Summary
CEARCH is hiring researchers; for more details and to apply, refer to the job description here.
CEARCH
The Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research (CEARCH) conducts cause prioritization research and outreach – identifying the most important problems in the world and helping to direct resources towards solving them, so as to maximize global welfare. As part of this effort, we carry out:
- A comprehensive search for causes
- Rigorous cause prioritization research, with (a) shallow research for all causes, (b) intermediate research for more promising causes, and (c) deep research for potential top causes.
- Reasoning transparency and outreach to allow both the EA and non-EA movement to update on our findings and to support the most impactful causes available.
CEARCH emerged from the 2022 Charity Entrepreneurship incubation program, and its founder Joel Tan is a long-time effective altruist with experience in political, economic and policy work.
The Role
As a researcher, you will be performing:
- Cause prioritization research and outreach – searching for causes, researching them, and engaging other organizations and individuals to use our research.
- Various generalist tasks (e.g. planning, administration).
In your first couple of months, you will likely be focusing on research, but you will eventually get to handle more outreach-related work (e.g. representing CEARCH at EAG/EAGx).
Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate will:
- Care about impact and doing good above all.
- Have strong research skills.
- Be able to work well in a team.
Benefits
The chief reason you might be interested in this role is that it can be expected to be highly impactful.
- Our internal cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) suggests that we save around 1,700 disability-adjusted life years (or the equivalent of 58 lives) per USD 100,000 spent, which is around 10x more cost-effective than GiveWell top charities.
- External analysis supports this assessment, with Charity Entrepreneurship's CEA finding that we should be around 8x as cost effective as top EA causes.
- That said, such estimates should not be taken literally, given the high amount of uncertainty involved. Rather, they should be understood as giving a sense of how promising CEARCH's work – and hence your work with us – will be, given (a) the outsized benefits from identifying extremely impactful causes and directing resources there, and (b) the low operating costs of research and outreach.
Salary offered will be competitive, and dependent on ability and relevant experience.
Other benefits include remote work, flexible hours, and a chance to become a leader within the organization and an influential member of the EA community as we grow.
How to Apply
To apply, please fill up and submit the following application form. In terms of the overall hiring process, there will be the following stages:
- Stage 1: An application form (<= 0.5 hours)
- Stage 2: An interview (<= 0.5 hours)
- Stage 3: A work test (~4 days across 2 weeks – or more, if requested – with a lot of flexibility)
Q&A
What causes do you work on?
- All sorts of (a) global health and wellbeing causes, (b) longtermist causes, as well as (c) meta causes.
Should I worry about my counterfactual impact?
- No – good researchers are hard to find, and the market is competitive; you should not worry about replaceability at all.
When should I expect to hear back?
- If we're keen on your application, we'll try to get back within 3 weeks.
