Technology Director — Global Health (REMOTE ROLE)

ICF•Rockville, MD

3d•Remote

About The Position

ICF's Global Health and Development (GHD) line of business is seeking a Technology Director to lead technology modernization efforts across various global health and survey programs. This is a hands-on leadership role where you will own the end-to-end delivery of the program's technology work, serving as a technical lead and architect. You will bridge ICF's applied AI and software engineers with survey methodologists, statisticians, field operations staff, and country partners. You will be accountable to the funder for results, including making decisions to redirect underperforming work and reallocate funding. This position can be remote within the United States, with occasional international travel, and is contingent upon award of program funding.

Requirements

Bachelors degree in IT, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field (or equivalent experience)
Minimum 10 years of professional experience designing and delivering technology solutions, including hands-on architecture of multiple complex systems taken into production
Minimum 5 years leading and mentoring software or data engineering teams to build products or deploy systems
A track record of architecting and delivering AI/ML or LLM-powered systems in production, and the ability to explain how their quality was measured and where they failed
Experience leading a multi-workstream technology program for a foundation, donor, or government client, with accountability for budget and results
Deep knowledge of system architecture, data pipelines, software development methods, and at least one major cloud platform (e.g., AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud)
Hands-on familiarity with agentic coding tools and specification-driven development, and experience setting how a team uses them
U.S. citizenship is required by federal government contract

Nice To Haves

Working proficiency in French or Portuguese
Background in survey operations or data collection, such as work on or with the Demographic & Health Surveys (DHS) Program, Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS), a national census, or other population-based household surveys
Experience delivering technology for global health or international development programs in low- and middle-income countries
Experience with field data-collection systems for low-connectivity settings (e.g., e, c, ODK), or with offline or edge deployment
Experience working with national statistical offices or ministries of health
Experience leading a stage-gated R&D or innovation portfolio, including a decision to stop a workstream
Experience setting and being held to quantitative acceptance thresholds for an AI or data system
Experience with multi-country deployments where data cannot leave a jurisdiction, and with data privacy and governance for human data, including IRB processes
Experience with cybersecurity practices, security controls, and authorization processes
Publications or conference presentations in AI, survey methods, or global health
Advanced degree in computer science, statistics, demography, public health, or a related field

Responsibilities

Own delivery of the program's AI innovation portfolio, covering automated data-to-report production, natural-language data access, multilingual questionnaire design, field data quality, and new measurement approaches.
Run the stage-gate process, lead go/no-go reviews, and make and defend decisions to stop workstreams, publish learnings, and reallocate funding.
Serve as the principal technical counterpart to the funder, leading progress reporting and learning reviews, and communicating results candidly.
Manage the innovation portfolio, schedule, and risks with the project manager, including inference and cloud operating costs.
Coordinate across global development programs to share successes, failures, and methods with technology partners to avoid duplicating work.
Act as technical lead and architect for a cluster of workstreams, owning system design, writing design documents, and staying hands-on through prototyping and production.
Define acceptance criteria and quantitative quality thresholds for tools, working with survey experts.
Set architecture and standards across the portfolio, including model selection and routing, privacy-preserving design, offline and low-connectivity deployment, and security.
Set engineering practice for the team, including specification-driven development with agentic coding tools, evaluation-first delivery, code review, and testing.
Protect data quality and comparability, ensuring innovations do not break data comparability across countries and over time.
Oversee responsible AI, data governance, and ethics, ensuring compliance with ICF security standards, IRB requirements, and partner-country data sovereignty expectations.
Lead and mentor the program's technology team, including applied AI, software, ML, and platform engineers.
Bridge technology and survey expertise, ensuring survey methodologists, statisticians, and field teams shape development and engineers understand survey operations.
Work with national statistical offices and ministries of health, along with ICF's country engagement leads, to design tools that countries can run independently.
Share the program's results openly through public documentation, publications, and presentations at technical and global health conferences.
Contribute to business growth efforts, including proactive engagement with potential clients, preparation of white papers, and proposal development.