Senior Livelihoods Researcher

GiveWell, United States + International (remote) +1

The role

GiveWell is seeking a Senior Livelihoods Researcher to help us identify and fund the most cost-effective ways to improve living standards among the global poor. You will have an outsized influence on our funding decisions and help us improve lives on a global scale.

Our livelihoods team is organized around thematic verticals, which includes cash transfers, broader social protection programs, education programs, and support for small and medium sized businesses in low-income countries. Across the portfolio, we try to maximize the social return on our investment, which we measure as the increase in relative consumption per $. We value consumption gains more highly among poorer populations, which has meant most of our grantmaking to date has focused on programs which support deprived populations within low-income countries (mostly in sub-Saharan Africa).

As a Senior Livelihoods Researcher, you’ll create and lead ambitious research agendas related to our portfolios of work and answer complex questions that will inform GiveWell’s grantmaking decisions. The researchers on our team combine rigorous evidence review, cost-effectiveness modeling, and thoughtful judgment.

The details

Compensation: We set salaries using a location-based tier system. Our pay for this role:
NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $308,000.
All other U.S. locations: $280,000
International: Similar to the “all other U.S. locations” salary, based on historical exchange rates and delivered in locally-denominated currency. We can share a precise figure upon request after the first work trial stage.
Benefits: Our benefits include:
Fully funded health, dental, vision, and life insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the US for you and any dependents)
Four weeks of paid time off per year
16 weeks 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)
Countries we can hire from: GiveWell is a remote-first organization. However, for the time being, we can only hire within a select number of countries (US, UK, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany). To be considered for a role with GiveWell, you need to already be based in one of those countries or be willing to move to one of them. We expect to expand the list of locations where we can hire over the course of 2027, and our job descriptions always reflect the current status — so we'd encourage you to check back and apply again for a role you're eligible for.
Visa sponsorship: The US is the only country where visa sponsorship is possible for a number of roles, and it's assessed on a case by case basis. For all other countries, you need to already have work authorization, we cannot sponsor visas.
Why we work this way: Focusing on countries where we already have tested onboarding processes lets us move candidates through hiring faster and with fewer surprises. Every additional country brings its own labor laws, EOR requirements, and new processes to work through, which slows things down for hiring teams and new colleagues alike. Concentrating our footprint keeps the experience consistent and supports GiveWell’s wider absorption capacity goals.
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.
Travel: Research team members are sometimes required to attend international site visits and conferences (on average 1-2 per year), with additional travel for those interested in traveling more. Additionally, we strongly encourage staff members to attend quarterly whole-org and department retreats to bond with other team members and complete in-person work. We'll discuss travel obligations in more detail during late stages of the hiring process, and we’ll accommodate staff who have conflicting family or other obligations.
Start date: We’d like a candidate to start as soon as possible after receiving an offer, but we’ll offer flexibility for candidates whose personal or professional circumstances require them to moderately delay their start date.

GiveWell grants have

Helped governments navigate changes to the funding landscape and implement high-impact health programs, like HIV/syphilis screening and treatment for pregnant people in Zambia and Cameroon.
Sought to scope and scale promising interventions that don’t have clear existing implementers. We are supporting the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s Incubator to identify potentially cost-effective interventions and create programs that we would be excited to support in the future. For example, we funded a program to prevent tuberculosis among young children in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India, that we co-designed with CHAI through the Incubator program.
Provided funding to ensure that programs that recently faced foreign aid funding cuts could continue, like healthcare support and malnutrition treatment in northern Cameroon.
Funded program delivery alongside strengthened monitoring and evaluation, as in our grants to support treatment of clubfoot and to evaluate the program.
Tested our assumptions and refined our understanding through further research and data collection, including improved estimates of disease burden and studies on the effect of water chlorination on mortality and the impact of a tree-planting program on farmers’ income.

We make our reasoning public and transparent so others can challenge it (sometimes we even pay people to point out our errors). We go to unusual lengths to check our assumptions and assess our impact, including funding research to address our uncertainties and gathering independent monitoring and evaluation data about the programs we support. We change our minds when the evidence demands it. For more about GiveWell, listen to Ezra Klein’s interview with GiveWell’s co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld.

Additional information

We don’t want to miss candidates that could do great things at GiveWell. Practically, that means a GiveWell staff member reviews every application carefully, considering the whole picture of your background and potential. If you’re on the fence about applying because you meet some but not 100% of our preferred qualifications (some studies suggest this hesitation is especially common for women and people of color), we encourage you to apply anyway.

By submitting an application, you acknowledge that you have read and consent to GiveWell’s Privacy Statement for Applicants. By completing an application exercise, you acknowledge and assent to GiveWell’s Work Trial Policy.

Senior Livelihoods Researcher

The role

Senior Livelihoods Researcher

The role

Our research department has over 60 people, and is currently organized into eight teams

We think our research team has unique qualities

We expect the Senior Livelihoods Researcher to have

The details

Miscellaneous details

GiveWell grants have

About GiveWell

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