Working at Coefficient Giving

Employees may take paid time off at their discretion, and we encourage staff to take ~20 days of paid time off per year (in addition to 16 days off for specific holidays). We also offer up to 16 weeks paid parental leave, leave for bereavement, and options for unpaid leave.

While many team members work remotely, we have permanent offices in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and some of our team members co-work out of New York City, London, and Boston. Most of our staff have significant discretion about how they allocate their work across the day, subject to their team’s needs.

Staff located outside of San Francisco will typically travel there 2-4 times each year for team meetings and events.

We provide all staff with an unconditional 401(k) grant equal to 15% of their salaries (up to $23,000 per year).

We encourage our employees to expense tools and services that allow them to do their best work, such as productivity software and supplementary childcare. We promote sustainable workloads by defining full-time employment as 35-40 hours of focused work per week. 

We offer a family-forming benefit that supports employees and their partners with expenses related to family formation, such as fertility treatment, surrogacy, or adoption. This benefit is available to all eligible employees, regardless of age, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Our hiring process features identity-blinded work tests to reduce bias in hiring decisions. We focus on finding the candidate for each role who can do the work best, rather than deciding based on personal rapport. We see interviews as complementary to — and not a replacement for — our work tests. Work tests also help candidates get a more accurate sense of the role earlier in the process. 

Our recruitment team works on proactive outreach to candidates from underrepresented communities. This includes building relationships with community organizers and attending international conferences to reach potential candidates from low- and middle-income countries. We also reach out to potential candidates from underrepresented backgrounds for introductory calls to advertise open roles and answer questions about Coefficient and our hiring process. 

We have flexible working hours, reimburse work expenses that will help individuals with their productivity, and take other measures to ensure that everyone can thrive here. We believe that many conventions of the workplace — for example, requiring business clothing or expecting regular in-person office attendance — are not necessarily important for all roles, and not necessarily compatible with prioritizing inclusiveness.

We have worked extensively on our compensation system to ensure that it is principled and data-driven rather than negotiation-driven. We also strive to be transparent with our staff about how salaries are determined, and we do our best to note the expected salary on job listings.

To encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds, we do our best to minimize needless application “requirements” that could deter capable individuals from applying. For example, we do not list educational requirements that are not strictly necessary for performing a given role.

Work tests vary considerably in length and complexity depending on the role. They often take the form of a small task or project similar to the kind of work a successful hire would be asked to perform. For example, someone applying to a communications role might be asked to draft a response to a sample inquiry from a reporter, while someone applying to a research role might be asked to read a set of materials and use them to build a cost-effectiveness model.

All of our work tests are created by our staff, and simulate the real work we do. We set up our process so that the majority of work tests can be evaluated without knowing the applicant’s identity, though at later stages in the process candidates might be asked to perform a work test that is partly or fully in-person.

While different positions require different skillsets, our operating values outline some qualities Coefficient values across all roles at the organization:

Ownership. We encourage staff to take broad responsibility for their work and approach tasks and priorities with a critical mindset. Staff are expected to question and seek to understand the reasoning behind their assignments, rather than assume they should execute instructions as given.

Openness. Openness means constantly seeking, incorporating, and sharing new information. We also encourage direct, clear, and frequent feedback — delivered respectfully and supportively — across all levels of the organization.

Calibration. We strive to communicate clearly about what we know and what we don’t (see our post on reasoning transparency). We work to improve our ability to make accurate predictions, and to impartially assess the impact of our work.

Inclusiveness. We work as flexibly as we can to ensure that anyone who embodies our operating values can do their best work at Coefficient.

Beyond these core operating values, we’re also looking for people who are passionate about Coefficient’s mission of helping others as much as we can with the resources available to us, who can tackle and complete difficult, open-ended projects, and who are excited to be part of building a growing, rapidly changing organization.

Our team is diverse in background and experience but united by a shared commitment to our mission. While we take our work seriously, we strive to keep our culture casual and approachable. Some staff come to us with existing knowledge on topics like evidence-based giving, while others are brand new to these ideas. Regardless of your familiarity with these concepts, we welcome your application and are excited to introduce you to our mission throughout the hiring process.

If you’re interested in learning more about what it’s like to work at Coefficient, we recommend checking out our Working at Coefficient series. 

We periodically run internship programs for a small number of teams. If you’re interested in interning at Coefficient outside of these programs’ timeframe, we encourage you to fill out our General Application and indicate your interest in interning. We may reach out to exceptional candidates interested in internships on a case-by-case basis.

We’re open to full-time remote work for many positions, and many of our team members work remotely from various locations worldwide. However, the feasibility of remote work varies depending on each role and team. Our job postings typically state any location preferences or requirements. However, we aim to be as flexible as possible, and generally encourage you to apply even if you’re uncertain about your location’s suitability; we will reach out if there are any questions or concerns about your specific situation. Additionally, we provide incentives for team members who work from established hubs (including cost-of-living adjustments, relocation cost assistance, and in-office perks).

We usually post anticipated salary for a role. If we haven’t posted a salary, it’s usually because we think the responsibilities and scope of the role will be heavily influenced by who we ultimately hire.

We aim to pay competitively enough so that salary isn’t a major consideration for candidates who would otherwise be interested in taking a role with us. We’d encourage you not to let uncertainty about salary deter you from applying.

We recommend that candidates wait about a year before reapplying for the same role at Coefficient. Past candidates are welcome to apply to a different role at any time.

We do sometimes use the same work tests from year to year, but we may use a new assessment for repeat candidates on a case-by-case basis. We sometimes allow candidates to skip forward in our process based on past work tests.

Coefficient is made up of several affiliated organizations. US-based staff who primarily conduct research are typically employed by Coefficient Giving Research 501(c)(3), whereas US-based program and operations staff are typically employed by Coefficient Giving LLC. The LLC is not a tax-exempt organization; as such, programs and operations roles are unlikely to be eligible for programs like PSLF.