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 Finance organization at The Gates Foundation partners with colleagues to invest the foundation’s resources wisely and boldly in service of people who need it most. This is achieved through maximizing the impact of the foundation’s investments and people, protecting the foundation’s assets and brand, and enabling the foundation’s leadership to strategically allocate resources.
The teams that comprise Finance include:
• Program Financial Planning & Analysis
• Enterprise Business Management
• Global Finance & Accounting Services
• Strategic Investment Fund
• Assurance & Risk Management

The Investment Management Enablement (IME) team under the Enterprise Business Management (EBM) team consists of program managers and business analysts responsible for the development and management of the systems, processes, tools, resources, and support structure enabling the foundation to develop, implement and oversee charitable investments. The IME team works closely with the foundation’s IT department to enhance and maintain the INVEST platform and the business processes used by foundation staff to make and manage investments. The INVEST tool is a platform built on Salesforce that streamlines the process of making and managing investments (i.e. grants) at the foundation, offering an intuitive and easy-to-use interface with enhanced reporting capabilities. The IME team also engages with other foundation teams and projects to ensure that the systems, processes, training, resources, and tools handled by Grants and Contract Services (GCS) are aligned with and supporting the foundation’s strategic priorities.

Your Role

The Senior Program Manager on the IME team will own both larger feature work streams and smaller enhancement work streams from early ideation to solution implementation. Specifically, these responsibilities include root cause and business analysis, software and business process solution design and delivery. This work is specific to The Gates Foundation’s investment making and management systems, tools, and processes in collaboration with IT, and in partnership with the implementation team for effective change management and communications. This is a full-time position with benefits in our Seattle, WA office where employees work a hybrid schedule of in-office time 2-3 days per week.

What You’ll Do

Core Responsibilities

• Manages people and is responsible for hiring the talent needed to achieve our goals, ensuring successful employee onboarding, communicating performance expectations, creating goal alignment, giving and seeking feedback, providing coaching, measuring progress and holding people accountable, supporting employee development, and recognizing achievement.
• Perform detailed analysis of business problems, processes, and customer needs to define requirements for appropriate system, tools and/or process solutions/improvements.
• Define the solution vision, desired outcomes and set priority for features and outcomes according to business and partner value
• Elicit, analyze, validate, and manage needs/requirements of customers applying user centered design principles and data driven decision making.
• Seek out requirements and act as voice of customer between the partner and customer community and the technical team responsible for solution delivery.
• Oversee a results-oriented backlog management process, including creating and communicating sprint goals and making priority decisions/trade-offs, to align with release schedules in order to improve technical development resources and ensure on time delivery of product features. Adoption of lean and continuous improvement methodologies using metrics to assess impact.
• Build positive, constructive relationships with customer and partner groups to enable a deep understanding of their work and experience with systems, processes, and tools for optimal solution and implementation design and delivery.
• Manage and collaborate with other program/product managers, business analysts, business systems analysts, developers, and contingent workforce on key workstreams, by providing knowledge and leadership on the discovery and design of product features and enhancements as well as insight into timelines and dependencies through organized project planning.
• Oversee rhythm of business and continuous improvement process activities as needed to optimize team efficiency.
• Compares actual performance with planned performance, analyzes trends to inform program improvements, evaluates possible alternatives and drives implementation of ongoing improvements.

Your Experience

• Preference for experience managing individuals and leading teams.
• Preference for bachelor’s degree with 5+ years of experience, or equivalent experience.
• Preference for experience leading enterprise-wide business process and system transformation efforts and demonstrated technical expertise to support transformation efforts.
• Preference for experience with and/or certification in business process design/product development frameworks, such as Lean Six Sigma and Agile methodology.
• Preference for prior experience with Salesforce.

Other Attributes

• Product management experience and/or strong analytic and problem-solving skills, including the ability to identify dependencies, integration points, and to objectively evaluate competing requests across the enterprise and deliver innovative, global solutions.
• Systems-thinking capabilities to understand formal and informal intersections and interdependencies to be able to frame the problem, evaluate issues, see downstream effects and identify future implications across the end-to-end system to help prioritize solutions.
• Ability to identify waste/inefficiencies in business processes and develop right sized and efficient solution development and delivery.
• Experience using data analytics to drive prioritization and execution of roadmaps.
• Intercultural and interpersonal relationship building mindset and skills. Ability to adjust workstyle and communication approach to accommodate diverse audiences.
• Strong facilitation and inclusive oral and written communication skills, including the ability to “translate” requirements between various groups and tailor communications based on the audience
• Ability to work in a highly collaborative virtual work environment, balance competing priorities and manage time successfully.

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

**Application deadline is 5 PM Pacific Time on Thursday, February 20, 2025.

The salary range for this role is $169,700 (min) to $254,500 (max) USD. We recognize high-wage market differences where our offices are located, in Seattle, WA and Washington D.C. The range for this role in these locations is $185,000 to $277,400 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission and new hires are typically brought into the organization at a salary range between the minimum and the midpoint salary range. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.

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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

If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.

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.

Level of Education: Bachelor Degree

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: No requirements