A unique opportunity to be in the room where it happens

Please submit your application by 11:59pm Pacific Time on Sunday, February 9th to be considered.

About CEA

The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) is an organization dedicated to building and stewarding a global community of people who are thinking carefully about the world’s most pressing problems and taking action to solve them. Our strategic priorities include growing the effective altruism community, improving the EA brand, and diversifying EA funding sources.

Join us in building and stewarding a community dedicated to doing good. We want to help build a radically better world, which will take the best effort of many people. We want to contribute to humanity solving a range of pressing global problems — like poverty, factory farming, and existential risk — and being prepared to face the challenges of tomorrow.

About the role

We are hiring an Associate to increase the capacity of our Executive Office, working closely with our CEO and Chief of Staff to ensure that CEA and effective altruism maximise our potential for impact.

CEA is entering a new era, with Zach Robinson having joined as our CEO and the process underway to spin out from Effective Ventures. Our work now will influence the trajectory not only of an independent organisation with around 50 staff, a budget over $30 million, and an established track record of delivering highly impactful programs, but through our stewardship of the community the trajectory of EA more broadly.

Joining our Exec Office team is a unique opportunity to be in the room where it happens: you will have unrivaled visibility into the inner workings of our Executive Office, Zach’s decision making as CEO, and the functioning of the EA ecosystem. We’re a team of generalists sharing a wide range of critical functions, from administration to communications and fundraising to strategy, and we are always in triage. We are looking for someone capable of contributing immediately across our full range of responsibilities, including improving our processes and prioritization. Our work is often unpredictable, so we’re looking for someone who’s willing to adapt to the team’s needs, including when that involves taking on unglamorous tasks.

We can imagine two different profiles for this role and exceptional candidates with a wide range of experience fitting into either one, and we will tailor the role to the profile of our successful candidate:

• Stable Support Role: If you are excited about excelling in this role for an extended period of time, we expect you could unlock a huge amount of value by being a force multiplier for Zach and our team, and therefore for CEA and the EA ecosystem as a whole. We endorse this post about appreciating Stable Support Roles.
• Leadership Development Role: We believe that as well as an opportunity to make an immediate impact, our team is an excellent training ground for future EA leaders. We would still be looking for someone motivated to take on this role as scoped, including its administrative aspects, but with a view to accelerating your development towards leadership roles at CEA or within the EA ecosystem. We’d increase the scope of the role over time as your capacity and skills allow.
  • This could be a fit for someone with more professional experience looking to build context and a network by transitioning into EA work, or someone earlier in their career with more exposure to EA looking to build the experience and skills required in leadership roles.
  • You would report to Oscar Howie, our Chief of Staff, who was himself originally hired as an Executive Assistant with a decade of professional experience but little exposure to EA. He was then promoted to become part of our Leadership team with responsibility for multiple aspects of our strategy and operations. Oscar is excited to invest in someone with the potential to become a Chief of Staff.
  • We’d ideally like you to stay in this role for two years, after which you’d help us hire a replacement and we’d help a high performer find another high impact and/or high-growth-potential role at CEA or elsewhere.

Responsibilities

We are aiming to build an Exec Office team of versatile generalists to ensure we have the flex capacity required to tackle our wide-ranging and ever-changing responsibilities. Our work is often unpredictable: we can’t predict everything you might do, so we’re looking for someone who’s willing to adapt to the team’s needs, including when that involves taking on unglamorous tasks.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Administration: you will be responsible for note-taking, calendar management, inbox management, task management and logistics (e.g. travel).
• Tracking team priorities: you will help prioritize and protect Zach’s time and attention. You will also improve our team-wide prioritization and planning processes.
• Project management: you will be responsible for delivering projects assigned to you on time and to a high standard, including coordinating our team and other relevant staff and stakeholders.
• Communicating with staff and stakeholders: you will be responsible for communicating and building relationships with staff and other stakeholders on behalf of Zach and Oscar (including drafting our correspondence and representing us through your own outputs).

Additionally, you will have opportunities to take on additional responsibilities over time as your capacity and skills allow, such as:

• Strategic problem solving: we do not expect to have all the answers about how best to achieve our goals, and you will sometimes be responsible for figuring this out and making actionable proposals.
• Special projects: establish and execute on new workstreams.
• Communicating with external audiences: you may be responsible for researching, drafting and editing content intended for audiences inside and outside the EA community, such as Forum posts, EAG talks and op-eds.

Expectations for taking on these additional responsibilities will be higher for the Leadership Development Role.

What we are looking for

We are looking for someone capable of contributing immediately across our full range of responsibilities. In order to earn our trust, we’d expect you to be able to demonstrate these attributes:

• Reliability and productivity: we need to be able to rely on you to deliver on your commitments. That will depend on your ability to:
  • Be organised,
  • Produce a high volume of output,
  • Plan and manage projects,
  • Prioritize appropriately between projects.
• Autonomy and proactivity: you will need to take the initiative in terms of figuring out the best way to achieve our goals and independently execute on plans that deliver them.
• Adaptability: you will need to adapt your working style to be compatible with the Exec Office’s norms. Responsibilities can be varied and unpredictable, and you’ll need to flexibly take on projects.
• Coordination and relationship building: you will need to build and manage relationships with staff and stakeholders, understand their perspectives and make appropriate trade-offs between their competing priorities. We expect you to be able to build rapport and trust quickly with a wide variety of people.
• Discretion: you will have privileged access to lots of information, and we need you to be able to make information flow as smoothly as possible across our Exec Office and CEA teams without sharing things that are confidential or sensitive.
• Clear and concise communication.

Additionally, we expect these attributes to be valuable for candidates interested in the Leadership Development Role:

• Learning and improving quickly: you will need to be receptive to feedback and proactive about putting it into practice.
• Sound judgement and strong reasoning: you will be acting under uncertainty, facing challenges without obvious solutions, and will need to make your decision-making legible to others.
• Compelling communications: you will benefit from being able to speak to and write for a range of different audiences, which will require you to have a good understanding of EA and associated ideas or (especially for candidates with more professional experience) demonstrate an interest in and aptitude for quickly learning more.

Other information

• This is a full-time, remote position reporting to Oscar Howie, our Chief of Staff. We prefer applicants who are able to work in time zones between the UK and US Pacific Time.
  • We have an office in Oxford, UK, that you would have access to. If candidates would prefer to work from the UK, we welcome applicants from overseas and we’ll sponsor visas where possible.
• Start date: We’d ideally have you start as soon as possible, but can be flexible for the right candidate.
• Compensation
  • US: total compensation package of $70,028, comprising a base salary of $63,662 and a 10% 401k contribution.
  • UK: total compensation package of £41,683, comprising a base salary of £37,894 and a 10% pension contribution.
  • For candidates outside the US/UK, we offer comparable compensation to the UK.
  • We are willing to consider higher compensation for experienced and outstanding candidates.
• Benefits include private insurance, flexible work hours, a $6,000 / £5,000 annual professional development allowance, a $6,000 / £5,000 mental health support allowance, extended parental leave, ergonomic equipment, unconditional 10% pension / 401k contribution, 25 days of paid vacation, and more.
• We are committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply. We especially encourage applications from self-identified women and people of colour who are excited about contributing to our mission. The Centre for Effective Altruism is an equal opportunity employer. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact jobs@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.
• We are committed to protecting your data. See our privacy policy for more information.
• Please submit your application by 11:59pm Pacific Time on Sunday, February 9th to be considered.