Deputy Director, Solutions, K-12

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
Education is one of the strongest drivers of economic opportunity, yet millions of learners in the United States encounter barriers that prevent them from reaching their full potential. The Gates Foundation's U.S. Program (USP) is focused on helping millions more learners earn credentials of value that lead to economic mobility by improving outcomes at the critical milestones that shape long-term success.

The K-12 Teaching and Learning team works collaboratively across USP to deliver on the foundation's efforts to help more students build strong mathematical foundations and successfully complete Algebra I by 9th grade—an important milestone that opens pathways to advanced learning, postsecondary success, and future careers. Building on decades of partnership with educators, researchers, school systems, and developers, the team invests in evidence-based instructional approaches, high-quality instructional materials, professional learning, tutoring, responsible AI-enabled tools, and implementation supports that help teachers accelerate learning and enable students to catch up, keep pace, and get ahead. The team works across the education ecosystem to identify, develop, evaluate, and scale an integrated and coherent set of these solutions to improve mathematics teaching and learning for millions of students.

Read more about our updated strategy here:
https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/documents/usprogramoverview.pdf

The Gates Foundation is partnering with Spencer Stuart to support the search for this role. To share nominations or expressions of interest, please send an email with any supporting materials to our confidential email address: [email protected] .

Application Deadline: Saturday, November 28, 2026

Your Role

The Deputy Director, Solutions provides strategic leadership for the Foundation's portfolio of investments that develop, validate, and scale AI-enabled solutions to improve K-12 mathematics learning. The role is accountable for advancing four core objectives of the foundation's K-12 strategy: expanding the availability of AI-enabled products, enabling instructional systems that are coherent, strengthening the field’s focus on curriculum and product quality and performance, and increasing access to modern high school mathematics courses.

This leader will bring deep edtech product, technology, and market expertise to refine and evolve the foundation’s strategy and work with the team to shape and evaluate investments that enable the development, improvement, and scaling of partner solutions. This includes assessment of technology architectures, product roadmaps, evidence plans, implementation and partnership models, and business and go-to-market strategies – ensuring that these are aligned with the foundation’s student-learning goals.

Reporting to the Director of K-12 Teaching and Learning, the Deputy Director leads and develops a team with expertise spanning product development, market dynamics, AI-enabled learning, instructional design, and partnerships – managing a portfolio of strategic investments, and building partnerships across education, technology, philanthropy, and research. Working closely with colleagues across the K-12 team, the AI & Data Infrastructure team, the Postsecondary Learning & Navigation team, the Advocacy & System Improvement team, and others, the Deputy Director helps ensure that innovative products evolve into scalable, evidence-based solutions that accelerate student learning and prepare the field for broad adoption of AI-enabled instructional systems.   The role requires both the technical credibility to engage product and technology leaders and the people leadership to build trust, develop team capabilities, and lead through a significant evolution in strategy in an environment of rapid change and uncertainty.

