We’re excited to announce that the Global Health and Wellbeing Cause Prioritization team at Open Philanthropy will be hiring several interns this summer to work with us on research to help pick new causes to support. We think this is a great way for us to grow our capacity, develop research talent, and expand our pipeline for future full-time roles. The key points are:
Full details (and a link to the application) are available here and are also copied below.
We hope that you’ll apply and share the news with others!
We’re looking for students currently enrolled in degree programs (or people whose work offers externship/secondment opportunities) to apply for a research internship from June-August 2022 and help us investigate important questions and causes. We see the internship as a way to grow our capacity, develop promising research talent, and expand our recruiting pipeline for full-time roles down the line. We plan to treat interns as team members working on the team’s core priorities, while also showing them how Open Philanthropy works and helping them build skills important for cause prioritization research.
Most projects will take the form of “opinionated, short research briefs” – synthesizing expert opinion, academic research, and prior views to get to a bottom line on an important question or promising area. Examples of projects our interns have taken on in the past include:
We expect that future interns will work on additional shallow investigations on topics such as reducing the risk of great power conflict, electrification for industrial development, and counterfeit drugs in LMICs. Interns will work on multiple projects of different depths, in the same way as full-time team members. Specific projects will depend on the team’s needs and the intern’s skills. Interns will report to an existing cause prioritization team member and participate in team meetings and discussions, including presenting their work to the team for feedback.
Like the day-to-day work of our full-time Research and Strategy Fellows, the internship would require:
We’re open to a variety of backgrounds, but all applicants must be enrolled in a degree program at the time that they are applying, or work at an organization that offers externship/secondment opportunities. Enrolled applicants must be no more than 1 year away from graduation in an undergraduate or masters program, or must be in their 2nd year or higher in a doctoral program. If you have any questions about your eligibility, please feel free to reach out to [email protected].
We expect that successful applicants will likely have a background in social science (including, but not limited to, having or working towards a master’s or PhD in a social science topic), comfort with quantitative approaches and methods, and experience in topics that are core to the GHW approach, such as economic development/growth, public health, scientific research, etc.
In the application form, we’ll offer a choice between Research and Strategy tracks, which map to the distinction between our full-time Research and Strategy Fellow positions. In general, both tracks often work on similar types of problems and there are many overlapping skills between the two tracks. However, the Research track involves deeper familiarity with social science research and more comfort interrogating the methodologies used in economics, political science, and similar fields, while the Strategy track tends to rely more on quicker, more assumptions-driven calculations, as well as projects that are more focused on how to “make something happen” in the world.
We anticipate hiring more Research track interns than Strategy interns, so if you’re uncertain which sounds like a better fit for you, we’d encourage you to select the Research track (but otherwise encourage you to select whichever fits your background and interests better).
Please apply by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on April 3 to be considered.
We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis, so we encourage interested candidates to apply early. The process will have three main steps: initial application, completion of a work test (for which we offer an honorarium payment to acknowledge applicants' time), and several interviews with the team.
We aim to employ people with many different experiences, perspectives and backgrounds who share our passion for accomplishing as much good as we can. We are committed to creating an environment where all employees have the opportunity to succeed, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status. We particularly encourage applications from self-identified women, people of color and people from low and middle income countries.
If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact [email protected].
