Jobs at GiveWell

We're hiring for the following research positions:

• Senior Researchers lead ambitious research agendas, answer complex questions, and inform high-impact grantmaking decisions. Applicants must have a quantitatively oriented advanced degree or substantial relevant experience using empirical tools to make real-world decisions.
• GiveWell's Senior Malaria Researcher will be responsible for strengthening the quality of the research and cost-effectiveness modeling guiding GiveWell’s large portfolio of investments in malaria interventions.
• We're hiring several Research Analysts to support our research team and ensure that the work we produce is accurate and high quality.

We're hiring for one outreach position:

• The Head of Philanthropy will manage our fundraising team, develop our donor engagement strategy, and own relationships with major donors.

We're hiring for one operations position:

• We're hiring a Head of Technology to take broad ownership of GiveWell's technology function and build a strong tech team.

Note: The benefits described on this page are current as of January 2024 and will be updated as needed.

• Healthcare. We provide fully funded health, vision, and dental insurance for staff and their families.
• Insurance. We provide life and short- and long-term disability insurance for staff.
• Flexible and remote options. We support and encourage flexible working for most roles, including flexible hours, working remotely, and working from the office when you choose. The majority of staff work flexibly one way or another. We happily employ staff remotely and generally request that employees work within three hours of the Pacific Time Zone.
• Paid time off. We offer 20 days per year of paid time off, in addition to 11 paid holidays and 10 days of paid sick leave. We also provide bereavement leave, time off for unforeseen hardships, and optional unpaid leave. We are always happy to discuss options with staff if more flexibility is required in a given situation.
• Parental leave. For new parents of all types, we offer 16 weeks of paid parental leave.
• Optional 403(b) plan. GiveWell hosts a 403(b) plan for staff retirement savings. After considering the most equitable way to provide a flexible retirement benefit to all staff, we decided to increase staff salaries rather than providing a matching employer contribution. The salaries we offer already include this increase.
• Professional development. We offer an annual allowance for staff to spend on coaching, courses, workshops, conferences, and other engagements to support professional development goals. We also have a 10% flex time policy: staff are welcome to spend up to 10% of their work hours on projects indirectly related to their work, such as taking courses, reading books about global health and development, etc.
• Wellness stipend. To support staff in their physical and mental health, we offer an annual stipend for expenses such as gym memberships, therapy, meditation retreats, exercise equipment, etc.
• Office equipment and work space. We want all staff to be able to work at maximum effectiveness regardless of where their primary workspace is and to have a workspace that supports their physical well-being. We provide staff with options for ergonomic equipment and work stations and will work with you on setting up an efficient workspace. For remote staff who are interested, we will cover memberships at co-working spaces.
• Office visits for remote staff. To promote social cohesion in an organization with a lot of remote staff, we schedule regular optional visit weeks and cover the cost of travel and lodging for visiting staff.
• Access to Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness. GiveWell is a qualified employer for the Department of Education's PSLF program, which cancels federal student loans after 10 years of work at eligible public institutions. Please review the PSLF loan and payment criteria to determine your personal eligibility for the program.
  

You can apply through our online application forms, which are linked in our job descriptions. Many roles have an FAQ document linked in the job description that provides information on specific hiring processes and timelines.

Most applications require an initial work exercise in lieu of letters of recommendation or cover letters. If you wish to submit additional files to support your candidacy, you can upload them while completing your application form. However, choosing to not provide a cover letter or letter of recommendation will not impact your application negatively.

During initial screening, the hiring team holistically reviews your application and initial work exercises (if applicable). All work exercises are anonymized before being graded.

We use work exercises to evaluate candidates’ abilities. We hope work exercises will also help you learn more about how we work and communicate.

You may complete one or two work exercises or a longer period of trial work, all of which will be compensated at salary-equivalent rates. We also cover childcare expenses when necessary. GiveWell distributes all compensation as a lump sum at the end of the hiring process.

Please let us know if you require special accommodations to complete any of our application exercises by contacting jobs@givewell.org.

You may be invited to one or more remote interviews with your future manager and other GiveWell staff.

We may ask you to provide several professional references. We arrange short chats with each of the references and use these conversations to understand your background in more detail.

We want you to join the team as soon as possible, but we’re able to work out delayed start dates on a case-by-case basis.

Due to our high volume of applications and limited staff capacity, we do not provide feedback on applications at this time. We recognize that this can be frustrating! Our internal culture is very feedback-heavy, but providing feedback on applications is very time-intensive and it's unfortunately not feasible for us to put in that time for every applicant.

We want to hire the candidates who will perform best in any given role, and it’s often challenging to understand candidates' abilities based solely on interviews or interpreting their resume. Work exercises provide us with high quality information about an applicant’s ability to perform job tasks.

Work exercises also help us identify skilled candidates with non-traditional backgrounds who may not have made it through a resume screening process. We’ve hired staff from a wide array of professional backgrounds without an immediate connection to GiveWell’s work, like teaching, journalism, politics, and more.

Because we want to develop an accurate and rich understanding of applicants’ job-related skills, we invest significant staff capacity into developing and grading work exercises. We also anonymize work exercises where possible to avoid certain kinds of biases in our hiring processes, and typically grade work exercises with rubrics to ensure consistency.

Our work exercises are centered around essential skills that we believe will determine long term success in a role. These skills can be general (clear communication and attention to detail are important in every role) or specific (reasoning transparency and arriving at a clear bottom line are critical for research roles).

Work exercises are especially helpful for roles where work trial output closely mirrors the day-to-day output for the role. For example, we use trial research projects to evaluate candidates for our research team.

Most likely yes, but check the specifics of the role you’re applying for.

Most of GiveWell’s staff work remotely, and most of our new job openings allow some level of remote work. Each job opening will have specific details on remote work eligibility.

We also think it’s important that remote staff are comfortable and socially connected, and that they have a strong sense of personal well-being. To meet these goals, we:

• Provide high quality home workstations for all remote staff, at no cost.
• Dedicate weekly time for social interaction.
• Hold quarterly, cost-covered Visit Weeks at our Oakland office.
• Offer benefits that may be of particular interest to remote employees, including a well-being stipend and phone/internet subsidies.

GiveWell has previously sponsored H-1B, TN NAFTA, and E-3 visas, and we’ve successfully sponsored all staff members that have required a visa to work at GiveWell. If we make you an offer, our legal team will work with you on your visa application.

We’re happy to employ international employees on a case-by-case basis! Several of our staff (at a variety of seniority levels across multiple teams) are currently employed outside of the United States.

We’ll expect international candidates to commit to a certain number of working hours that overlap with typical US working hours. For more senior roles, the overlap would be more significant. Each job description has specific details on international work eligibility.

GiveWell provides international employees with a location-based compensation and benefits package.

We do not offer any such opportunities at this time, but we’ll post about them on this page if that changes.

Timelines differ by role and by staff capacity. Check each role’s FAQ for up-to-date information.

Each position requires a different skillset, but our values point to some traits that we find important throughout our organization. Specifically, we’d like our team members to be invested in our mission of maximizing global well-being, and to be transparent, truth-seeking, and considerate.

More than any particular type of experience, GiveWell is looking for critical, skeptical thinkers with strong communication skills. We have previously hired many team members with unconventional backgrounds.

If you think any of our jobs would make you happy to go to work, please apply!