Research Analyst

GiveWell’s mission is to help people in need as much as we can by researching the most cost‑effective ways to save and improve lives, sharing our work openly, and directing donations to the programs we believe will do the most good. Our work, which focuses on global health and well-being, 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. We anticipate our total grantmaking is likely to approach or even exceed $1 billion this year, and we are working toward a future that could be several times that scale. Through years of deliberate groundwork, we’ve been growing our research capacity and scope in order to direct substantially more funding to the most impactful opportunities we can find.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 t...