The application deadline is September 5, 2026 at 11:59 pm Pacific.
Best Starts for Kids is hiring three Early Support for Infants and Toddlers (ESIT) Lead positions responsible for planning, implementing, and continuous improvement of King County’s ESIT program. The ESIT Lead positions work with a partnered leadership approach and report to an Early Supports supervisor. Each position may have a particular focus of assignments, such as:
- ESIT Service Delivery Lead
- ESIT Quality Assurance Lead
- ESIT Language and Accessibility Lead
Salary range: $110,087.54 to $139,542.21 annually
Job Duties
- Build strengths-based, racial equity-centered relationships, disability justice, and continuous improvement efforts across Early Support for Infants and Toddlers, including developing, leading, and/or supporting the King County team’s:
- Priority goal centering Black/African American excellence;
- Strategic priorities to support child and family well-being, engage families as experts and leaders, deepen community partnerships, expand language access, strengthen inclusive workforce, and improve transitions;
- Efforts to strengthen racial equity in access, services, and outcomes for infants, toddlers, and their families, including children’s progress on social-emotional outcomes;
- Holding of family and community groups that center voices and experiences of people most impacted, including provider meetings, the King County Interagency Coordinating Council, workgroups, and listening circles.
- Co-manage and implement County Lead Agency responsibilities as required by the Washington State ESIT program and other funding partners:
- Encourage positive, collaborative relationships and partnerships with current, potential, and new ESIT contractors, local communities, and King County, regional and statewide programs, partners, and funders.
- Embed racial equity, disability justice, and reflective, evidence-based and/or promising practices and assure compliance with federal, state, and county requirements.
- Create meaningful program policies, procedures, guidance, and technical assistance in alignment with goals, funding, and requirements.
- Lead coordination of services and effective teaming across ESIT providers, including with children who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing and/or Blind/Low Vision children and their families, providers, and systems partners.
- Improve services for families who live in more isolated areas or experience early traumas such as hospital stays, substance exposure, child welfare system involvement, houselessness, and domestic or community violence.
- Analyze data, manage budgets, develop requests for proposals, write, review, and monitor contracts, approve invoices, and engage with planning and evaluation activities in alignment with team members and with the support of fiscal, contracts, and evaluation partners.
- Collaborate with dynamic, multilingual, culturally diverse work teams focused on family-centered, strengths-based practices, data-informed innovation, cross-systems partnerships, trauma recovery and resilience.
- Engage with or provide leadership to cross-strategy, division, department, and Best Starts efforts bringing ESIT, racial equity, disability, and social justice priorities, such as Equity, Inclusion and Belonging work and cross-divisional workgroups.
Experience, Qualifications, Knowledge, Skills
- Deep knowledge of equity and social justice principles and practices, and understanding of the effects of place, race, and policy and systems-based inequities on marginalized communities and populations.
- A combination of at least four years of education and experience within early childhood development, early supports for children with delays or disabilities and their families, with at least 2 years leading projects and/or strategies in collaboration with local, regional, or state partners.
- Demonstrated knowledge of systems serving children and families, including people with developmental disabilities.
- Ability to identify intersecting issues, multiple perspectives, and opportunities for collaboration, including strategies to promote equity and to advocate for process improvements.
- Ability to work independently with attention to detail, to work under deadlines and on several tasks simultaneously, and to organize and prioritize quickly in response to changing needs.
- Skills and abilities to work collaboratively with people with diverse needs and perspectives, including families, service providers, partners, co-workers, and funders.
- Ability to facilitate participatory meetings with diverse groups, and to design group and individualized learning supports using adult learning approaches.
- Ability to share complex information to support decision-making, including skills to prepare visuals, written documents, presentations, and spreadsheets.
- Ability to travel throughout the County in a timely manner.
Desired Experience, Qualifications, Knowledge & Skills
- Lived experience and/or work experience with early childhood supports for children with delays or disabilities and their families.
- Experience supporting families’ home cultures and languages and centering racial and disability justice.
- Capacity and skills to plan, lead, and/or support strategic King County ESIT priority centering Black/African American excellence.
- Experience with interpreting complex state and federal early childhood program requirements and leading continuous improvement efforts.
- Bilingual skills and knowledge.
Best Starts for Kids
Building on the deep knowledge, connections, and skills within King County communities, and backed by what science and research tells us about human development, the Best Starts for Kids King County initiative meets children and families with the right services at the right time. The first Best Starts for Kids levy, approved by King County voters in 2015, reached 490,000 of King County’s youngest children and their families and 40,000 youth and young adults, catalyzing strong starts in a child’s earliest years, and sustaining those gains through to adulthood. In August 2021, King County voters chose to renew the levy with over 62% approval for another six years. The second Best Starts for Kids levy maintains current Best Starts for Kids investments in promotion, prevention, and early intervention, while deepening our investments to address critical needs in our community. View the Best Starts for Kids Implementation Plan: 2022 – 2027.
