The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded in 2015 by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg to harness the power of technology to pursue some of society’s most ambitious goals — from curing or preventing all disease to transforming how students learn.
At CZI, you’ll join a deeply collaborative, mission-driven community where your work helps drive breakthroughs across our flagship nonprofit organizations, Biohub and Learning Commons. Whether enabling scientific breakthroughs via open science and AI-powered biology or strengthening the tools teachers and students rely on every day, your contributions help turn bold ideas into real-world impact.
Our teams operate at the intersection of innovation and scale, building the infrastructure, partnerships, and capabilities that allow scientists, educators, and innovators to tackle some of the most complex challenges of our time — and to do so with urgency, integrity, and optimism.
The Team
Across our work in Science, Education, and within our communities, we pair technology with grantmaking, impact investing, and collaboration to help accelerate the pace of progress toward our mission. Our Central Operations & Partners team provides the support needed to push this work forward.
Central Operations & Partners consists of our Brand & Communications, Facilities, Finance, Infrastructure/IT Operations/Business Systems, Initiative Operations, People, Real Estate/Workplace/Facilities/Security, Research & Learning, and Ventures teams. These teams provide the essential operations, services, and strategies needed to support CZI’s progress toward achieving its mission to build a better future for everyone.
Our Central Tech team provides technology and security support for CZI and our grantees. We believe that Engineering, IT and Security are most effective when in sync and learning from each other on a daily basis. Across our three pillars of Infrastructure, Security, and Grantee & Partner Support, we enable our teams to achieve their goals faster and more securely. We leverage technology to automate manual processes, constantly innovate to optimize operations, provide first-class support, and build solutions to enable the scale and execution of our business partners' strategies and initiatives.
The Opportunity
This role sits at the center of how work gets done across CZI, with visibility across collaboration tools, AI initiatives, and cross-functional workflows. You will work across Slack, Jira, Google Workspace, and emerging AI tools to improve how work flows and ensure teams can execute more efficiently. You’ll partner with program, platform, and engineering partners to align workflows, improve tool usage, and ensure changes land clearly as we scale. This is a highly cross-functional role with the opportunity to shape how collaboration systems evolve, including AI-driven workflows and automation. It’s a strong fit for someone who enjoys working across systems, bringing structure to ambiguity, and driving practical improvements that teams actually use.
As a Senior Program Specialist on the Central Tech team, you will play a key role in making our collaboration ecosystem more consistent, scalable, and effective across the organization.
What You'll Do
- Map and improve end-to-end collaboration workflows across systems, identifying friction and driving resolution across tools and teams
- Define ownership models (DRIs) and standardize workflows across collaboration platforms to reduce fragmentation and improve consistency
- Translate workflow gaps into system, tooling, or automation improvements, partnering with application administrators and engineers to implement changes
- Drive alignment and standardization across core platforms (Jira, Slack, Google Workspace), including usage patterns and system of record expectations
- Identify and help scale opportunities for AI, automation, and integrations to improve workflows and reduce manual work
- Improve shared workflows with End User Services (e.g., intake, support, request handling), while ensuring clear documentation, adoption, and continuous improvement through data and feedback
What You'll Bring
- 5+ years of experience in program management, operations, or systems-focused roles
- Strong understanding of collaboration platforms such as Jira, Confluence, Slack, and Google Workspace
- Experience working across multiple systems and teams, with the ability to map workflows and understand how tools interact
- Experience defining and improving system-based workflows (e.g., ticketing, intake, automation) to reduce friction and improve execution
- Comfort partnering with technical teams and working with automation and integration concepts (e.g., APIs, workflows, event-driven systems)
- Strong communication skills, especially when explaining system behavior and workflows
- Practical, execution-focused mindset with strong judgment
- Ability to operate in ambiguity and drive progress without formal authority
Compensation
The Redwood City, CA base pay range for a new hire in this role is $134,000 - $183,700. New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range, enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on job-related skills and experience, as evaluated throughout the interview process.
This position may be eligible to participate in our discretionary annual performance bonus program. Bonus eligibility and targets are determined in accordance with our total rewards philosophy and may vary by role.
Better Together
As we grow, we’re excited to strengthen in-person connections and cultivate a collaborative, team-oriented environment. This role is a hybrid position requiring you to be onsite for at least 60% of the working month, approximately 3 days a week, with specific in-office days determined by the team’s manager. The exact schedule will be at the hiring manager's discretion and communicated during the interview process.
Benefits for the Whole You
We’re thankful to have an incredible team behind our work. To honor their commitment, we offer a wide range of benefits to support the people who make all we do possible.
- Provides a generous employer match on employee 401(k) contributions to support planning for the future.
- Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice.
- Funding for select family-forming benefits.
- Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving
If you’re interested in a role but your previous experience doesn’t perfectly align with each qualification in the job description, we still encourage you to apply as you may be the perfect fit for this or another role.
#LI-Hybrid
