Operations

GiveWell Is Hiring Operations Staff Across Several Ops Functions 

GiveWell’s Operations department provides strategic partnership, infrastructure, and support to enable GiveWell’s mission: we make things work—and work better—so that GiveWell can do more good in the world. In close partnership with the Research and Outreach teams, we own the critical processes and systems that help GiveWell work efficiently, manage risk, and steward donors’ funding responsibly. Operations at GiveWell encompasses seven critical functions: Finance & Accounting, Gift Processing, Grant Administration, Legal, People Operations, Talent Acquisition, and Technology. We share a passion for supporting GiveWell’s mission, and we bring excellence, dedication, and good humor to our work every day. 

Why we’re hiring these roles right now: In the last 18 months, GiveWell has grown faster than even our most ambitious projections, and we expect that growth to continue in the coming years. Our Operations scaffolding needs to scale as well, to support GiveWell today and build a resilient and adaptable foundation for the future. We have a particular need for early- to mid-career staff across most Operations functions, and we’re excited to look at a broad pool of applicants—both Ops generalists and subject matter specialists—who can bring their experience, skills, and passion to support and improve the way that GiveWell operates. 

Open roles

The application deadline is September 7, 2026. 

GiveWell is hiring across multiple Operations roles in parallel, mostly at the Coordinator and Associate/Specialist level (though we may consider Senior Associates in certain cases for experienced candidates). For most of the roles described below, we will consider hiring more than one person. We welcome applications from candidates who have developed domain-specific expertise, and we are also very open to “generalist” candidates who have strong operational skills and a desire to apply them in impactful operational roles in support of GiveWell’s mission. See below for details on the responsibilities of each role, and how it contributes to GiveWell.

Grants Administration (Associates and Senior Associates)

The GiveWell Grants Administration team is hiring up to three new team members through this application process. Those joining the Grants Admin team would:

• Shepherd grants through the administrative and logistics process, including handoff from the Research team, grantee communications, due diligence, contract generation and negotiation, signature, payment, and submission of required reports.
• Create and maintain timely and meticulous grant records in GiveWell’s grants database.
• Provide advice to the Research team regarding their proposed and active grants, helping to ensure that grant investigators have full context on logistics requirements and limitations and that grantee expectations are appropriately set and met throughout the logistics process.
• Build and improve systems used for grant administration (including in Salesforce, Asana, and Ironclad). Look for and implement opportunities for automation and increased efficiency.
• Work collaboratively with Research Operations, Finance, Legal, and Outreach; this role sits at a critical intersection impacting GiveWell’s work.

People Operations (Coordinators and Specialists)

The GiveWell People Ops team is excited to hire up to three new team members through this application process. Those joining would have the opportunity to support a variety of functional areas including: 

• End-to-end employee lifecycle including onboarding, offboarding, performance reviews and feedback programs, and incoming team questions or HR tickets. 
• Multi-state and international payroll processing, benefits and COBRA administration, open enrollment, leave management, new state setup, tax compliance, and annual reporting. 
• International employment and global mobility support including immigration and visa application processing, international employment research, and EOR management. 
• Helping to build and improve POps processes and infrastructure including updating and maintaining our company handbook, policies and procedures, and self-service tools. 

Talent Acquisition (Coordinators)

GiveWell has two Talent Acquisition teams: one that focuses on Research hiring, and one that focuses on Operations and Outreach hiring. Talent Acquisition Coordinators at GiveWell support our hiring processes end-to-end, including:

• Partnering with Talent Acquisition Specialists on full-cycle recruitment across multiple roles, including reviewing applicants, conducting screening calls, coordinating work trials and interview logistics with candidates, and supporting offer processes.
• Creatively sourcing candidates—everything from prospecting on LinkedIn recruiter to attending job fairs to scraping through our database to find passive talent.
• Proposing and implementing system-level-improvements, including building documentation, reports, and SOPs that improve efficiency across our recruiting processes.
• Coordinating internally with People Operations, Communications, and Tech teams for hiring-round logistics (i.e., writing job descriptions, preparing for onboardings, etc.).
• Partnering with our accounting team to disburse work-trial honorariums to hundreds of candidates.
• Promptly responding to inbound inquiries that come to our careers inbox with professionalism and courtesy.

Technology Roles

GiveWell’s Tech team builds, manages, and protects the technology, data, and technical infrastructure that powers Givewell’s mission. In this application round, the Tech team is looking to hire one or more new team members to help support and enable GiveWell staff across existing and developing technologies and tools. 

