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.   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