Senior Researcher, Animal Welfare
Rethink Priorities
📍 Remote (Global) 🕔 Full Time
💰 $90- $106K p.a. ⏳ 26/03/2025
Rethink Priorities’ Animal Welfare Department is a hub and platform that advances and pioneers evidence-based and reason-driven change for animals. The department seeks to hire a Senior Researcher to help fulfill our mission of accelerating the end of factory farming and reducing the suffering of animals living in the wild. The Senior Researcher would play a leading role in each of our core programs:
Research: We accelerate the development of evidence-based findings and insights for those working towards a better future for animals.
Stakeholder engagement: We build meaningful connections to support better-informed decision-making of advocates, charitable organizations, and others improving animal welfare worldwide.
Infrastructure development: We experiment and scale up novel approaches to help the most neglected animals and strengthen the capacity of the animal welfare movement.
The types of tasks involved in the role
Within the first year, you are likely to do most of the following at least once:
Conduct a literature review to get a better sense of the scale of an issue negatively affecting animals
Model the cost-effectiveness analysis on an intervention to reduce animal suffering
Identify and interview experts to address questions that cannot be easily answered by consulting academic or grey literature.
Deliver an oral presentation on your recent work at a conference, and network with other attendees.
Help organize a coordination event to help the animal movement prioritize which issues to tackle next.
What sorts of topics you would work on:
Check out the executive summaries of our reports on investments into insect farming, institutional meat reduction campaigns, and labeling restrictions for alternative proteins to get a sense of the types of questions you would investigate. Many of our projects are self-generated, based on ideas that we believe deserve more attention, while others are requested directly from mission-aligned philanthropic or advocacy organizations.
What makes this a "Senior" role:
The level of autonomy: You have the experience to execute projects with minimal oversight. While you have many colleagues you can consult, you will take the initiative to learn how to do tasks you have not done before.
The opportunity to provide strategic input: Department leadership will often consult you on decisions of strategic importance, such as which projects to work on.
Your demonstrated ability to tailoring outputs to decision-makers: You have conducted research that is aimed at influencing stakeholders other than your peers. As part of that experience, you have elicited the needs of your main audience early on during projects, and have adjusted the presentation to ensure that the key insights are easy for them to find and understand.
The successful candidate will report directly to Senior Research Manager William McAuliffe and collaborate with the entire Animal Welfare department.
Key Responsibilities
As a Senior Researcher, you will play a key role in designing, conducting, and communicating high-quality research that informs and guides animal welfare leaders, organizations, policymakers, and charitable foundations in developing strategies to improve animal welfare.
In line with this overarching mission, your main responsibilities will include:
Engaging with external stakeholders to identify how to create deliverables to their preferred specifications.
Building Fermi estimates and forecasts, explicitly incorporating uncertainty.
Drafting well-written reports from inception to delivery, with minimal oversight.
Ensuring that projects remain on track, and proactively identify mitigation measures when barriers arise.
Assessing how sociopolitical and economic developments may pose threats or opportunities for animals
What We’re Looking For
Skills and Competencies
Required
An abiding commitment to the mission of Rethink Priorities' Animal Welfare Department
Ability and willingness to learn how to use and interpret a wide variety of methods, including quantitative concepts and models.
Excellent at explaining the premises and inferences involved in a chain of reasoning
The ability to communicate clearly about complex concepts that may be unfamiliar to your target audience.
Resourcefulness to identify tractable ways to address open-ended questions
A steadfast commitment to truthseeking and principles of research ethics
Professionalism in interactions with all colleagues and external stakeholders
Comfort with remote work and asynchronous collaboration using technologies like G Suite (we're a remote-first organization with staff in multiple time zones)
Nice to have
Proficiency with R or Python
Skill in using strategic decision-making tools (e.g., SWOT analysis, PEST analysis, stakeholder mapping, etc.)
Knowledge and Experience
Required
5+ years conducting relevant research
Many topics count as "relevant," including (a) animal welfare science, (b) evaluating or informing government policy, (c) consulting to inform decisions in an industry, or (d) regular use of quantitative models.
