Senior Officer, Drug Discovery

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

As a key member of the Accelerator team, the Senior Officer, Drug Discovery, is accountable for a portfolio of investments and partnerships as the primary technical partner to the program lead and the principal drug development authority across the HIV Frontiers portfolio.

You will own and drive the portfolio: ensuring that the Foundation's grantees have the scientific and operational guidance they need to advance biologics and gene therapy candidates from discovery through IND and into first-in-human studies — at the standards of quality, rigor, and regulatory readiness required to ultimately deliver a product that works in LMICs.

This is a highly integrative, externally facing, technically demanding role that requires both deep drug development expertise and the intellectual range to engage credibly across the full scientific and development spectrum — from molecular biology through clinical pharmacology.

You will provide leadership, strategy development, and communications to add genuine value to grantees’ programs, not merely monitor them.

Partner closely with team leadership, including the Director, Accelerator and Distinguished Fellow, HIV Frontiers, to develop, communicate, and implement the overall strategy for the HIV Frontiers program.

Manage and coordinate a portfolio of multiple active grantee companies and institutions, spanning large pharmaceutical companies, emerging biotechs, academic medical centers, and CDMOs, each at different stages of development.

Our Global Health (GH) program harnesses advances in science and technology to save lives in low and middle income countries. We focus on the health problems that have a major impact in developing countries but get too little attention and funding. Where proven tools exist, we support sustainable ways to improve their delivery. Where they don’t, we invest in research and development of new interventions, such as vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics. Our work in infectious diseases focuses on strategies to fight and prevent HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, neglected and other infectious diseases, enteric and diarrheal diseases and pneumonia. These strategies are supported by functional teams that focus on Discovery and Translational Sciences, Vaccine Development, and Integrated Development.

The Accelerator funds the creation of novel technology capabilities that enable the achievement of the foundation’s mission by fostering the conception, design, and testing of fundamentally new biotech platforms that have the potential to change current best practices or business models and show proof of concept for these platforms. By leveraging grants, equity, and donor capital, we work to ensure the capabilities advanced further the foundation’s objectives and support the transition of these new technology platforms to execution partners. Some platform capabilities that we are exploring include harnessing the power of chemo-sensing for ultra-high sensitivity detection of volatiles, programming immune system responses for design of next generation vaccine modalities, and engineering antibodies for oral delivery. Our team also includes more mature programmatic units aiming to achieve a “single-shot cure” for HIV and sickle cell disease in the next ten years, harness AI and machine learning tools to radically advance drug discovery and development to cure HPV and pre-eclampsia, and develop five new preclinical oral polio vaccine candidates in the next two years.

The HIV Frontiers program is a high-priority initiative of the Gates Foundation within the Accelerator, a long-horizon effort to develop curative interventions for HIV disease and sickle cell disease: a single-shot, durable, safe, effective, and affordable “cure” (i.e., durable viral control in the absence of antiretroviral therapy in the case of HIV and durable resolution of anemia and painful crises in the case of SCD), one that can reach the populations most in need — especially those living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where both diseases carry their heaviest burden.

The program currently funds a portfolio of multiple organizations — ranging from major pharmaceutical companies to early-stage NewCos — each receiving major equity and/or grant support from the Foundation. Grantees also include academic medical centers, contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), and international regulatory bodies. Work on these investments spans the full development continuum: from basic scientific input and target identification, through chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC), preclinical IND-enabling studies, and first-in-human (FIH) clinical trials, to LMIC affordability and access strategy.