[Hiring] Senior Researcher, AI Economic Preparedness @Windfall Trust

Role Description

Windfall is hiring a full-time Senior Researcher to provide research support across several country engagements. You'll analyze each country's economic exposure to AI, help design and run scenario workshops with senior officials, and support governments as they move from diagnosis to monitoring, policy and institutional change.

Your work will span six areas:

• Country analysis: Develop the starting hypothesis for each country regarding how advanced AI could affect its economy, labor market, and public finances, and identify early indicators. Source and analyze international data (e.g., World Bank, IMF, ILO, national statistical offices).
• Scenarios and workshops: Adapt Windfall's reference scenarios to each country's context, and prepare and run workshops with senior government officials, local experts, and international partners.
• Writing and briefing: Draft country briefs, workshop materials, scenario design, workshop summary reports, and help turn findings into short explainers for officials, partners, and funders.
• Policy tools: Apply Windfall's research tools to each country, such as data dashboards of AI exposure, public opinion surveys, scenario reports, and maps of policy options.
• Preparedness planning: Advise and support governments and local partners in setting up early-warning indicators, designing policy responses, and developing national preparedness plans.
• Learning and reporting: Set a baseline for each country, track changes in government monitoring, decisions, and funding, and contribute to comparative findings across countries.

Qualifications

• Typically 3+ years of relevant experience in economic or policy research, international development, government advisory, or a related field.
• Knowledge of development economics, such as labor markets, informality, structural transformation, trade, or public finance, and public policy.
• Comfort working with country-level economic data and building a clear argument from it.
• Clear, rigorous writing for senior government and multilateral audiences.
• Experience working with governments, think tanks, or international organizations, ideally in low- and middle-income countries.
• Great organization skills with the ability to manage several country workstreams and deadlines at once, with light supervision.
• A collaborative, reliable working style suited to a small team spread across time zones.
• A serious interest in how advanced AI could reshape economies, jobs, and public finances.

Requirements

• Experience with a multilateral or development organization, or in strategy consulting.
• A background in foresight or scenario planning.
• Working knowledge of Python, R, or Stata and of AI coding tools such as Claude Code.
• Experience convening expert networks or working groups.
• Experience in, or a working language of, one or more of the regions Windfall works in.

Benefits

• Compensation: $105,000 - $160,000.
• Location: Remote, with regular overlap with European and US working hours.
• Start date: January 2027.
• Travel: ~10–20%, including international travel.