Staff Accountant

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 thousands of donors who rely on our research to inform their giving. We’ve grown from directing $1.5 million in 2010 to directing more than $400 million in 2025. We anticipate our total grantmaking is likely to approach or even exceed $1 billion this year, and we are working toward a future that could be several times that scale. Through years of deliberate groundwork, we’ve been growing our research capacity and scope in order to direct substantially more funding to the most impactful opportunities we can find.

The Role

We’re looking for a Staff Accountant to support the transactional and operational accounting that keeps GiveWell’s books accurate and current. You’ll bring care and precision to accounts payable, month-end close, and reconciliations—work that directly enables GiveWell to move money carefully and transparently. This is a great entry-to-mid-level opportunity for someone detail-oriented who wants broad exposure to nonprofit accounting operations. You’ll be joining our growing Finance team and reporting directly to our Controller.

Why we’re hiring this role right now: GiveWell has grown from directing $1.5 million in 2010 to directing more than $400 million in 2025, and we’re building our finance team to match that scale and prepare for additional growth in the coming years. Our Controller joined earlier this year, and we’re now making the team’s foundational hires to shift from outside contractors to a strong in-house finance team.

Specific duties include:

Owning accounts payable and employee expense processes. You’ll manage invoice processing, vendor relationships, credit card program administration, and employee expense reimbursements, ensuring accurate coding and compliance with our expense policies. Supporting month-end and quarterly close. You’ll help record journal entries for payroll, benefits, credit card and employee expenses, prepaids, and accruals. Performing and improving our monthly bank reconciliation process. You’ll own the execution of this process and look for ways to make it more efficient over time. Triaging and responding to finance-related staff questions. You’ll intake questions and concerns from GiveWell staff and be the first point of contact on the Finance team to triage and respond to those communications. Supporting annual compliance processes. You’ll contribute to the audit and 990 preparation alongside the Controller and Senior Accountant.

About You

The strongest candidates will have 2+ years of experience in accounting, accounts payable, or a related finance role, with a track record of accuracy and reliability in transactional and operational accounting work. You have a solid foundational understanding of debits, credits, and how the books work, and you take pride in getting the details right.

We expect that high-quality candidates will have all of the characteristics listed below:

2+ years of financial/accounting experience Experience with:

Common accounting systems (we currently use Sage Intacct, Salesforce, and Bill.com) Supporting financial audits and annual compliance processes such as the 990 Accounts payable processes, including invoice processing, vendor management, and expense reimbursements

Strong Excel skills. You’re comfortable with formulas, filters, and pivot tables, and you use them to keep your work accurate and organized Highly organized. You’re meticulous in how you prepare, document, and track your work. You love a close checklist and clear documented procedures for each workstream Keen detail orientation. You bring accuracy and care to your work Strong communication. You write and speak with accuracy and the right tone Experience with or interest in process improvement. You don’t just execute, you look for ways to do things better

We also think these preferred characteristics will help you do well in the role at GiveWell:

Alignment with our values and passion about GiveWell’s mission Experience in public accounting (Big 4 or similar) Comfortable working cross-functionally with non-finance colleagues and communicating clearly with internal stakeholders

Details

Compensation :

NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $113,000 All other U.S. locations: $102,500

Location: GiveWell’s staff work primarily remotely within the US and abroad. This position is eligible to work fully remotely from the United States, and we're only considering US based candidates for this role.

Offices: You are welcome but not required to work from our offices in Oakland, California or Brooklyn, NYC. We’ll cover relocation expenses for candidates who wish to move to either of these physical office locations.

Flexibility: We support and encourage flexible working, including flexible hours, working remotely, and working from the office when you choose. The majority of our staff, including senior management, work flexibly in one way or another. Visa sponsorship:

For this role, we can currently only hire team members based in the United States who have prior work authorization. Please note that government entities and policies ultimately dictate our ability to sponsor visas.

Benefits : A few highlights of our benefits offerings:

Fully funded health, dental, vision, and life insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the US for you and any dependents) Four weeks of paid time off per year plus an annual summer break 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave Ergonomic home workstations or coworking space memberships 403(b) retirement plan for US team members Automatic contribution equal to 5% of your gross salary into your 403(b) retirement plan (for US based staff)

Travel: GiveWell hosts “Visit Weeks” twice a year in our Oakland, California, office and up to two annual departmental retreats. Attending these in-person opportunities will be important to fulfilling the goals of this role. Occasional additional travel may be helpful for conferences or recruiting events. Start date: We’d like a candidate to start as soon as possible after receiving an offer, but we’ll offer flexibility for candidates whose personal or professional circumstances require them to moderately delay their start date.

Key Questions

We expect you may want to know the answers to the following questions before you apply:

What is the Finance team like at GiveWell?

We approach accounting as more than keeping the books. It’s how GiveWell demonstrates the integrity and transparency that our donors and grantees rely on. We are at an exciting and important moment: building out the processes and systems that will allow our finance function to operate with accuracy and efficiency at scale. You’ll not only execute core accounting work with care and attention to detail, but also help us envision and build a better function, identifying where we can streamline, improve, and do things smarter as we grow.

You’ll own meaningful work from day one, contributing to close processes, accounts payable, audit preparation, and more, all in service of an organization that moves large amounts of money carefully and transparently. This role is cross-functional by nature: you’ll need to communicate clearly with non-finance colleagues, navigate a growing and evolving organization, and look for ways to improve those processes and relationships as we build out the function.

