Overview

The FoundationWe 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 TeamThe Global Health division harnesses advances in science and technology to save lives in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on diseases that carry a heavy burden but receive too little attention or funding - including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, neglected tropical diseases, enteric and diarrheal diseases, and pneumonia. Where proven tools exist, we invest in getting them to the people who need them; where they don't, we fund the R&D to create them.The Accelerator's goal is to conceive, design, test, and prepare the ecosystem for fundamentally novel platform technologies with breakthrough potential in service of the foundation's global health mission. Through its Activator unit, the team explores and funds "seedling" efforts across a wide variety of topics for proof-of-concept, and works to activate private-sector entities - biotech companies, pharma, and venture investors - to carry promising technologies the rest of the way. The team's current frontiers span curative, gene-based interventions for diseases like HIV and sickle cell disease, AI-enabled approaches to drug discovery, and the strategic partnerships and portfolio practices that keep the whole engine disciplined and connected to the broader global health ecosystem.Application Deadline: Wednesday, September 30, 2026Most of the breakthroughs that eventually save millions of lives start out looking like long shots: an unproven platform, a scientist with a wild idea, a technology nobody in the field has bet on yet. The Accelerator is the Gates Foundation's technology innovation team - the place where those early bets get made, tested, and either killed quickly or carried far enough that the rest of the world can take them the rest of the way.The Director, Accelerator leads that team. This is a role for someone who has done this before as an operator, not just as an observer of the field: a founder or serial entrepreneur who has built biotech or health-technology companies from a scientific hunch into something real, and who knows firsthand what it takes to pick the right science, back the right people, and know when to walk away. You'll bring that judgment to a portfolio of foundation-scale bets on the platforms most likely to change the trajectory of global health.What You'll DoSet the strategic bets Survey the scientific and technological innovation landscape and decide, with conviction, which fundamentally novel platforms are worth the foundation's time and capital. Conceptualize and articulate the Accelerator's strategy, and serve as the ultimate owner of its portfolio-level decisions and direction. Actively pursue synergies across foundation programs, affiliates, and external partner efforts that advance the same platform bets from multiple angles.Run the Activator like a venture engine Lead the Activator unit's sourcing, funding, and staged, milestone-driven support of early-stage "seedling" concepts, from first hypothesis through proof-of-concept. Apply hands-on, founder-level judgment to evaluate scientific risk, technical feasibility, and execution risk simultaneously - and make the call on what to fund, what to scale, and what to kill. Design and enforce robust portfolio