development implementing AI solutionsMachine Learning/AI modelingAImodel evaluation Large Language Model deployment data wranglingor similar.c) Comfort making and defending architectural tradeoffs (managed service vs. self-host fine-tune vs. prompt agent vs. workflow) and mentoring others through them.

• Collaborative mindset:Strong teamwork and adaptability with experience working cross-functionally in complex environments.

• Creative & innovative thinking: Beyond thinking out of the box in a lab context having a healthy relationshipwith real world ambiguity as a creative space rather than a source of able to create and innovate intentionally and with rigorand explainability.

• Excellent analytical thinking and communication skills:Demonstratedability to clearly articulate technical concepts and recommendations to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Mission-driven ethos:Deep motivation to apply AI responsibly for public good with alignment toequitabledevelopment and global health impact.

• AI for evidence generation:Demonstratedability to use AI effectively for research data analysisdocumentationand communication.

• Ability to work in a matrixed and diverse work environment with strong consensus building skills across both technical and non-technical audiences.

Other Attributes

• Comfortable in a wide range of cultural geographic and operational situations demonstrating culturally sensitive behaviour with a diverse range of people and a deep commitment to development issues and high standards of personal integrity.

• Willingness and ability to travel domestically and internationally for up to 30% of the time.

*Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.

Application deadline: 17 July 2026

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Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

Were committed to providing an inclusive and accessible hiring experience for all candidates. If you have a disability or medical condition and need an accommodation at any stage of the application or interview processsuch as an ASL interpreter alternative interview format or physical accessibility supportwere happy to help. Please contact with the position number and a brief description of your accommodation needs. Requests will be handled confidentially.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity equity and inclusion of voices ideas and approaches and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race color age religion pregnancy sex sexual orientation disability gender identity gender expression national origin genetic information veteran status marital status and prior protected activity.