About the Role
Rethink Priorities’ Animal Welfare Department advances evidence-based and reason-driven change for animals. Within it, the Neglected Animals Program works on animals that are overlooked relative to how many of them there are — farmed invertebrates and wild animals. These are populations counted in the hundreds of billions and upwards, almost entirely outside the scope of existing animal welfare protections, and receiving a tiny fraction of the attention directed at farmed vertebrates.
We are looking for a Program Officer or Senior Program Officer to take a substantial share of this program’s work and run with it, primarily focused on terrestrial invertebrate welfare — both farmed and wild.
The program’s bottleneck is finding out which questions matter, getting them investigated by the most appropriate talent, and ensuring the analysis is acted upon. Sometimes that means doing the research in-house. But often it means finding and managing the right contractor, or convening the handful of organizations working on a particular problem.
Where your time would go. Roughly half your time on farmed terrestrial invertebrates and half on wild ones. The balance will shift as opportunities move. The wild side of this work is at an earlier stage of strategic development than the farmed side. In the future, this role could expand to cover other wild animals.
Key Responsibilities and the Types of Tasks Involved in the Role
~35% Analysis and intervention evaluation — decision-oriented analysis that lets aligned funders and organizations make better calls.
- Run a shallow intervention review: go from a loosely specified idea to a defensible recommendation on whether it is worth pursuing, within a fixed time budget.
- Identify and interview experts on questions that academic and gray literature cannot answer.
- Conduct analysis of a production system — its economics, cost, and whether it can plausibly be commercially viable at scale — or write the specification for a contractor to build one and quality-assure what they deliver.
- Analyze published financial disclosures to understand a company’s or a sector’s trajectory, rather than relying on media reports or press releases.
~30% Commissioning and overseeing external work — commissioning work, convening the field, and incubating new efforts where nothing suitable exists.
- Scope, commission, and manage an external contractor or consultancy, including in a region where we currently have no in-house presence — and decide when to stop work that isn’t delivering.
~25% Stakeholder engagement and coordination — building the relationships that let well-informed decisions actually get made.
- Help organize a coordination event that brings together the organizations working on a shared problem, and follow through on what was agreed.
- Write and present an update for a funder on what a project has achieved, what it has not, and what you would do differently.
- Present your work at a conference and build relationships with others working in the field.
~10% Strategy and opportunity identification — bringing forward new opportunities, and honestly assessing which of the program’s current bets are not working.
- Take an idea that someone has floated, evaluate it honestly, and either run with it or kill it.
- Exercise judgment about information sensitivity — some of this program’s work requires discretion about what is shared, with whom, and when.
What Sorts of Topics You Would Work On
To get a sense of the kind of question you would investigate, see the executive summaries of:
- Investments into insect farming
- Can black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) producers displace fishmeal?
- Database of near-term interventions for wild animals
- Forecasting farmed animal numbers in 2033
You are also welcome to browse our full research database. Note that not all our work in this space is openly published.
Levels and Compensation
The salary range ($79,000–$98,500 USD pre-tax) covers more than one seniority step. Toward the upper end of the range we would expect more of the following:
- Autonomy — running projects with minimal oversight, and taking the initiative to learn tasks you have not done before.
- Judgment we lean on — program leadership consulting you on which projects are worth taking on at all, not just how to execute them.
- A track record of moving decision-makers — analysis aimed at changing what someone outside your own organization actually does, where you elicited their needs early and shaped the output around them.
- Independent stakeholder relationships — being trusted as a counterpart in your own right by people outside RP.
Toward the lower end of the range we would expect strong analytical capability and clear evidence of potential, with less of a track record behind it — we would expect to coach you on commissioning external work and on building relationships in the field. Toward the upper end we would expect you to arrive already able to do both, and we would lean on your judgment about which projects are worth taking on at all. You do not need to signal which end you think you fit; we assess that from your answers.
This role does not currently include line management of RP staff, and would not involve running hiring rounds or performance reviews — though you would manage contractors and external partners. At the Senior Program Officer level, line management responsibilities may be introduced in future.
What We Are Looking For
Essential criteria:
- Analytical judgment under time pressure. You can take a vague but important question, scope it sensibly, identify critical assumptions, choose a defensible method, and reach a usable answer by a deadline — rather than an exhaustive answer late.
