The role

As a Research Analyst on GiveWell’s Commons team, you will support our broader research team in identifying cost-effective giving opportunities. Your work will directly inform GiveWell’s decisions about how hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to save and improve the lives of people living in the lowest-income communities in the world. You will also play a key role in fulfilling our commitment to transparency by ensuring that the analysis we publish is accurate, rigorous, and clearly reasoned.

You will contribute to our work in a variety of ways, including:

• Quality-checking and updating cost-effectiveness models. You will verify the cost-effectiveness models and published analyses that inform our grant decisions: confirming that formulas are correct, that data inputs match their sources, that links are intact, and that the numbers are internally consistent and accurately reflected in our published text. Beyond checking accuracy, you will provide a sanity check on model logic, for example, by considering whether calculations should flow differently or whether additional parameters should be incorporated. You will also make substantive updates to these models, such as adding a new country or a new parameter, while ensuring the model continues to function and flow logically. 
• Answering defined research questions through desk research. You will conduct secondary research—synthesizing information from academic papers, government statistics, NGO reports, World Bank and DHS survey data, market analyses, and policy documents—to answer specific questions (for example, “What options does a maize farmer in Malawi have for selling their product?” or “How difficult is it for adults in rural Mozambique to purchase basic health commodities like chlorine tablets or insecticide-treated nets?”). This requires developing an understanding of the local context (market structures, supply chains, health-system access, etc.) from available resources so that our cost-effectiveness models reflect reality on the ground as much as possible.
• Writing and quality checking public summaries of the reasoning behind our grant decisions. You will translate complex analyses into clear, accurate public write-ups that explain why we made a given grant. This involves synthesizing multiple considerations (such as the strength of the evidence base, the cost-effectiveness estimate from our models, the implementing organization’s track record, room for more funding, and counterfactual considerations) into a cohesive and legible explanation for external readers.
• Summarizing monitoring and evaluation reports from grantees. You will distill the key data and findings from grantee reports, including coverage figures, program delivery metrics, survey data on delivery quality, financial reporting, and impact or process evaluations, into a format other researchers can use to assess whether programs are being implemented as expected and whether the assumptions in our models hold up in practice.
• Other support as needed. You may take on unique projects wherever we expect those projects to be high-impact to the Research team. Recent examples have included: exploring ways to use AI tools to increase the efficiency and quality of our team’s work, providing critical project management support to a grantmaking subteam, and sourcing candidates for Senior Researcher roles.

Why this role may not be the right fit

We want to be transparent about what this position entails so you can make an informed decision about whether it is right for you:

• This is a junior-level research position. In your first year, you will likely spend a substantial portion of your time conducting vetting work, rigorously checking the outputs of more senior research-team members for accuracy and clarity. You will not be driving strategic decisions or leading major research initiatives.
• Your projects will be assigned rather than self-generated. Senior researchers and program officers will determine your priorities based on team needs. You will have opportunities to share ideas and contribute to scoping discussions, but you will not set research strategy or own a research agenda in this role.
• You will not specialize in a single grantmaking area. We are looking for generalists who can contribute across our grantmaking teams. You will develop deep analytical skills through vetting, but you will not focus exclusively on one cause area or intervention type.

If this sounds exciting to you—if you want to spend at least a year becoming excellent at rigorous, quantitative vetting work and gaining familiarity with the fundamentals of GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analyses—then this role could be a great fit. But if you are primarily motivated by strategic influence, specialization, or project ownership, you might prefer to wait for a more senior opportunity.

Team structure

Our research team is organized into subteams that each focus on a specific area of our grantmaking (malaria, water quality, vaccines, etc.). The Commons team sits outside these subteams; we provide shared and flexible research capacity so we can direct effort toward the highest-priority areas at any given time. As a Research Analyst on the Commons team, you will have opportunities to learn about and contribute to investigations across research subteams, giving you a breadth of knowledge about GiveWell’s work.

You may also have opportunities to temporarily embed in a subteam for the duration of a grant investigation or other project. During these periods, in addition to the research work noted above, you may be asked to help with project management of research investigations, including maintaining our information-management systems, tracking progress and checking in with relevant stakeholders, scheduling and taking notes during calls with external contacts, and generally driving investigations forward.

We expect that many Research Analysts who excel in the role will eventually be embedded permanently in a specialized research subteam.

About you

We expect you will be characterized by most of the qualities below:

• Strong communicator: You write clearly and concisely. You are able to interface respectfully, effectively, and efficiently with people in all program areas at GiveWell and externally. You clearly communicate what you believe and why, as well as what you are uncertain about. You check in proactively when you’re unsure about something or when you notice a potential problem. You are able to translate clear, detailed write-ups about complex topics into clear and succinct public summaries. 
• Analytical: You are able to make judgment calls about how to interpret and use messy data and explain your reasoning for your choices. You are sufficiently comfortable with quantitative reasoning to summarize main points and identify key details within technical content.
• Conscientious: You have meticulous attention to detail. You are highly productive and keep your work organized. You are able to carefully follow a process with many steps. You are thoughtful about how you approach your work, keeping the big picture in mind and, when appropriate, asking questions about why we do things the way we do. You perform high-quality work, with or without supervision. You are receptive to feedback. You learn from your mistakes and rarely repeat them.
• Mission-motivated: You are passionate about maximizing global well-being. GiveWell is focused on programs that aim to save lives and improve human well-being in low- and middle-income countries. You want to contribute to GiveWell’s mission and are passionate about accomplishing as much as possible with the resources available.
• Curious and versatile: You are excited to learn about a wide cross-section of our grantmaking and to work with a variety of people. You actively seek out and adopt new tools and technologies—including AI and emerging platforms—that can improve our efficiency and impact. 

