[Remote] Program Officer

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. GiveWell researches highly cost-effective global health and poverty alleviation opportunities and directs donations to programs that can save and improve lives. The Program Officer will investigate and recommend grants, manage a grant portfolio, analyze interventions and cost-effectiveness, build relationships with grantees and experts, and publish research findings.

Responsibilities

• Investigating and recommending grants. We receive and solicit requests for funding on an ongoing basis, and you'll own investigations into these opportunities from scoping through recommendation. You'll discuss each opportunity with the potential grantee, consider its plans and assess the likelihood of achieving them, estimate the cost-effectiveness of the grant and forecast its likelihood of success, and recommend how to structure it (e.g., whether to include conditions, milestones, or gates). When necessary, you'll solicit feedback from outside experts (e.g., academics, government officials) about the opportunity
• Managing a portfolio of grants. Once a grant is made, you'll maintain a current view of whether it's on track and why. This includes collaborating with grantees to assess whether reported outputs reflect real coverage, quality, and adherence to evidence-based practices, and ground-truthing how programs are delivered—through monitoring data, site visits, and conversations with field staff—so we can learn and course-correct over the life of the grant
• Analyzing interventions (e.g., vaccine demand generation, vitamin A supplementation, seasonal malaria chemoprevention) at various levels of depth to refine our view about the cost-effectiveness of interventions in your portfolio and recommend either deprioritization or further work. You'll review existing empirical evidence about intervention impacts, build models, speak with subject matter experts about particular interventions, and use your judgment to come up with a bottom line. Examples of this work are available on our [intervention reports page](https://www.givewell.org/research/research-on-programs)
• Building cost-effectiveness models to estimate the costs and benefits of a particular intervention. These models take into account a wide variety of considerations, including: one's prior estimate for an intervention's impact, the strength of the evidence, the size of the effects, the similarity between the context in which an intervention was studied and will be implemented, negative and/or offsetting effects, and how funding this intervention would affect decisions by other actors (e.g., local government, donor governments). See more on our page about [our cost-effectiveness models](https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/our-criteria/cost-effectiveness/cost-effectiveness-models)
• Building relationships relevant to our work, for example with grantees and program staff at organizations we are funding or considering for funding, academics who specialize in interventions we are reviewing (e.g., malaria, malnutrition treatment, in-line water chlorination), and program staff at other funders who are also evaluating where to allocate funds
• Publishing reports and blog posts on our website. [Transparency is a core value of ours](https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/transparency) and we aim to publish as much supporting information regarding our conclusions as we can. Program Officers write up findings and reasoning for publication on our website or summarize key points from their work in [blog posts](https://blog.givewell.org/)

Skills

• The strongest candidates will typically have around 3-5 years of professional experience, a significant portion of which was in similar or closely-related roles
• Many of our Program Officers have quantitatively-oriented advanced degrees, but there's no hard academic requirement—what matters is a demonstrated ability to use empirical tools to make rigorous, evidence-based decisions, whether that comes from graduate training or hands-on experience
• You are passionate about helping improve global health and alleviate global poverty as much as possible
• You are highly skilled at critically analyzing and synthesizing empirical research and understanding how a body of evidence applies to real-world funding decisions
• You get things done, and you'll drop what you're doing when something matters more. You drive work to conclusions, and when the evidence shifts or a higher-value opportunity appears, you're eager to pivot
• You're drawn to gaps. When you see something missing—a program that should exist, an implementer worth seeding, a better way to structure a grant—you want to help make it happen, and you're comfortable taking bets under uncertainty
• You are able to plan an efficient approach to exploring complicated questions, including identifying and focusing on the most decision-relevant aspects of a project
• You consider the big picture, asking questions like: is this project appropriately formulated and the best use of my time? What is GiveWell getting wrong in our research?
• You clearly communicate what you believe and why, as well as what you are uncertain about
• You ask a lot of questions, and are curious, rather than defensive, when interrogating your own or others' work
• You are effective at building and managing relationships with external parties, including grantees, experts, and other funders
• You are respectful, effective, and efficient in your interactions with colleagues as well as external parties
• 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
• 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
• We encourage you to apply if you would use the majority of these characteristics to describe yourself

Benefits

• 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)
• This position is eligible to work fully remotely.
• We support and encourage flexible working, including flexible hours, working remotely, and working from the office when you choose.
• We'll cover relocation expenses for candidates who wish to move to any of our physical office locations.
• 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).

Company Overview

Company H1B Sponsorship