$136K – $150KSeniorFull Time
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.
GiveWell's senior research staff are the key decision makers for hundreds of millions of dollars in grantmaking, and we think growing that team is one of the most important things we can do to increase our impact. We're seeking one or more Senior Recruiters to help us do that.
Finding senior research staff is a hard problem for a couple reasons:
We want you to figure out where to find strong candidates, improve our assessment process, and do the hands-on work of sourcing, screening, and closing offers. You'll work very closely with our research leadership team. We're most excited about finding someone who helps us make better decisions about finding great talent — and hire them faster.
You'd work closely with our research team leaders to own recruiting for our Researcher, Program Officer, Senior Researcher, and Senior Program Officer roles. A few problems we’ll want you to think about:
After candidates apply, is our assessment process effective? Our offer rate for senior roles is below 0.1%. That might mean we’re extremely selective. It might also mean we’re losing good candidates somewhere in the funnel. You’ll dig into our data and find answers (How well do early screening scores predict work trial performance? What are the most common rejection reasons, and are they signal or noise? How did past hires actually turn out?). You’ll help us develop good heuristics about what to do in situations when candidates’ signals are mixed.
Where do we even find good candidates? The ideal GiveWell researcher doesn’t come from one degree program, industry, or competitor. You’ll think about where to look and go after them. And you’ll continually develop new pipelines with creative methods (running structured referral conversations with our researchers, scouring conference guest lists, using sourcing tools creatively, or maybe vibe-coding your own).
How can we use data to make better decisions? Right now, we don’t have great visibility into which sourcing channels, process changes, or pipeline stages are driving results. You’ll track data, run analyses, and help us make evidence-based decisions about where to put effort. In some cases, you might find out that we don’t have the right data architecture to answer important questions, so you’ll build it.
What are ways our hiring process could be much better? This is harder to describe because it covers ~every strategic and tactical question we face. We want you to be thinking about all of it. Things like: Are we overweighting particular qualities and losing promising candidates without noticing? How could we run experiments on our hiring processes (randomization, A/B testing, sourcing campaigns) that actually give us useful information?
You’ll also do a fair amount of bread-and-butter recruiting work: screening applications, writing outreach emails, and interviewing candidates. We think that sort of work will keep you close to the data and help you develop strong pattern recognition.
You’re excited about GiveWell's mission and methods. You think GiveWell is doing something special, not just generically “doing good.” You can explain what makes GiveWell different.
You’re careful and truth-seeking with your beliefs. For example, if a hiring manager says we need to find “scrappy” people, you’re likely to ask “Why do you believe that?” or “What does scrappy mean?” instead of uncritically agreeing. You’re quick to update your beliefs by picking up new information and asking sharper questions. You can probably tell us about times when you’ve changed your mind about important things.
You're unusually curious and analytical. When you get invested in a question, you keep trying to find the right answer after many other people would have stopped. You ground your beliefs in data when possible and hedge appropriately when you’re not confident.
You have very high standards. We have a high competence bar for our research team, and you’ll need to uphold that and own your decisions about applications that do and don’t meet our bar.
You’re entrepreneurial and high agency. You figure things out. You have a history of solving problems. You’re very resourceful. You’re more likely to make the mistake of moving too fast than moving too slow. You'd rather try something imperfect and learn from it than wait for a perfect plan.
You're direct. You say what you actually think even when it's uncomfortable.
You’re good at communicating in writing. You're concise, clear, and you don't hide behind jargon. You probably enjoy an effective memo.
If you think people who know you well would agree that many of the qualities above describe you, we’d like you to apply.
We care much more about the qualities described above than any specific background. That said, some things that might help:
Recruiting experience is welcome but not required. Some of the best people in comparable roles at peer organizations came in without it. And we’ll support you if you want to move on to other things at GiveWell after making progress on our research recruiting. There's always a place here for generalists who are good at solving hard problems, and we have a history of developing high performers into different roles across our org.
What are some of the reasons I might not like this role?
What does growth look like in this role?
GiveWell’s growing, and you’re going to help shape that. Your growth will be tied directly to the impact created by the people you help hire. Beyond day-to-day recruiting, you’ll have the opportunity to work on more strategic projects, including shaping our overall hiring approach and improving our employer brand. In this role you’ll also have significant exposure to executive leadership and many corners of our business. The talent acquisition team is doubling in 2026, which means there are clear opportunities for mentorship and potentially growing into a team leader.
What does this interview process entail?
We'll use a combination of interviews, written exercises, and work trials to assess the qualities described above. Past versions have looked like:
We'll share more specific details if we invite you to move forward, but our current plan is:
This role sits on GiveWell's People team and reports to our Manager of Talent Acquisition. Day-to-day, you'd work in close partnership with our Research Program Director, who owns senior research hiring decisions and is part of our Research Leadership Team. You'd collaborate regularly with other members of the People and Research teams on sourcing and candidate evaluation.
We'll likely also want you to attend research team meetings, develop 1:1 relationships with research team members, and potentially join research team-building retreats. We’ll be interested in ~any kind of team embedding that helps you build useful context.
We don't want to miss candidates who could do great things at GiveWell. If you're on the fence about applying because you meet some but not 100% of our preferred qualifications, we encourage you to apply anyway.
GiveWell is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer by choice. We value our team's diversity in all respects and desire to maintain a work environment free of harassment or discrimination. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, contact us at careers@givewell.org.
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:
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.
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 careers@givewell.org. 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.
