Senior Cross-Cutting Researcher

GiveWell is a research organization that identifies and funds cost-effective giving opportunities, focusing on global health and well-being. Our work is funded by tens of thousands of donors who rely on our research to inform their giving. We’ve grown from directing $1.5 million in 2010 to directing more than $400 million in 2025. Summary GiveWell is seeking a Senior Researcher on our Cross-Cutting team to help us make better funding decisions across our entire portfolio. The Cross-Cutting team works on methodological questions, research quality, and big-picture problems that don't sit naturally inside any single program area. Cross-Cutting team’s work has included pressure-testing our work through retrospective evaluations of completed grants ( "lookbacks" ) and scrutinizing grantmaking areas ( "red teaming" ), collecting more on-the-ground quantitative and qualitative information to check what our grantmaking might be missing, looking for ways to use AI to improve our research process, experimenting with new ways to solicit feedback , figuring out how to quantify the “value of information” in our grantmaking, and answering thorny research questions that affect our entire portfolio. As a Senior Cross-Cutting Researcher, you'll shape ambitious research agendas that cut across GiveWell's portfolios and answer complex questions that inform grantmaking decisions across the organization. The researchers on our team combine rigorous evidence review, cost-effectiveness modeling, and thoughtful judgment. We're open to a wide variety of professional development pathways depending on your preferences and our needs. The role You will be joining a small team focused on the methodological and cross-portfolio questions that shape how GiveWell does research. You'll sift through the countless questions we could try to answer, hone in on those that matter most, and partner with grantmaking teams (Malaria, Water, Nutrition, Vaccines, Livelihoods, New Areas) to pressure-test and extend their work. You'll also communicate externally about your work and mentor and advise other researchers on the team. You will shape a research agenda that brings rigor and creativity to the thorniest questions GiveWell faces across its grantmaking. Your work will combine empirical evidence review and critical synthesis, cost-effectiveness modeling, discussions with subject matter experts, understanding of the broader context, and your own judgment. In the course of your work, you might approach questions like: Are our grants actually achieving what we predicted? How do we know, and how can we improve our decisions over time? How do we systematically incorporate field insights, monitoring data, and external feedback into our work? How do we design M&E systems that tell us whether grants are working, not just whether grantees are reporting what we asked for? How can we use AI tools to speed up or increase the quality of our work? How should we model spillover effects? Do health programs affect income, and vice versa? Are we consistent in how we handle this across program areas? How should we set our cost-effectiveness bar over time when funding and spending vary unpredictably year to year? How should we value averting a death versus improving health outcomes versus increasing income? (Our "moral weights" problem) Where are the systematic risks in our research (i.e., the areas where if we're wrong, we're making big mistakes in how we allocate funding)? Team structure Our research department has over 60 people, and is currently organized into eight teams, including Cross-Cutting: Five of the teams (Water, Livelihoods, Nutrition, Malaria, and Vaccines) focus on specific areas of grantmaking. The New Areas team focuses on interventions in domains that are new to GiveWell. The Commons team provides generalized research support to each of the other teams, including landscaping research, vetting, and publishing. The Cross-Cutting team works closely with other grantmaking teams. Projects typically involve partnering with a team to pressure-test or extend their work, or running methodological projects that set standards across the department. Team values We think our research team has unique qualities: We care deeply and centrally about finding and sharing truth. Truth-seeking is one of our core values . We post our mistakes and we prize our team members who keep our culture of free-flowing feedback strong. We are independent. We focus 100% on finding the most cost-effective opportunities to save and improve lives. Our researchers assist in communicating our research findings to the public and our donors, and on occasion we provide tailored advice to ultra-high-net-worth donors who want to rely on our expertise to direct their giving—but we never ask our researchers to trade off against honesty, or to hide their real beliefs. We don’t waste time. Once it’s clear that a particular research question is unlikely to change our bottom-line funding recommendation, we drop it as quickly as possible. We encourage our research staff to constantly re-evaluate their portfolios and only work on the highest-priority questions. Lean research team = huge personal impact. In 2022, we directed about $440 million with a research staff of less than 40 people. We work well together. Our research team is lean because we’re able to attract top-tier people, all of whom complete skills-based assessments before joining our staff. We maintain a high-performing, collegial culture and pay our staff accordingly. About you Senior Cross-Cutting Researchers typically have quantitatively oriented advanced degrees and substantial relevant experience using empirical tools to make rigorous, evidence-based decisions in the real world. Practically, our senior research staff typically has 5-10 years of post-grad work experience prior to joining GiveWell. We're happy to consider applicants who do not have advanced degrees, but we'll look for a commensurate amount of relevant experience. We expect that people with the soft qualities below will be the most successful and happy on our team. This isn’t a full list, but hopefully it conveys the gist of our team’s professional personality: GiveWell’s mission and methods are personally energizing—you like our approach to research and you find personal meaning in our story of impact. You’re abnormally curious—you ask lots of questions, and you’re willing to interrogate others’ work. Your curiosity also extends to your own work—you aren’t defensive when your research comes under scrutiny. You routinely think about and surface the value judgments, background knowledge, and strategic commitments that undergird your work. You understand the potential effects of mistaken mental models, so you strive to improve yours and your team’s. You dislike it when people express strong confidence in views that don’t seem to rely on commensurate evidence. You carefully and legibly communicate about your confidence levels. You appreciate the value of an