Join GiveWell as a Research Analyst

[GiveWell]

GiveWell is hiring Research Analysts: If you’re looking for a high-impact entry-level position with no experience requirements, we’d love for you to apply! We are looking to hire one to two more Research Analysts and will be accepting applications through July 15 at the latest, but may close the application sooner if we make our last hire before then.

Have a huge impact with your career

Each year, GiveWell’s researchers spend more than 50,000 hours looking for and funding cost-effective programs that save and improve lives. In 2022 (the most recent year for which we have data), we directed more than $430 million to programs around the world—and we expect that this funding will avert more than 56,000 deaths!^[1] Your work as a Research Analyst will increase that impact. With additional research capacity, we could look for even more promising programs and gain even more confidence that we’re funding the most cost-effective opportunities.

As a Research Analyst on the Commons subteam, your work will focus on the highest-impact investigations currently underway. The Commons subteam provides flexible research capacity to all of the other research subteams, each of which focus on a specific area of our grantmaking (malaria, water quality, vaccines, etc.). By providing flexible support, our team allows the research team as a whole to direct its efforts toward the highest-priority projects.

In addition to opening up capacity for senior researchers, you’ll have opportunities for more direct impact. For example, Research Analysts are responsible for verifying the accuracy of our work and ensuring consistency in the way we’re modeling cost-effectiveness across different types of programs. Finding errors and inconsistencies in our work has the potential to change our funding decisions and improve the cost-effectiveness of our grantmaking.

You’ll also have the opportunity to influence GiveWell’s decisions beyond your own workstreams. New staff are often surprised at the openness of GiveWell leadership to engaging with critiques of our work, including from junior staff.

Gain skills and experience to jump-start your career in global health and development

You’ll gain a breadth of knowledge about global health and development. Because Research Analysts on the Commons team work with all the other research subteams, you’ll be in a unique position to learn broadly about GiveWell’s research. In a given week, you might be researching the options a maize farmer in Malawi has for selling their product, checking the accuracy of the formulas in a cost-effectiveness model for the co-delivery of vitamin A supplementation and seasonal malaria chemoprevention in Nigeria, and drafting a page explaining our reasoning for recommending a grant to support the installation of chlorine dispensers near communal water points.

You’ll get an inside view of the grantmaking process. You’ll see the GiveWell research pipeline in action, as we move from shallow reviews of a large number of programs to more intensive reviews of promising programs and potential implementers, focusing on the strength of evidence, cost-effectiveness, and capacity to effectively use additional funding. In addition to working on individual projects at various stages in the process, you may also have opportunities to embed in a subteam for the duration of a grant investigation and gain deeper insight into a particular intervention.

You’ll have support to grow and develop. We want to help you build a career, so we provide time, money, and ongoing guidance to help you achieve your professional development goals. Research Analysts on the Commons team also receive substantial support from the Commons Lead and Commons Coordinator to improve their work and take on new responsibilities.

You’ll be able to work flexibly with great people. GiveWell staff are laser-focused on maximizing global well-being. In practice, this means a collaborative environment where we’re all doing our best to help each other succeed at our common goals. We also support and encourage flexible working, including flexible hours and remote work.

***

If you’re excited by GiveWell’s mission and think the Research Analyst position would be a good fit, we invite you to learn more and apply here. We’d also love you to share this post or the job listing with others who might be great for the role.

1. ^

   We estimate deaths averted only for grants to our live-saving top charities. We directed $263.7 million to top charities in 2022, and we estimate those funds will lead to 56,600 deaths averted.

[Marna]

Could you share more information about how many applications you get in a recruiting cycle, and how many hires you make as a result of that?

Respectfully, I’ve seen you advertising this role for years. It pays quite well, so I find it baffling that you continue to recruit year after year!

If you could offer any transparency about this job posting—how often you open a recruitment cycle, how many people move through each stage of the recruitment process in each cycle, how many people you hire each cycle, etc—it would be much appreciated.

[Calum]

Hi Marna, your questions (and sorry for the delay on this; I didn’t see your post until today):

• In the last two years, for junior hiring rounds across our teams, we’ve...

  • received in the range of thousands of applications per round. Application volume is usually somewhat lower for more senior roles.

  • made 3 to 5 hires per round. This isn’t always apparent from our people page because new junior hires sometimes take on different job titles at the beginning of their employment or shortly thereafter.

• We last hired Research Analysts in 2022, but the job duties and team placement of that role were different than the role of the same name advertised above. We last opened a Content Editor hiring round (the most similar role to this one) in 2023. From that round we made 4 hires, all of whom are on our staff today.

• We don’t plan to share information about passthrough rates for each stage of the hiring process, except to say that passthrough rates generally increase with each stage.

[Chinwe]

Are you open to recruiting from outside the USA for this role?

[Calum]

Hi Chinwe, yes! From the JD:

We may employ staff internationally on a case-by-case basis. We require that employees either work in time zones shared by the continental U.S. or, if working outside those time zones, be willing to work hours that are compatible with regular meetings scheduled around U.S. time zones.

We currently have many non-US employees, and we’re happy to bring on more.