[Hiring] Senior Water Researcher @GiveWell

Role Description

GiveWell is seeking a Senior Water Researcher to help direct tens of millions of dollars annually to the most cost-effective water interventions we can find. You will have an outsized influence on our funding decisions and help us save and improve lives on a global scale.

As a Senior Water 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 role involves:

• Joining a small grantmaking team to contribute to our ambitious research agenda on water.
• Sifting through numerous questions and honing in on those that matter most.
• Communicating externally about your work and mentoring other researchers on the team.
• Shaping a research agenda that brings rigor and creativity to the water team's questions.

What you might work on in your first year:

• Calibrating cost-effectiveness estimates to real-world program performance.
• Comparing chlorination with alternative water quality methods across different settings.
• Unlocking cost-effective funding by partnering with multilaterals to layer water treatment onto large-scale projects.
• Shifting portfolio focus between water quality and water access.
• Improving estimates of the all-cause mortality effect of chlorination on children under-5.
• Using new funding mechanisms to identify and scale promising interventions.

The Senior Water Researcher will help shape a major annual grantmaking portfolio, own grant investigations end-to-end, and represent GiveWell to external counterparts.

Qualifications

• A quantitatively oriented advanced degree (e.g., in epidemiology, environmental engineering, environmental health, public health, economics, or related fields).
• Substantial professional experience in the water sector or an adjacent field.
• Hands-on familiarity with water systems, epidemiology, or both is preferred.
• Strong researchers whose expertise sits in any subset of the areas explored are welcome to apply.

Requirements

• Curiosity and willingness to interrogate others’ work.
• Ability to surface value judgments and strategic commitments in your work.
• Strong communication skills regarding confidence levels in findings.
• Ability to moderate directness and intensity when communicating externally.
• Passion for solving complex problems and reassessing mental models.

Benefits

• Fully funded health, dental, vision, and life insurance for you and any dependents.
• Four weeks of paid time off per year, plus a one-week organization-wide summer break.
• 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave.
• Ergonomic home workstations or coworking space memberships.
• 403(b) retirement plan.

Company Description

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. Since 2007, we’ve directed over $2.6 billion to cost-effective programs and interventions.

• Helped governments implement high-impact health programs.
• Funded program delivery alongside strengthened monitoring and evaluation.
• Sought to scope and scale promising interventions.
• Tested assumptions through further research.