Technology (Coordinator and Specialist)

• Support IT onboarding and offboarding for new hires. 
• Manage software licenses and vendor accounts.
• Troubleshoot day-to-day tech issues so staff can stay focused on their work.
• Provide training and support to staff, especially with new tools. 
• Lead or contribute to projects that improve our technology foundation.

AI Enablement (Specialist) 

• Create and deliver enablement materials (guides, videos, live sessions, interactive tools) to encourage effective AI adoption.
• Explore and discover new AI-based tools and bring them to GiveWell’s team.
• Understand how our AI tools deliver value, then leverage that for ongoing improvement. 
• Help the Tech team configure and deploy AI tools safely, securely, and effectively. 

Executive Support Roles

As GiveWell grows and evolves, its executive leaders are building out staff to provide professional and project support. These roles have the potential for immense impact by providing leverage and organizational support to key leaders within GiveWell.  

Associate, Office of the CEO

• Provide operations support to GiveWell’s CEO, Elie Hassenfeld, and his Chief of Staff, Anna Weldon: support with scheduling and event planning, note-taking, rolodex management, expenses, and other administrative and project support.
• Contribute to written comms, presentations, strategy documents, memos, and other key work products. 
• Depending on aptitude and interest, the person hired for this role might work on AI experimentation and implementation to support CEO initiatives and workflow.

Chief of Staff, Office of the COO

• Act as a proxy for and extension of the COO, bringing excellent high-context judgment and developing strong relationships with other team members in Ops and throughout GiveWell. 
• Provide support on both internal and external comms as well as networking within our community. The CoS will be an important ambassador for GiveWell Ops.
• Provide support on information flow and prioritization, meeting prep and follow-through, and occasional scheduling. This role will be a critical force in ensuring the most important things get done on time and are high quality. 
• Own and manage cross-operations initiatives, such as org-wide and team goals and other ongoing and ad-hoc projects. 
• More senior versions of this role will contribute to higher-level decision-making on strategy, hiring, and team priorities and structure. There are a wide variety of growth opportunities for excellent hires.

In your application (below), you will have the option to select one or more of the open roles where you’d like to be considered. If we move forward with your application, you’ll complete a brief work sample exercise and a conversation with a member of our recruiting team. At that point, we will determine which role (or roles) may be the best fit for you. You’ll have the opportunity to review a more robust role-specific job description, and if you are interested in moving forward, you’ll continue the candidate process from there.

About you

The strongest candidates will bring some stellar operations experience and ideally some domain-specific experience or demonstrated alignment with GiveWell that sets you apart. However, we are also open to candidates very early in their careers, including recent graduates. 

Across the board, we look for candidates who demonstrate the following qualities:

• Ownership. You don’t consider something done when you’ve checked off a task; you consider it done when the problem is actually solved. You are inclined to action, even in cases where you haven’t been told exactly what to do. You catch your own mistakes and produce consistently high-quality work that others can depend on.
• Solid communication. You speak and write clearly across channels (Zoom, Slack, email, memos, etc.) and know how to pick the right medium for the message. You’re open to structural and stylistic feedback on your work, and you can integrate it effectively in service of producing legible, clear, and accurate work product. 
• Good judgment. You grasp the big picture behind a process and can see what it’s trying to achieve and how the small day-to-day decisions fit into it. Faced with an unfamiliar problem, you break it into manageable parts and reason through it systematically, asking the right questions along the way. You use that context to make good calls on the fly and to spot where a process or system has quietly gone off the rails.
• Coachability. You accept and seek out direct feedback, positive or critical, and actually thrive on it rather than just tolerate it. You ask questions when something’s unclear, and you integrate what you hear into how you work going forward. You’re excited to develop new skills and be challenged.
• Service and collaboration. You are genuinely curious about the people whose work you’re supporting—what they need, where they’re stuck, and how you can make their work easier. You also care enough to push back, provide feedback along the way, and embrace a collaborative decision-making process.
• Adaptability. You are resilient and stay effective when priorities or plans shift with little warning. You’re flexible enough to bend systems and processes so that they don’t break, while keeping the important pieces intact. You’re curious about new tools, including AI, and quick to fold them into your own workflow where they add value. You are excited to dive into unknown systems, tools, and tech.
• Mission alignment. You’re motivated by GiveWell’s impact, and can you speak concretely about why it matters to you. You’re genuinely bought into GiveWell’s mission and the idea of doing the behind-the-scenes, high-leverage work in service of it.