If your research during a master's or PhD program was relevant, it counts towards this requirement.
At least one past role where a key responsibility involved liaising with external stakeholders to ensure that your research outputs are tailored to their needs.
Comfort with using consequentialist moral frameworks and assessing opportunities in terms of their marginal cost-effectiveness.
Nice to have
Experience working in or volunteering for the animal advocacy movement
Knowledge about politicians, parties, and policies in a jurisdiction that produces or consumes a large number of animals.
Knowledge of methods for assessing sentience and welfare in nonhuman animals.
Expertise in supply chains for farmed-raised food or feed (e.g., import markets for aquaculture products).
Our Hiring Process
There are 5 evaluation stages: (1) application prompts, (2) work samples, (3) skills assessment, (4) interviews and (5) reference checks. You can find more details about what each stage includes here. Only candidates that meet the minimal bar at a given stage will proceed to the next stage. We aim to complete assessments of each stage within one to two weeks, so that you can learn quickly whether you will proceed to the next stage.
What We Offer
Compensation
The annual salary for this full-time position ranges from $90,000 to $106,000 USD pre-tax (based on a 40-hour workweek). For part-time roles, the salary will be prorated, with a minimum requirement of 32 hours per week.
The exact salary will be based on the candidate’s prior relevant experience and corresponding title level, and calculated using RP’s salary algorithm.
Compensation is not restricted to USD, and can be offered in other currencies based on currency rates set in RP's salary algorithm, and in accordance with any applicable legal or regulatory requirements.
To ensure fairness across the entire organization, RP does not negotiate salaries.
Other Benefits
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.
Flexible work hours and location.
Comprehensive global benefits package (while this varies 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 and unpaid leave, including:
“Mandated” 3-week total mid- and end-year organization-wide breaks
Unlimited (within reason) personal and sick paid and unpaid leave
Parental leave - up to 4 months paid and up to an additional 5 months unpaid parental leave that can be taken prior to and/or during the first 2 years after a child’s birth or adoption
Other paid and unpaid leave (e.g., bereavement)
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
Role-Specific
Work Environment and Visa Sponsorship: This role is fully remote and we are able to legally hire in many countries. In certain cases, we may be able to provide visa sponsorship to the US or UK and help candidates relocate. If you have questions about whether we can hire or provide visa sponsorship in another country and if this will influence your decision about applying, please contact careers@rethinkpriorities.org before submitting your application.
Time Zones and Working Hours: While we welcome applicants from all time zones, your work schedule should have at least 2 hours of overlap with 8AM-4PM EST on weekdays. Depending on your personal timezone, this might mean early morning or evening calls; however, you would not be required to attend calls outside of waking hours.
Full-Time Position: This role is open to candidates who are available to work at least 32 hours per week.
Travel: Please note that international travel is an essential requirement for this position. The person in this role can expect to attend 1-2 workshops/conferences events (~3-8 workdays) a year, sometimes requiring international flights. For other travel, remote attendance is an available alternative (e.g., annual all staff retreat). We ask that you only apply if you are able to meet the travel requirements for this position.
Language: Professional level of English language is required for all roles at Rethink Priorities.
Hiring Process-Specific
Extension requests: We will try to accommodate extension requests that are made before the deadline and are up to three (3) days. We generally cannot accommodate extension requests made after the application deadline, or are longer than 3 days, and cannot accept late submissions to ensure fairness to other applicants.
Application materials: All application materials must be submitted in English language; otherwise, we will not be able to evaluate your candidacy.
Inclusivity and fairness: RP is committed to building an inclusive, equitable, and supportive community for you to thrive and do your best work. 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 through 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.
Accessibility: We’re committed to running an inclusive and accessible hiring 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.
Hiring Software: We use a Pinpoint platform for our recruitment and hiring processes and all of the email correspondence is done via Pinpoint. We encourage you to add Pinpoint domain (@pinpoint.email) to your trusted contacts and/or check your 'spam', 'promotions' and ‘updates’ folders, if you don’t hear from us within the expected timeframe.
Other: Visit our Career webpage if you’d like to know more about our hiring process, culture, and what working at RP is like.
