About the Position

• Moral uncertainty
• Decision theory including risk aversion and ambiguity aversion
• Intervention cost-effectiveness for humans, non-human animals, and possibly digital minds
• Sensitivity of different interventions in longtermism, global health, and animal welfare to theoretical considerations (i.e. population ethics, theories of welfare, moral uncertainty)
• Interspecies welfare comparisons

Key Responsibilities

• Conceptualizing and creating quantitative models and approaches to comparatively analyze interventions and cause areas under different assumptions
• Writing summaries or reviews of the existing research, distilling key actionable insights, generating ideas for future research research directions, and potentially including additional analysis.
• Preparing reports and manuscripts, carefully documenting research studies, including methods, data, analysis, conclusions and actionable insights for grantmakers and advocates and communicating research to a wide variety of audiences, including other researchers, funders, advocacy groups, and the general public.
• Providing detailed review of other team members’ work, especially where it may overlap with areas of personal expertise.
• Developing a co-operative working relationship with other researchers in the relevant space and participate in fostering free exchange of ideas in the community of researchers.
• Coordinating with external stakeholders, including philanthropic foundations, and other research organizations across the relevant  communities (this involves communicating instructions on the research protocol to coworkers and others with clarity and precision).
• Contributing to high-level organizational strategy.
• Writing clear and well-documented code. 
• Preparing data, code and other study materials for publication and potential usage by the other researchers.

What We Are Looking For

• Ability to quickly develop an understanding of existing academic and advocacy research literature in unfamiliar areas of study. 
• Strong analytical skills accompanied with steadfast curiosity and a willingness to wrestle with large and complex problems and data sets.
• Comfort creating deterministic models (particularly in Excel or Sheets) and probabilistic models in modeling software (such as Causal or Guesstimate) and ideally in a programming language typically used in data science (such as R or Python).
• Willingness and ability to learn advanced statistical approaches and programming techniques to accomplish tasks, as required.
• A disposition that favors evidence-based reasoning and critical thinking.
• Strong attention to detail and a commitment to maintaining high quality and accuracy in all research output.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills demonstrated through authorship of scientific reports or peer-reviewed articles.
• A deep and enduring commitment to high standards of ethics in research including, but not limited to, matters of data use and storage, handling of privileged information, attribution of credit, conflicts of interest, protocol compliance, and correction of errors.
• Comfort reaching out to and helping to identify relevant experts.
• Familiarity with G Suite (particularly Documents and Sheets), and Asana (or similar project management software).
• An abiding commitment to the mission of Rethink Priorities.

• A BS, MS or PhD or equivalent knowledge in social sciences, mathematics, statistics, psychology, economics, computer science, public health or other related topics.
• Knowledge of research methods, principles, techniques and philosophies, ideally including survey methodologies, the design of experiments and power calculations.
• Strong background in descriptive as well as inferential statistics, and an aptitude for mathematical reasoning.
• Some familiarity with evidence-based, high-impact charitable giving.
• Demonstrated track record of developing, leading and completing excellent quantitative research, including philosophical analysis where appropriate.
• Experience reviewing and critically assessing original research across multiple disciplines.
• Knowledge of empirical research methods, principles, techniques and philosophies commonly used in social science.
• Prior experience managing or collaborating with multidisciplinary teams, including but not limited to economists, philosophers and cognitive scientists.

What We Offer

• Annual salary between the following ranges for a full-time position, prorated for part-time work:
  • $100,500 - $118,500 USD pre-tax
  • £77,900 - £91,529 GBP pre-tax 
  • €89,544 - €105,582 EUR pre-tax
• The exact salary will be based on the candidate’s prior relevant experience and corresponding title level, and calculated using RP’s salary algorithm. RP does not negotiate salaries to ensure fairness.
• Compensation is not restricted to the currencies listed above. Payments may be made in different currencies and payment intervals depending on the location of applicants and legal requirements.

• Opportunity to contribute to a fast-growing, high-impact organization — our research is used by key decision makers who influence the distribution of hundreds of millions of charitable dollars.
• Fully remote environment, including flexible work hours and location.
• Comprehensive global benefits package (while they vary by country, we make every effort to ensure that our benefits package is equitable and high-quality for all staff).
• Generous paid time off (PTO) leave, including, but not limited to:
  • Forty (40) days PTO (excluding local, public local holidays) proportional / prorated according to how many hours per week the employee works
  • “Mandated” mid- and end-year, organization-wide breaks (if the temporary employment contract falls within the break timeline)
  • Unlimited (within reason) personal and sick leave
• Technology and in-person co-working stipends in the equivalent of $500 each.
• A caring team that values respectful work relations and a healthy work-life balance
• Opportunities to grow/advance your career and engage in professional development
• Low administrative bureaucracy
• We don’t provide snacks but we could mail you a box of Oreos if you want!

Additional Information

• Extension requests: We will try to accommodate extension requests that are made before the deadline and are up to five (5) days. We generally cannot accommodate extension requests made on or after the application deadline, or are longer than 5 days, and cannot accept late submissions to ensure fairness to other applicants.
• Language: Please submit all of your application materials in English and note that we require professional level English proficiency.
• Travel: Travel is not an essential requirement for this position. However, a majority of our staff travel a few times per year for conferences, team and all-staff retreats, and other work-related purposes. In most cases, travel is not mandatory, but encouraged. If, for any reason, you would prefer not to travel for work, please do not be discouraged from applying. Depending on the event, we can likely make accommodations, such as allowing virtual participation when possible.
• Accessibility: We’re committed to running an inclusive and accessible application process. We warmly invite you to reach out to careers@rethinkpriorities.org with any questions or accessibility requests such as chat box use during interviews.
• Inclusivity and fairness:  RP is committed to building an inclusive, equitable, and supportive community for you to thrive and do your best work. We’re committed to finding the best people for our team, so please don’t hesitate to apply for a role regardless of your age, gender identity/expression, political identity, personal preferences, physical abilities, veteran status, neurodiversity or any other background. We provide reasonable accommodations and benefits, including for example, flexible work schedules and locations, mental health coverage in medical benefits (as available), as well as technology budgets and professional development time that can be used, for example, to purchase assistive technology or engage in job coaching. 
• Other: Visit our Career Opportunities webpage if you’d like to know more about our hiring process, culture, and what working at RP is like.

About Rethink Priorities

1.  A consultancy doing commissioned work in response to demands from organizations doing high-impact work.
2.  A research institute driven by research agendas we set according to our own priorities.
3.  A think tank aiming to inform public policy to improve the world.
4.  An accelerator, incubator, and base for priority projects.

• Helping major foundations to answer their questions on climate change solutions, weather forecasting in lower- and middle-income countries, increasing access to medicine, and the effectiveness of prizes and other interventions. 
• Comparing the capacity of different animal species to experience pleasure and pain to help philanthropists decide how to allocate funding.
• Investigating various animal welfare interventions, as well as bringing to light the neglected areas of invertebrate and insect welfare.
• Publishing pieces on nanotechnology and ways to use forecasting to improve the long-term future, as well as supporting those interested in these types of topics.
• Launching a Special Projects Team to incubate promising new initiatives, such as Epoch (a new AI research organization) and Condor Camp (longtermism movement-building in Brazil and Latin America).