Key questions and information

I have a strong preference for being on one of the teams listed above. How can I express that?

When you apply, please be sure to tell us which role/team you want to be considered for via the first application question. You may also indicate this in the short-answer questions in your application. 

What would my job title be?

We plan to hire across three levels, and your title and compensation will depend on where you’re leveled during the hiring process. Generally speaking, coordinators are our most junior staff members. Specialists and Associates are the next level up, followed by Senior Specialists and Senior Associates. If we decide to proceed with your application after the first interview stage (your screen with the Talent Acquisition team), we’ll let you know what role/job title and level you’re being considered for. We will do our best to share specific job details with you at that time, but there may be situations where we make changes based on what we learn about you in the interview process. 

When will I hear back on my application?

We are setting an application deadline of September 7, 2026 and you will be notified of your status within two weeks of that date. Most likely, you will hear from us sooner—often within one to two weeks of your initial application. Please be sure to check your email (including spam folder!) for any updates from the talent acquisition team.

What are some of the reasons I may not be a fit for the GiveWell Ops team?

• If you prefer a highly structured and predictable environment. We expect the next few years will involve a lot of change—including shifting our goals and priorities to ensure we’re scaling our Operations to meet the needs of a bigger, more complex GiveWell.
• If you don’t enjoy GiveWell’s style of writing. We care about reasoning transparency, legibility and depth of information in our written communications. 
• If you don’t embrace helpful technology, or aren’t excited to try new tools. 
• If you’re not excited about GiveWell’s mission and values. There are many ways to have an impactful career, and you may not feel excited about supporting GiveWell’s particular focus on highly cost-effective interventions. 

What does the interview process entail?

We’ll use a combination of interviews, written exercises, and work trials to assess the qualities described above. We’ll share more specific details if we invite you to move forward, but our current plan is:

• Apply. Indicate your interest in one or more roles. Be sure to respond to all application questions thoroughly.
• Work trial. A 2-hour timed work trial to assess how you reason through a complex task.
• Initial screen. A 30 minute call with a member of the Talent Acquisition Team. 

At that point in the process, the hiring team will share which role(s) we’d like to consider you for, along with the relevant job description and remaining interview steps. Generally speaking, each role will have 2 to 3 additional stages (a combination of interviews and work trials), followed by reference checks. 

Please note:

• You don’t need to submit a cover letter. We rely heavily on your resume and answers to the application questions below when we’re making early decisions. We encourage you to spend time responding to the application questions thoroughly and carefully.
• We may decide not to move forward with your candidacy at any point in this process, and we cannot give individualized feedback to applicants. We will notify you if, at any point, we decide not to move forward with your application.

Details

• Compensation: Your compensation will be determined by which role you ultimately land in. After the first couple of interview stages, we will inform you which track you’re on. You will have the option to express interest in specific teams and levels in your initial application. Generally, you can expect the following: 
• Coordinators:
• NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $92,000
• All other US locations: $83,500
• Specialists/Associates
• NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $113,000
• All other US locations: $102,500
• Senior Specialists/Associates
• NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $135,500
• All other US locations: $123,000
• Location: GiveWell’s staff work primarily remotely, within the US and abroad. The positions offered in this hiring round are all eligible to work fully remotely within the US.*
• Offices: You are welcome but not required to work from our offices in Oakland, California or Brooklyn, NYC. 
• *For the Chief of Staff to the COO, some preference will be given for candidates who are willing to work in person in our Oakland office 1-2 days per week. Relocation support may be available.
• Flexibility: We support and encourage flexible working, including flexible hours, working remotely, and working from the office when you choose. The majority of our staff, including senior management, work flexibly in one way or another.
• Benefits: A few highlights of our benefits offerings:
• Fully funded health, dental, vision, and life insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the US for you and any dependents)
• Four weeks of paid time off per year plus an annual summer break 
• 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave
• Ergonomic home workstations or coworking space memberships
• Automatic contribution equal to 5% of your gross salary into your 403(b) retirement plan (for US based staff)
• Travel: GiveWell hosts “Visit Weeks” twice a year in our Oakland, California, office and up to two annual departmental retreats. Attending these in-person opportunities will be important to fulfilling the goals of this role. Occasional additional travel may be requested for certain roles.
• Start date: We’d like a candidate to start as soon as possible after receiving an offer, but we’ll offer flexibility for candidates whose personal or professional circumstances require them to moderately delay their start date.
• Application deadline: September 7th, 2026.