Our Finance team is currently small but growing. We’re hiring a Senior Accountant and Staff Accountant, who will work alongside external contractors and our Controller to ensure the function operates with the accuracy and transparency GiveWell is known for.

How does this role interact with other teams at GiveWell?

Because of this role’s focus on accounts payable and employee expenses, you’ll interact with colleagues across nearly every team at GiveWell—giving you visibility into the organization well beyond the finance function.

Who would do well in this role?

You take pride in accuracy and find genuine satisfaction in getting the details right. You’re proactive, take ownership of your work, and thrive in a collaborative, evolving team. You’re a fast learner who can navigate ambiguity and help improve processes as the organization grows. You have a low-ego approach — you welcome feedback and care more about getting it right than being right. You’re aligned with GiveWell’s mission and values .

What are some reasons I may not like this role?

This role may not be a good fit if repetitive, transactional work isn’t something you find satisfying. While there’s real opportunity to improve processes over time, some of the day-to-day will be routine as that’s the nature of accounts payable work. You’ll also be juggling multiple workstreams at once, so if managing competing priorities or working without a lot of structure feels uncomfortable, this role may not be the right match. Additionally, GiveWell staff highly value direct feedback, in line with our organizational values of truthseeking and transparency . This role may not be right for you if you struggle to hear or incorporate feedback on your work.

What does growth look like in this role?

GiveWell’s finance function is still being built, and your growth will be tied directly to that. As the team and organization scale, you’ll have increasing opportunities to take on more complex projects, such as owning a process end-to-end, leading a system improvement, or taking on additional technical areas. In the meantime, there’s no shortage of opportunities to deepen your skills and help shape a best-in-class nonprofit finance function.

What does this hiring process entail?

We’ll use a combination of interviews and a work trial to assess the qualities described above.

Our basic plan for the hiring process is listed below. If you move to step 2, you’ll be in touch with a member of our recruiting team who will quickly answer any questions about logistics and timelines.

Submit your application below. You don’t need to write a cover letter—we deliberately turned off the cover letter upload field; we only need you to answer our application questions. 30-minute introductory conversation with our Talent Acquisition Team Take-home assessment 90-minute interview with Controller 75-minute values interview 30-minute interview with Chief Operations Officer Reference checks Offer

About GiveWell

GiveWell is dedicated to finding and evaluating highly cost-effective global health and development opportunities, and we publish all the work, reasoning, and uncertainties behind our funding decisions. Our giving funds enable donors to contribute to the most impactful and cost-effective programs our researchers identify.

GiveWell is one of the world’s largest private funders of global development efforts. Trusted annually by tens of thousands of donors, GiveWell searches for highly cost-effective programs that save or improve lives the most. Since 2007, more than 150,000 donors have given over $2.6 billion through GiveWell to the most promising programs its research has identified, which we estimate will save more than 340,000 lives .

GiveWell is most well-known for recommending a small number of Top Charities , which currently support seasonal malaria chemoprevention , insecticide-treated nets , vaccine incentivization , and vitamin A supplementation . However, most of our research capacity and grantmaking is devoted to cost-effective opportunities outside of those programs .

GiveWell grants have:

Helped governments navigate changes to the funding landscape and implement high-impact health programs, like HIV/syphilis screening and treatment for pregnant people in Zambia and Cameroon. Sought to scope and scale promising interventions that don’t have clear existing implementers. We are supporting the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s Incubator to identify potentially cost-effective interventions and create programs that we would be excited to support in the future. For example, we funded a program to prevent tuberculosis among young children in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India, that we co-designed with CHAI through the Incubator program. Provided funding to ensure that programs that recently faced foreign aid funding cuts could continue, like healthcare support and malnutrition treatment in northern Cameroon. Funded program delivery alongside strengthened monitoring and evaluation, as in our grants to support treatment of clubfoot and to evaluate the program . Tested our assumptions and refined our understanding through further research and data collection, including improved estimates of disease burden and studies on the effect of water chlorination on mortality and the impact of a tree-planting program on farmers’ income .

We make our reasoning public and transparent so others can challenge it (sometimes we even pay people to point out our errors ). We go to unusual lengths to check our assumptions and assess our impact, including funding research to address our uncertainties and gathering independent monitoring and evaluation data about the programs we support. We change our minds when the evidence demands it. For more about GiveWell, listen to Ezra Klein’s recent interview with GiveWell’s co-founder and CEO Elie Hassenfeld.

Additional information

We don’t want to miss candidates that could do great things at GiveWell. Practically, that means a GiveWell staff member reviews every application carefully, considering the whole picture of your background and potential. If you’re on the fence about applying because you meet some but not 100% of our preferred qualifications (some studies suggest this hesitation is especially common for women and people of color), we encourage you to apply anyway.

GiveWell is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer by choice. At minimum, this means that we comply with all federal, state, and local EEO and employment laws. Beyond the requirements of those laws, we value our team’s diversity in all respects, and we desire to maintain a work environment free of harassment or discrimination—we want our team members to thrive at GiveWell. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, contact us at careers@givewell.org. We will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

By submitting an application, you acknowledge that you have read and consent to GiveWell's Privacy Statement for Applicants . By completing an application exercise, you acknowledge and assent to GiveWell's Work Trial Policy .