Program Officer  for Product Design and Development - Global Development

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Seattle, Washington

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Patty Stonesifer and co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

The Financial Services for the Poor group makes grants in the areas of Product Development, Product Delivery at Scale, Financial Systems, and Policy and Advocacy that designed to ensure that 500 million of the world's poor will have access to high-quality savings accounts, micro-loans, and other financial products.  Our group is located in the Global Development Program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Program Officer for Product Design and Development will use insights from social science to design and develop suites of products that match the needs of poor households in developing countries.

The Program Officer duties include:

• Develop and implement a series of requests for proposals and manage an ensuing grant portfolio that:
• Tests key hypotheses about the features that make products work for clients
• Tests hypotheses about impact, uptake, and cost-effectiveness

• Tests other hypotheses about client behavior in relation to financial services
• Develops rich qualitative accounts of client behavior, motivations, and actual uses of existing and newly introduced financial and technological products.
• Work with the other members of the Product Development team to ensure that product approaches make sense for provider institutions in terms of practical implementability and profitability
• Ensure that robust evaluation of outcomes is ongoing and that learnings are shared with the rest of the Financial Inclusion Group and with other stakeholders.
• Represent the foundation to key program-related external constituencies as well as foundation leadership.
• Advanced degree in the social sciences and an outstanding academic record required.
• 7 years’ relevant work experience.  Publication record in related subjects desirable.
• Demonstrated ability to recognize and understand innovation and how to turn innovative ideas into practice.
• Capacity to conceptualize, structure, negotiate, document, and supervise projects/programs.
• Experience living and working in one or more developing countries.
• Comfortable in a wide range of cultural, geographic and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behavior with a diverse range of people.
• Solid team player who can also operate independently, with a demonstrated ability to work with flexibility, efficiency, and diplomacy in a fast-paced environment.
• Innovative and open-minded approach to all aspects of work. Ability to question and challenge colleagues, including managers, in a constructive manner.
• Ability to travel up to 25% of time as needs dictate.

Job Location: Seattle, WA 98102

To apply, please use the following URL:

http://posttrak.arbita.net/cgi-bin/PostTrak.cgi?RefCode=R3078247506547