The ideal candidate for this position will possess most of the skills described above and will have at least a bachelor's degree and 1-5 years of relevant experience. We expect successful candidates to hold a degree (or to have equivalent professional research experience) in a field that develops strong quantitative and analytical skills, such as economics, global health, public health, public policy, political science, epidemiology, mathematics, statistics, or another STEM discipline. Graduate-level training in one of these fields is common among the people who do this work well.

However, there is no such thing as a “perfect” candidate. If you meet most of these criteria and would be excited to contribute in this role, but are unsure whether you are qualified, we would still strongly encourage you to apply.

Role details and benefits

Team: You’ll report to the Commons Manager or Associate Manager.

Compensation: We share upfront information about our compensation for every role. We set compensation based on internal leveling and external benchmarking, and we typically do not negotiate compensation at the offer stage.

• NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $115,500
• All other U.S. locations: $105,000
• UK and Canada: We'll convert the non-NYC/Bay area salary into local currency using historical USD exchange rates.

Location: GiveWell staff primarily work remotely within the United States. GiveWell has offices in Oakland, California; Brooklyn, New York City; and London, UK, which you are welcome but not required to work from. 

• International applicants: For this role, we can currently only hire team members based in the UK, Canada, or the United States who have prior work authorization.

Flexibility: We support and encourage flexible working, including flexible hours, working remotely, and working from the office when you choose. The majority of our staff, including senior management, work flexibly in one way or another.

Benefits: Our benefits include:

• Fully funded health, dental, vision, and life insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the U.S. for you and any dependents)
• Four weeks of paid time off per year
• Four months of fully paid parental leave
• Ergonomic home workstations or coworking space memberships
• Automatic contribution equal to 5% of your gross salary into your 403(b) retirement plan (for U.S. based staff)

You can see our full list of benefits here.

Visa sponsorship: We are not currently able to sponsor visas for this role.

Travel: Every year, we host two Visit Week gatherings in our Oakland office, bringing together the entire GiveWell team. We also hold an annual retreat for our research department. We’ll expect you to attend each of those three gatherings, although we’ll offer some flexibility in the event of major conflicts or emergencies.

Start date: At the offer stage, we'll try to accommodate your notice period and align your start date with other Research Analyst new hires. 

Hiring Process

After the initial application, our application process uses a mixture of interviews and work trials, which are anonymized before grading. We pay a flat rate for our work trials, beginning with the longer vetting assignment.

The work trials in our process allow us to better understand how applicants’ skills will translate to the work we do and allows you to learn more about our work. They also reduce bias in our hiring process — we’re better able to hire candidates with nontraditional backgrounds who nonetheless excel in our trials.

Our process is as follows:

• Initial application. Our application asks for basic information about you and why you are applying, as well as a number of questions designed to help us assess your fit for the role. We request that you include a resumé. We do not plan to review other materials, like cover letters or letters of recommendation, so we encourage you not to submit these.

• Spreadsheet vet assignment. You will be asked to review a spreadsheet for accuracy and reasoning transparency. This exercise should take a maximum of 4 hours and will be compensated at a flat rate of $184. Submissions will be graded anonymously.

• Spreadsheet vet follow-up: We’ll invite you to a 25 min call with someone from our hiring team to talk through your thought process on the vetting assignment and dig into any questions they have about your work.

• Grant page work trial: You will be asked to turn a rough, AI-generated draft of a page explaining our reasoning for making a fictional grant into a polished, public-facing grant page. This exercise should take a maximum of 6 hours and will be compensated at a flat rate of $276. 

• Interviews. You will have two additional interviews. In one, you’ll meet with the two hiring managers for this role to talk about your work on the trial assignments and answer any questions you have about the role. In the second, you’ll discuss your own work experience and GiveWell’s values.

• Reference checks. The final step in our process is to request and contact two references. If possible, we prefer for at least one reference to be a former or current manager.

You will receive communication about whether you are advancing after each stage of the process. We strive to respond to all applications within two weeks across all stages of the process; however, we typically receive a large volume of applications and may not always be able to achieve our desired response times. Let us know if you have specific circumstances (e.g., a competing offer or tighter timeline) that could impact timing. We may be able to speed up our turnaround times to accommodate your needs.

There is no deadline for application; we're hiring for this role on a rolling basis. 

If you have questions about the process before you begin, feel free to reach out to us at careers@givewell.org.

AI note: We're exploring ways to use AI to improve the efficiency and quality of our team's work, and if you join GiveWell, you'll be encouraged to help us continue our experimentation. However, AI use is not permitted in all work trials. We state in each application stage whether or not AI use is permitted. In the cases where we restrict AI use in the application process, our goal is to get good information about each applicant's skills so that we can form a clear picture of the strengths you would bring to your work on our team.