GiveWell Hiring: Cause Prioritization Lead

By GiveWell @ 2026-08-18T22:08 (+7)

We're hiring a Cause Prioritization Lead to help GiveWell decide where to look next—building a portfolio of early-stage grants in emerging cause areas and moving quickly on promising opportunities that don't fit our existing teams.

This is a Senior Program Officer-level role on our New Areas team, where you'll build and lead a new subteam. Recent examples of areas the team has explored include market shaping, health systems strengthening, and applications of AI to global health.

As Cause Prioritization Lead, you will:

• Own and improve how GiveWell prioritizes cause areas, combining evidence, cost-effectiveness modeling, and judgment
• Oversee a portfolio of grant investigations across our highest-priority emerging cause areas, and build the research agenda behind them
• Investigate our more complicated opportunities directly, including programs at an earlier stage of development or support for government prioritization and planning
• Build a network across implementers, funders, and academia to source new ideas
• Manage and develop a small team that can respond quickly to unusual opportunities

We're looking for a strategic generalist—someone who imposes structure on broad, undefined problems, gets up to speed fast on unfamiliar topics, makes bets under uncertainty, and can find the crux of an argument in a field they don't know well. 

Details:

• Remote-friendly (US + international case-by-case)
• $308,000 (NYC / SF Bay Area) | $280,000 (all other US locations) | international rates available
• Fully funded health/dental/vision/life insurance, four weeks PTO + annual summer break, 16 weeks fully paid parental leave, 403(b) with automatic 5% employer contribution
• Visit Weeks twice a year in our Oakland office, plus up to two annual departmental retreats
• Application deadline: September 30, 2026

Our typical senior hire has a quantitatively oriented advanced degree and 5-10 years of post-grad experience, though we're open to candidates with commensurate experience who don't fit that mold exactly. Cause prioritization experience at an aligned organization is a plus, not a requirement.

If you're motivated by rigor, transparency, and having a direct say in where global health funding goes next, we'd love to see you apply.