Senior Program Officer, MNCNH Clinical Epidemiology

Gates Foundation•Seattle, WA

About The Position

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 Maternal, Newborn, Child Nutrition & Health (MNCNH) Team is responsible for an end-to-end approach focused on product discovery, development, introduction, and scale of novel and existing high impact products for women, adolescent girls, and children in low-resource settings. Our approach targets underlying biological vulnerability and seeks to intervene as early as possible in the life course. We fund development on a core set of products that range in type (including drugs, foods, microbes, risk algorithms, and devices), technical risk (from novel concepts to product substitutions), and development phase (from early discovery to late-stage efficacy testing and implementation research). We also support launch and introduction planning of a subset of our core products that are further in the development process to accelerate country adoption and uptake in the global architecture and drive impact at scale. These products target pregnancy risk, maternal undernutrition, prematurity, neonatal encephalopathy, child wasting, child neurodevelopment and maternal morbidity. Our team is multidisciplinary and includes physician scientists with backgrounds in obstetrics and pediatrics, perinatal epidemiologists, and professionals in neurodevelopment, nutrition research, engineering, global health, strategy development and industry-experienced market and commercialization experts. We emphasize in-country partnership to integrate the local context into research and development. The Senior Program Officer (SPO), MNCNH Clinical Epidemiology plays a critical role in executing the upstream data strategy of the Maternal, Newborn, Child Nutrition & Health (MNCNH) team. The SPO will leverage expertise in perinatal epidemiology and clinical trial methodology to optimize the design of MNCNH-funded RCTs. The SPO will lead the conceptualization and manage the execution of a portfolio of highly efficient, adaptive, integrated clinical trials spanning priority areas across the MNCNH strategy. The SPO will also engage with internal and external stakeholders to provide technical input to trial protocols and statistical analysis plans. Reporting to the Deputy Director, Epidemiology, Surveillance & Data, the SPO will contribute to the team’s routine synthesis of interim data readouts to enable strategy iteration. The ideal candidate will bring strong technical expertise in epidemiology, adaptive trial design, and trial data analytics.

Requirements

PhD in epidemiology, biostatistics, or an equivalent quantitative field.
Previous work as a trial methodologist in pharma and/or research.
Demonstrated experience leading complex trial designs with efficiency.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to synthesize complex information and tailor messages to senior audiences.
Demonstrated ability to work across disciplines and integrate data and strategy perspectives into cohesive plans.
Strong interpersonal and facilitation skills, especially in cross-cultural and multi-stakeholder environments.
Comfortable working in a fast-paced, evolving landscape with shifting priorities.
Curious, humble, and proactive learner with a deep commitment to improving outcomes for women, children, and families.
Ability to travel up to 20% domestically and internationally.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with LMIC contexts and working with data, research, and/or health systems in low-resource settings is a plus.
Interest in AI and aptitude for piloting AI applications to clinical trial design, operationalization, and data analysis.

Responsibilities

Design adaptive, integrated clinical trials optimized for efficiency and informativeness.
Provide technical review and input to trial protocols and statistical analysis plans.
Actively manage execution of funded trials against operational and data readout milestones.
Engage with key stakeholders to optimize trial design and execution and to translate interim and final readouts into key actions around investment strategy and/or policy.
Collaborate with grantees and internal data scientists to support effective use of data in strategic decisions.