Research Analyst

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. The role As a Research Analyst on GiveWell’s Commons team, you will support our broader research team in identifying cost-effective giving opportunities. Your work will directly inform GiveWell’s decisions about how hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to save and improve the lives of people living in the lowest-income communities in the world. You will also play a key role in fulfilling our commitment to transparency by ensuring that the analysis we publish is accurate, rigorous, and clearly reasoned. You will contribute to our work in a variety of ways, including: Quality-checking and updating cost-effectiveness models. You will verify the cost-effectiveness models and published analyses that inform our grant decisions: confirming that formulas are correct, that data inputs match their sources, that links are intact, and that the numbers are internally consistent and accurately reflected in our published text. Beyond checking accuracy, you will provide a sanity check on model logic, for example, by considering whether calculations should flow differently or whether additional parameters should be incorporated. You will also make substantive updates to these models, such as adding a new country or a new parameter, while ensuring the model continues to function and flow logically.  Answering defined research questions through desk research. You will conduct secondary research—synthesizing information from academic papers, government statistics, NGO reports, World Bank and DHS survey data, market analyses, and policy documents—to answer specific questions (for example, “What options does a maize farmer in Malawi have for selling their product?” or “How difficult is it for adults in rural Mozambique to purchase basic health commodities like chlorine tablets or insecticide-treated nets?”). This requires developing an understanding of the local context (market structures, supply chains, health-system access, etc.) from available resources so that our cost-effectiveness models reflect reality on the ground as much as possible. Writing and quality checking public summaries of the reasoning behind our grant decisions. You will translate complex analyses into clear, accurate public write-ups that explain why we made a given grant. This involves synthesizing multiple considerations (such as the strength of the evidence base, the cost-effectiveness estimate from our models, the implementing organization’s track record, room for more funding, and counterfactual considerations) into a cohesive and legible explanation for external readers. Summarizing monitoring and evaluation reports from grantees. You will distill the key data and findings from grantee reports, including coverage figures, program delivery metrics, survey data on delivery quality, financial reporting, and impact or process evaluations, into a format other researchers can use to assess whether programs are being implemented as expected and whether the assumptions in our models hold up in practice. Other support as needed. You may take on unique projects wherever we expect those projects to be high-impact to the Research team. Recent examples have included: exploring ways to use AI tools to increase the efficiency and quality of our team’s work, providing critical project management support to a grantmaking subteam, and sourcing candidates for Senior Researcher roles. Why this role may not be the right fit We want to be transparent about what this position entails so you can make an informed decision about whether it is right for you: This is a junior-level research position. In your first year, you will likely spend a substantial portion of your time conducting vetting work, rigorously checking the outputs of more senior research-team members for accuracy and clarity. You will not be driving strategic decisions or leading major research initiatives. Your projects will be assigned rather than self-generated. Senior researchers and program officers will determine your priorities based on team needs. You will have opportunities to share ideas and contribute to scoping discussions, but you will not set research strategy or own a research agenda in this role. You will not specialize in a single grantmaking area. We are looking for generalists who can contribute across our grantmaking teams. You will develop deep analytical skills through vetting, but you will not focus exclusively on one cause area or intervention type. If this sounds exciting to you—if you want to spend at least a year becoming excellent at rigorous, quantitative vetting work and gaining familiarity with the fundamentals of GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analyses—then this role could be a great fit. But if you are primarily motivated by strategic influence, specialization, or project ownership, you might prefer to wait for a more senior opportunity. Team structure Our research team is organized into subteams that each focus on a specific area of our grantmaking (malaria, water quality, vaccines, etc.). The Commons team sits outside these subteams; we provide shared and flexible research capacity so we can direct effort toward the highest-priority areas at any given time. As a Research Analyst on the Commons team, you will have opportunities to learn about and contribute to investigations across research subteams, giving you a breadth of knowledge about GiveWell’s work. You may also have opportunities to temporarily embed in a subteam for the duration of a grant investigation or other project. During these periods, in addition to the research work noted above, you may be asked to help with project management