Worldview Investigations Philosophy and/or Quantitative Researcher (EXPIRED)

ABOUT THE POSITION:   To encourage and support affiliations with leading universities worldwide, we are happy to accommodate applicants who wish to keep their current university affiliation (e.g., with teaching buy-outs for professors). 

We are looking for a Philosophy Researcher and/or Quantitative Researcher to temporarily join our Worldview Investigations Team to conduct research on a variety of cross-cutting topics. This position offers a significant opportunity for thoughtful, and curious individuals to shift priorities, research areas, and philanthropic spending strategies of major evidence-based, high-impact non-profit organizations through interdisciplinary work analyzing and publishing on cross-cutting topics including, but not limited to:

• 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

The work will involve getting up to speed with the literature in different fields, contacting experts, writing up reasoning in a manner that is understandable for experts and non-experts alike, and engaging with quantitative models.

COMPENSATION:

• 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. To ensure fairness, RP does not negotiate salaries.  
• 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.

This is a temporary, 1-year position (with a 3-month probationary period) with an opportunity for a year renewal and/or a permanent employment offer at the end of the first year. This role is fully remote and we are able to legally hire in many countries. While we welcome applicants from all time zones, you may be expected to attend meetings during working hours between UTC-8 and UTC+3 time zones, where most of our staff are based. This role is open to part-time (minimum 20 hours per week) and full-time candidates; however, we have a preference for candidates who are able to work full-time.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:  As a Worldview Investigations Researcher, your main responsibilities will include:

• Evaluating strength of evidence, risk of bias and generalizability to motivate and inform conclusions and/or new research studies.
• 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 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.

SKILLS and COMPETENCIES:

• 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.
• An aptitude for mathematical reasoning, and some familiarity with statistics.
• Attention to detail and a commitment to maintaining high quality and accuracy in all research output.
• Willingness and ability to learn and apply new approaches to accomplish tasks, as required.
• A disposition that favors evidence-based reasoning and critical thinking.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills demonstrated through the authorship of philosophical papers 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).
• 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).

KNOWLEDGE and EXPERIENCE:

• A PhD or equivalent knowledge in moral philosophy, decision theory, or epistemology.
• 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.
• Experience reviewing and critically assessing original research across multiple disciplines.
• Demonstrated track record of developing, leading and completing excellent research, including quantitative analysis where appropriate.
• Some knowledge of empirical research methods, principles, techniques and philosophies.
• Prior experience managing or collaborating with multidisciplinary teams, including but not limited to economists, philosophers and cognitive scientists.