Senior Researcher

Position: Senior Researcher

Salary: Our salaries are competitive with peer organizations like private foundations, academic institutions/think tanks, and the World Bank. We adjust the salaries of remote employees using a tier system. Our pay for this role:

  • Tier 1 (San Francisco Bay Area or New York City): $220,600.
  • Tier 2 (all other US locations): $200,000.
  • International: Custom based on location.

Candidates with exceptional relevant experience may be considered for more senior positions.

Benefits: Read about the benefits we offer here.

Location: You will be joining a hybrid team that works remotely throughout the United States and elsewhere. GiveWell has an office in Oakland, California that you are welcome (not required) to work from. Part of our staff also works from a coworking space in New York City. As a general rule, we request that employees either work in time zones shared by the continental US or, if working outside those time zones, be willing to work hours that are compatible with regular meetings scheduled around California’s timezone. For international staff, this usually means having a 3-hour overlap with a 9am to 5pm Pacific Time schedule. Our priority is for staff members to be able to collaborate relatively easily across different time zones. If you’d like to learn more about how we support remote and international work, please refer to our FAQs page.

Flexibility: We support and encourage flexible working, including flexible hours, regular work-from-home days, part-time work patterns, and periodic remote-work stints. The majority of our staff, including senior management, work flexibly in one way or another.

Visa sponsorship: We can sponsor work visas. However, please be aware that processing times can be much longer than usual right now and are subject to specific country circumstances. Currently, international remote work is possible.

Timeline: We're reviewing applications on a rolling basis.

The role

Senior Researchers at GiveWell are the intellectual leaders who guide our exploration of how we can do the most good. In this role, you will be responsible for finding, researching, and ultimately recommending high-impact or potentially high-impact giving opportunities. As part of a small team, you will be a significant contributor to our decisions about how hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent with the goal of saving and improving the lives of people living in the lowest-income communities in the world.

You will be a leader on our research team, conducting research to help us identify outstanding programs to recommend. Examples of questions Senior Researchers have worked on recently include:

In addition to the core work of identifying outstanding programs, Senior Researchers own messy and complicated questions that inform our analysis, such as:

Our Senior Researchers leverage a combination of critical research review and synthesis, empirical analysis, modeling, logical reasoning, and good judgment in order to make practical recommendations on a topic.

About you

At minimum, you must have a quantitatively-oriented advanced degree or an undergraduate degree and substantial experience using quantitative tools to make decisions in the real world. You can see all of our staff bios here.

We expect you will be characterized by many of the below qualities. We encourage you to apply if you would use the majority of these characteristics to describe yourself:

  • You are passionate about helping improve global health and alleviate global poverty as much as possible.
  • You are highly skilled at critically analyzing and synthesizing empirical research and understanding how a body of evidence may apply to real-world problems.
  • You are able to plan an efficient approach to exploring complicated questions, including identifying and focusing on the most decision-relevant aspects of a project.
  • You consider the big picture, asking questions like: is this project appropriately formulated and the best use of my time? What is GiveWell getting wrong in our research?
  • You clearly communicate what you believe and why, as well as what you are uncertain about.
  • You ask a lot of questions, and are curious, rather than defensive, when interrogating your own or others’ work.
  • You are able to execute research that holds up under scrutiny from others and over time.
  • You are respectful, effective, and efficient in your interactions with colleagues as well as external parties.

Confidence can sometimes hold us back from applying for a job. Here’s a secret: there's no such thing as a "perfect" candidate. GiveWell is looking for exceptional people who want to make a positive impact through their work and help create an organization where everyone can thrive. So whatever background you bring with you, please apply if this role would make you excited to come to work every day.

To apply

Apply here: http://www.givewell.org/about/jobs/research-application. We only accept applications through our website.

If you would like to learn more about our hiring process, such as estimated hiring timelines, step-by-step descriptions of our application process, and research team structure, please refer to our FAQs page.

About GiveWell

GiveWell is motivated by the simple question: How can we do as much good as possible?

Our staff researches and makes grants to support the most cost-effective global health programs that save and improve lives. We focus on global health and poverty alleviation in the lowest-income parts of the world because that is where we've found we can have the greatest impact.

Since 2007, we’ve directed over $2 billion to cost-effective programs and interventions. In 2022, we directed over $400 million. GiveWell is one of the world’s largest private funders of global development efforts, and we estimate that the funding we've directed has saved more than 200,000 lives.
Recent grants have supported programs that:

Additional information

We plan to respond to all submissions. Please contact jobs@givewell.org with any questions.

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at jobs@givewell.org.

As part of our dedication to the diversity of our staff, GiveWell is committed to the principles of Equal Employment Opportunity and to making employment decisions based on merit and value. We are committed to complying with all federal, state, and local laws providing Equal Employment Opportunities, as well as all laws related to terms and conditions of employment. We desire to maintain a work environment free of harassment or discrimination due to sex, race, religion, color, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, citizenship, physical or mental disability, marital status, familial status, ethnicity, ancestry, status as a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault, age, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local laws.

We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Source URL: https://www.givewell.org/about/jobs/senior-researcher