excellent reputation and strong relationships. You can moderate your directness and intensity when you’re communicating with external folks. You love a gnarly problem . You figure out the most important questions to answer, go deep on the details where they matter (and move on where they don’t), and reassess your mental models based on what you’ve learned. You constantly assess whether you and the team are working on the most important things. Senior Cross-Cutting Researcher vs. other Senior Researcher roles We're hiring Senior Researchers for both our Cross-Cutting team and our grantmaking teams. If you're energized by variety and methodological questions that span multiple program areas, Cross-Cutting may be a better fit. If you're excited to develop deep expertise in a specific program area and eventually own a grantmaking portfolio, our grantmaking-team-specific Senior Researcher roles (e.g., Senior Malaria Researcher or Senior Livelihoods Researcher) may be a better fit. Not sure? Apply to whichever sounds more appealing—we'll help you figure out the right fit during the process, and we're open to moving candidates between tracks. The details Compensation: We set salaries using a location-based tier system. Our pay for this role: NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $241,000. All other U.S. locations: $219,000. 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) Location: GiveWell’s staff work primarily remotely within the U.S. and abroad. This position is eligible to work fully remotely. Offices: You are welcome but not required to work from our offices in Oakland, California; Brooklyn, NYC; or London, UK. We'll cover relocation expenses for candidates who wish to move to any of our physical office locations. International work: We are happy to employ staff internationally on a case-by-case basis. A successful candidate will need to commit to a work schedule that has some overlap with American working hours and the schedules of key coworkers. 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. Visa Sponsorship: If you want to work in the United States and need a work visa, we’ll do our best to sponsor it (and also cover up to 100% of relocation expenses on a case-by-case basis). Please note that government entities ultimately dictate our ability to sponsor visas. 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. Miscellaneous details: Please note that our hiring process consists of the same work trials for the following roles: Researcher, Senior Researcher, Senior Cross-Cutting Researcher, Senior Livelihoods Researcher, Senior Malaria Researcher, Senior New Areas Researcher, Senior Nutrition Researcher, Senior Vaccination Researcher, and Senior Water Researcher. If, within the last year, you applied and were rejected for one of these roles, you should hold off on applying to the other roles, unless explicitly asked to do so by a member of our team. If you're interested in all of these roles, please just apply once and note in your application that you'd like to be considered for the other roles, too. After application review, our hiring process consists of a short application exercise and up to 15 hours of compensated work trials. You can see more details about our hiring process on our FAQs page ! We devote significant staff capacity to initial application review, and we respond to all applications as quickly as possible. We’re aiming to hire four to six full-time Senior Researchers. We have a strong preference for full-time applicants, but we’ll consider applications for part-time work. We aren’t interested in reviewing applications for contract or project-based work at this time. If we settle on an application deadline, we’ll write it in bold here. If you’re on our website job posting and don’t see a deadline, there is no deadline. If you’re reading this on an external job board and don’t see a deadline, you should double-check on our website . You don't need to submit a cover letter—we rely mainly on your resume and answers to the application questions below when we're making early decisions. About GiveWell GiveWell is dedicated to finding and funding outstanding giving opportunities in global health and development, sharing the full details of our analysis with everyone for free. Our giving funds enable donors to contribute to the most impactful and cost-effective programs our researchers identify. Since 2007, we’ve directed over $2.6 billion to cost-effective programs and interventions. In the last two years, we’ve made more than $500 million in grants. GiveWell is one of the world’s largest private funders of global development efforts, and we estimate that the funding we’ve directed will save more than 340,000 lives . GiveWell is most well-known for recommending a small number of Top Charities , which currently support seasonal malaria chemoprevention , antimalarial nets , vaccine incentivization , and vitamin A supplementation . However, most of our research capacity is devoted to finding cost-effective opportunities outside of those programs. GiveWell grants have: Helped governments to implement high-impact health programs, like in-line chlorination of drinking water in India and HIV/syphilis screening and treatment for pregnant people in Zambia and Cameroon. Funded program delivery alongside strengthened monitoring and evaluation, as in our grants to support treatment of clubfoot and to evaluate the program . Sought to scope and scale promising interventions that don’t have clear existing implementers. We are supporting the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s Incubator and Evidence Action’s Accelerator 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 provide diarrhea treatment to children in Nigeria that we co-designed with CHAI through the Incubator program. Tested our assumptions through further research, including studies on the effect of water chlorination on mortality , the impact of a tree-planting program on farmers’ income , and the effects of combining the RTS,S malaria vaccine and perennial malaria chemoprevention . We never take for granted that GiveWell’s work is good for the world. 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 and external analysis to address our uncertainties and insisting that our grantees conduct rigorous monitoring and evaluation. We change our minds when the evidence demands it. 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. GiveWell is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer by choice. At minimum, this means that we comply with all federal, state, and local EEO and employment laws. Beyond the requirements of those laws, we value our team’s diversity in all respects, and we desire to maintain a work environment free of harassment or discrimination—we want our team members to thrive at GiveWell. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, contact us at [email protected]. We will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. 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 .