Senior Communications Officer, Editorial & Production

GiveWell’s mission is to help people in need as much as we can by researching the most cost‑effective ways to save and improve lives, sharing our work openly, and directing donations to the programs we believe will do the most good. Our work, which focuses on global health and well-being, is funded by tens of thousa...

We’re hiring a Senior Communications Officer, Editorial & Production to lead the editorial quality and production of GiveWell’s communications. You will set the editorial bar, build the people and systems needed to produce excellent work consistently and at increasing scale, and personally shape some of our most com...

This role reports to Steven Profaizer, our Vice President of Communications, and will lead a small and growing team. This is one of three new communications leadership roles, alongside a Senior Communications Officer, Strategic Communications and a Senior Communications Officer, Media & Public Affairs.

Both our research and impact are expanding. Last year, we directed more than $400 million to highly cost-effective programs that save and improve lives. This year, we expect our grantmaking to approach, and possibly exceed, $1 billion.
To build toward the communications capacity this next stage requires, we are rapidly expanding our team. Together with the Vice President of Communications, the three new Senior Communications Officers will form GiveWell’s communications leadership team. Each leader will own their function, but much of the work that matters most—like team strategies, major initiatives, partnership campaigns, and how we present the organization as a whole—will involve all three. We will expect this group to set shared priorities and work closely together to achieve the team’s goals.
In this hands-on leadership position, you’ll own the editorial quality and production of GiveWell’s communications, with end-to-end responsibility for this emerging function. You’ll strengthen its standards, hire and develop its people, build its systems, and personally own its hardest and most consequential work. This is an opportunity to build, not just inherit, an important function at a critical point in GiveWell’s development. You’ll start with a small team and grow it over time. 
While this role is set at the Senior Communications Officer level, we may consider hiring an exceptional candidate as a Communications Director—with greater expectations, responsibilities, and compensation.
As Senior Communications Officer, Editorial & Production, you will be responsible not only for the quality of individual pieces but also for creating a content operation that can prioritize effectively, manage dependencies, use its resources well, and deliver reliably. This will require both senior editorial judgment and strong operational leadership.
Own the editorial quality and production of GiveWell’s communications, ensuring that our work is clear, accurate, useful, carefully reasoned, and delivered on time. You will serve as GiveWell’s senior editor for our communications content, with responsibility for returning or correcting work that does not meet our editorial bar.
Build and manage the workflows, editorial standards, review processes, and production systems that allow GiveWell to create consistently excellent content at increasing scale.
Lead planning, prioritization, and resource allocation for GiveWell’s owned-content portfolio, managing dependencies and moving complex projects from concept through publication.
Uphold GiveWell’s voice and editorial standards across everything we publish, and help colleagues across the organization write within them.
Own the development of GiveWell’s recurring communications and reporting products, turning established priorities and messaging into clear, accurate content.
Personally create, edit, or substantially shape our most complex, sensitive, or high-priority content. 
Oversee GiveWell’s website content operations, including the people and processes responsible for routine updates and publishing, so that the site remains accurate, current, and consistent with our editorial standards.
Serve as a senior editorial and production partner to teams across GiveWell, helping shape high-priority projects early, determine the right format and production approach, and establish clear roles, review paths, and timelines.
Oversee the production of design, visual, and multimedia assets across GiveWell’s channels, and the internal team and external contractors who create them.
Manage and develop one or two team members initially, and determine how the function’s team and capabilities should grow over time.
People who can develop a strong point of view and hold it with confidence, but remain genuinely open to challenge, new information, and better ideas.
Self-starters who take ownership, are comfortable creating structure in an evolving environment, and can make thoughtful decisions without always having complete information.
People who are proactive and anticipatory, who identify opportunities, risks, bottlenecks, and communications needs before they become obvious.
Collaborative leaders who raise the quality of the work around them and build strong relationships across teams.
People who coordinate well with peers, resolve dependencies and disagreements, and make shared work clearer rather than more complicated.
You want to step into a mature function with established systems, rather than build one while you run it.
You do best with clear direction and established priorities. We’ll expect you to set most of your own, make most decisions yourself, and reach substantial autonomy within your first six months.
You prefer advising on communications to producing and being accountable for them.
You want sole ownership of an organization’s overarching communications strategy and brand. At GiveWell, the Vice President of Communications owns that direction; you would help shape it and lead your function within it.
You want to lead a large team from day one. This team is small today, and much of the most difficult work will be yours to do directly.
You find standards of precision and understatement limiting and frustrating. We work extremely hard to only communicate accurately what we know and what we don’t.

You are skilled at using communications to help people understand complex ideas, build trust, and take action. You are comfortable being accountable for outcomes, making consequential decisions with limited oversight, and knowing which decisions genuinely require escalation.
You are energized by intellectually demanding work, and the challenges of creating engaging communications within a careful and precise style. You can engage deeply with GiveWell’s research, and you are comfortable understanding and communicating about data in detail. You have a long track record of getting up to speed quickly on complex subject matter and carefully communicating to a very high standard. You can build a compelling narrative that is entirely factual, representing what is known and unknown without overstating or hedging into vagueness—and you find the idea of working with GiveWell’s exacting communications standards exciting rather than limiting.
Your background includes significant experience leading communications in complex, high-stakes environments. This should include 10+ years of experience leading editorial and content-production work, setting and maintaining editorial standards, managing writers and editors, and building systems that produce consistently high-quality work. You have deep experience owning that work end to end, not just contributing to it. You’ve remained a hands-on leader who enjoys the work itself, as well as the strategy and systems behind it.
You are a precise editor of complex or technical content: you read text literally and carefully, and you notice when a claim isn’t supported by the evidence behind it. You should be able to combine high standards for individual work with the operational judgment needed to prioritize, allocate resources, manage complex production, and increase capacity over time. You should understand how content is developed through writing, editing, design, audio, graphics, websites, and other formats—even if you are not personally an expert in every medium.
Exceptional communications judgment, including the ability to understand audience, context, risk, timing, and the underlying substance of a message.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to quickly make complex ideas clear and compelling without sacrificing rigor or nuance.
A track record of building and leading: you have created or substantially rebuilt a team or function—not only run ones you inherited—and you have hired, developed, and managed people.
Recent, hands-on excellence at your craft: you can point to work from the past few years that you personally produced or substantially shaped.
Experience producing communications that are direct and factual while being engaging and effective with their target audiences—work that succeeds through substance and clarity rather than embellishment.
Intellectual curiosity and the ability to engage deeply with GiveWell’s research and ideas, even without prior experience in our giving areas.
Experience advising executives or other senior decision-makers directly.
Strong alignment with GiveWell’s mission and values, including truth-seeking, transparency, and a commitment to communicating accurately and thoughtfully.