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What You'll Do

- Lead the foundation's K-12 Solutions strategy and manage a team of investors (program and strategy staff) with portfolios focused on increasing the availability of high-quality AI-enabled instructional products for K-12 mathematics that deliver learning acceleration. Support the continued improvement of that strategy as a reflection of field context, data and evidence on progress and impact, and foundation competitive advantage.
- Advance coherent learning systems by supporting solutions that integrate curriculum, assessment, tutoring, AI-enabled instructional supports, and district infrastructure into seamless classroom experiences.
- Engage in understanding and supporting curriculum product and technology investments in the portfolio, including clear theses for AI capabilities, AI safety, product architecture, roadmaps, evidence of learning impact, implementation requirements, and pathways to market adoption and scale.
- Drive quality and coherence across the market for AI-enabled mathematics solutions by partnering with developers, publishers, researchers, districts, and investors to improve product quality, efficacy, adoption, and scale.
- Build field alignment around quality and performance by advancing common quality signals, implementation frameworks, procurement approaches, and other conditions that enable districts to confidently adopt AI-enabled instructional solutions that drive measurable outcomes for students.
- Lead the foundation's strategy to expand availability and access to modern high school mathematics pathways by working with publishers, states, districts, and other partners.
- Identify emerging technologies, market opportunities, and strategic partnerships that validate and strengthen the K-12 AI ecosystem and improve student learning outcomes.
- Manage a significant portfolio of grants, contracts, and strategic partnerships, ensuring investments generate evidence, achieve measurable impact, and inform continuous product improvement.
- Collaborate across K-12 Teaching & Learning, Postsecondary Learning & Navigation, AI & Data Infrastructure, and Advocacy & System Improvement to align product development, implementation, policy, and market adoption strategies.
- Continuously attend to contextual, progress, and impact data and evidence to inform tradeoffs for resource allocation and investment management.
- Serve as a member of the K-12 Teaching & Learning leadership team, contributing to strategy development, portfolio planning, budgeting, organizational effectiveness, culture building, and cross-foundation priorities.
- Represent the foundation with senior leaders across education, technology, philanthropy, and government, helping shape the national conversation on AI-enabled teaching and learning.

Your Experience

Education product and market expertise

- Senior product and technology leader who understands education markets (including incentives across supply and demand side actors), can evaluate AI-enabled products in depth, and can influence sophisticated partners. Deep knowledge of curricula, interventions, and assessment markets, publishers, and developers, ideally in the mathematics space.
- Understands opportunities and risks related to AI Safety (from multiple vantage points- students, teachers, districts, parents) and how to translate those perspectives into investments that influence the field

Demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion

- Commitment to a vision of product efficacy and quality centered on the assets of students – ensuring equitable outcomes progress including for Black and Latino students and students experiencing poverty
- Demonstrated experience in prioritizing approaches (e.g. targeted universalism) -- particularly to team leadership and partnership development -- that maximize progress on equitable outcomes.

Strategic Thinking

- Enacts and continuously evolves a Solutions strategy that increases the availability and supports the adoption of high-quality instructional materials and supports. Demonstrates superior skills in strategic planning and implementation, leveraging a systems-thinking approach.

- Masterfully plans, organizes, and prioritizes work of self and others in fast-paced environment with multiple and competing demands (both internal and external), which requires ability to see the critical path, measure and mitigate risk, and make trade-offs.
- Leads the team to structure and manage high-return, well-risk-mitigated grants, with clear milestones and outcomes.

Collaborating and Influencing

- Skillfully communicates complex information and data in written and oral formats; advocates and communicates effectively with a broad and diverse audience.
- Builds and leads collaborative, trust-based efforts with key stakeholders from diverse sectors including non-profit organizations, school districts, and the private sector.
- Works in productive collaboration with diverse teams with high technical acumen within a complex organization.
- Demonstrates curiosity and comfort in areas beyond current areas of expertise with proven ability to rapidly acquire knowledge and execute good judgment in a variety of areas.

Leading People

- Demonstrated experience leading teams with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds to develop and work towards clear metrics and outcomes
- Leads with empathy, curiosity, and compassion to bring together and inspire team members with diverse backgrounds, approaches, and beliefs to pursue a coherent long-term direction, and collaborates with the team on how to achieve it.
- Delegates objectives with clear and explicit intent to a team with high technical acumen, allowing the freedom to be creative in devising strategies.
- Sets up practices to reinforce independent and open communication among team members and other groups within the K-12 team and broader foundation that contribute to the team’s work.
- Holds people accountable for their commitments, providing clarity and assisting when barriers arise; maintains the team’s focus on results, integrity, and impact.

Academic credentials

- Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience is required. Advanced degree highly preferred.

*Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located. The Foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H-1B, O-1, L-1,  E, OPT, STEM-OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.).

#LI-PA1

The salary range for this role is $238,400 to $369,400 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C., where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $262,200 to $406,400 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hires salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.

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

We’re 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 process—such as an ASL interpreter, alternative interview format, or physical accessibility support—we’re happy to help. Please contact [email protected] 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.