- Getting work done through other people. You have specified a piece of work for someone else to deliver — a contractor, consultant, agency, or a team outside your own — held them to it, and formed your own view about whether what came back was good enough to act on.
- Quantitative reasoning. You are comfortable building, interrogating, and explaining simple models. You can produce quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, and you are comfortable articulating confidence in assumptions or beliefs using numbers as well as words.
- Clear written communication for decision-makers. You can explain a chain of reasoning — premises, inferences, and where it might be wrong — to an intelligent reader who is not a specialist and who does not have much time.
- Comfort with deep uncertainty. You can give a caveated but genuinely decision-useful answer with transparent reasoning, instead of waiting for evidence that will not arrive.
- Sound judgment about sensitive information. You can be trusted to hold information carefully and to work out for yourself what should and should not be shared.
- Pragmatism and flexibility. The program’s priorities move. You are comfortable being redeployed onto a different problem, and comfortable abandoning your own idea when the evidence turns.
- Truthseeking and research ethics. A steadfast commitment to following the evidence, including when it undercuts a conclusion you or we would prefer.
- Commitment to the mission — you care about improving the welfare of animals who are neglected relative to their numbers, and you are open to focusing your career on terrestrial invertebrates, building expertise and networks in the field.
Desirable criteria:
- Techno-economic analysis, unit-economics modeling, or industry/market analysis — in any sector.
- Reading and interpreting company financial statements, statutory accounts, or investor disclosures.
- Knowledge of invertebrate biology or entomology, in either a production or an ecological context.
- Knowledge of agricultural production systems, animal feed, crop protection, or waste management.
- Working experience in low- and middle-income country contexts, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia.
- Grantmaking, due diligence, procurement, or contract management experience.
- Reporting to funders, grant-makers, or a board.
- Convening or facilitating processes involving several organizations with differing interests.
- Skill with strategic decision-making tools (stakeholder mapping, scenario analysis, SWOT).
- Proficiency with R or Python.
- Experience working in or volunteering for the animal advocacy movement.
- Working proficiency in a language other than English, particularly one spoken in a major agricultural producing region.
- Working constructively with external parties whose interests and priorities do not fully align with your own.
- Overseeing a project from conception to delivery in a remote, distributed team.
- Comfortable working in an AI-forward workplace.
We expect that even highly qualified applicants will not meet all of these criteria. We encourage you to apply even if you do not have some of these skills, knowledge, and experiences.
What We Offer
Compensation
We offer an annual salary between the following ranges for a full-time Program Officer and Senior Program Officer positions, prorated for part-time work:
- $79,000–$98,500 USD pre-tax
- £61,000–£76,600 GBP pre-tax
- €71,000–€89,350 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. Compensation is not restricted to the currencies listed above. 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.
- Remote-first environment, including flexible work hours and schedule.
- Comprehensive global benefits program, including statutory benefits as required by local law, and supplemental benefits specific to each country (varies by location).
- Generous paid time off (PTO) and unpaid leave, including:
- Unlimited vacation with a minimum number of required statutory days off.
- “Mandated” 3 weeks total mid- and end-year organization-wide breaks.
- Unlimited (within reason) personal and sick paid and unpaid leave.
- Parental leave — at least 4–9 months of a combination of paid and unpaid leave, available prior to and/or during the first 2 years after a child’s birth or adoption.
- Other paid and unpaid leave (e.g., bereavement).
- Technology stipend of $2,000 USD equivalent every 3 years for work and office equipment.
- AI tools budget of $40 USD equivalent monthly.
- Learning opportunities, including workshops/training sessions and 10% of work time dedicated to professional and personal development.
- Paid work trips, including one annual all-staff Mega Team Retreat and relevant conferences.
- Virtual co-working spaces, including a private Rethink Priorities Focusmate group.
- RP Peer Support Program for New Employees.
- Other benefits at the discretion of RP Leadership.
- A caring team that values respectful work relations and a healthy work-life balance.
- Low administrative bureaucracy.
- We don’t provide snacks, but we could mail you a box of Oreos if you want!
