Associate Program Officers and Research Fellows in AI x Global Health & Wellbeing

Coefficient Giving is scaling its giving significantly over the next few years, building a new team to make grants at the intersection of AI and global health and wellbeing. The organization believes AI progress will reshape health and economic outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), potentially compressing decades of medical progress into years or threatening growth pathways for hundreds of millions.

To ensure AI’s benefits reach those who need them most, Coefficient Giving is hiring Associate Program Officers and Research Fellows for its AI x Global Health & Wellbeing (GHW) team. These roles are high-leverage, with successful candidates helping decide what grants the organization funds in this space.

About the AI x Global Health and Wellbeing Team

The GHW team makes grants across scientific research, policy advocacy, and global health and development to advance the mission of helping others as much as possible with available resources. They prioritize grants that improve health outcomes and economic wellbeing, primarily for people living in LMICs.

The AIxGHW team is new and operates within the Cause Prioritization team. Their responsibilities include setting strategy for Coefficient Giving’s work at this intersection, conducting research to identify promising approaches, and making up to $100 million in cost-effective grants in the next year. Their grantmaking focuses on:

• Mitigating noncatastrophic but serious risks to global health and wellbeing from transformative AI.
• Ensuring AI-enabled solutions to improve health and economic outcomes globally are built and scaled effectively.

Illustrative projects they might fund include:

• Seed funding for a new policy organization on faster drug development. Supporting an organization focused on what major global health funders and multilaterals should do now to prepare for accelerated medical breakthroughs.
• Technical assistance program for governments redesigning safety nets for AI-driven job losses. Funding a team embedded within an LMIC government to redesign cash transfer targeting, eligibility, and financing mechanisms robust to labor market disruption.
• Building a data access layer. Setting up data-sharing frameworks, consent, and privacy protections to enable cheaper and faster impact evaluation of global health interventions, including RCTs and monitoring.
• AI-interpreted diagnostics to narrow healthcare infrastructure gaps. Developing phone or handheld tools that read chest X-rays for tuberculosis, retinal images for diabetic retinopathy, or cervical images to assist under-resourced health workers.
• Frontline public-worker support. Providing legal aid drafting and case triage for overloaded courts, as well as translation and summarization of case files.
• Open public datasets, especially in specific domains and local languages. Creating labeled text/speech for under-resourced languages, particularly in high-importance sectors like agriculture or health.
• LMIC-specific AI benchmarks. Building benchmarks that reflect local epidemiology, languages, and contexts, and tracking frontier model performance on them over time.
• Usage studies. Conducting baseline descriptive or causal studies to establish the value of out-of-the-box models, how people in LMICs use them, and the impact of those uses.
• New “AI for good” accelerators and incubators. Programs that draw on local talent familiar with deployment contexts, such as recruiting clinicians or health workers to deploy local AI for Health tools.
• Climate-sensitive disease early warning. Forecasting outbreaks of climate-linked diseases (e.g., malaria, dengue, cholera) from environmental and ecological signals to ensure resources reach people before a surge.

This list is illustrative and not exhaustive, highlighting the range of work and the organization’s uncertainty about the most impactful interventions.

Coefficient Giving is significantly scaling its grantmaking and rapidly growing its team to support this expansion, anticipating increased philanthropic funding in the coming years. This growth means the work is fast-paced, ambiguous, and often messy, requiring quick decision-making, pivots, and trade-offs.

About the Role

The roles involve:

• Investigating and recommending specific grants, with a current budget of $100 million and potential for more.
• Conducting desk research to assess potential strategies.
• Building back-of-the-envelope models to estimate social returns and cost-effectiveness of potential grants.
• Interviewing domain experts and working with potential grantees to answer key questions.
• Synthesizing conclusions and recommendations in writing for senior leadership.
• Rigorously evaluating and synthesizing academic evidence relevant to grantmaking.

The distinction between Research Fellow and Associate Program Officer is based on emphasis rather than a hard boundary:

• Research Fellows focus more on in-depth evidence reviews and academic literature synthesis, typically holding a master's or PhD in quantitative disciplines related to social science or public health.
• Associate Program Officers identify promising opportunities, propose evaluation strategies, and own grants that are more ambiguous or novel. They may come from backgrounds in consulting, policy, or global health implementation.

Both titles are used to make the role accessible to professionals from different backgrounds, but responsibilities will be evaluated uniformly.

Who Might Be a Good Fit

Coefficient Giving is looking for candidates with at least three years of relevant professional experience (or equivalent in academia) who are excited to apply research and analysis to high-stakes decisions.

Ideal candidates possess:

• Interest in AI's implications for global health and wellbeing. Views on how AI could change health and economic outcomes in LMICs, with a willingness to test these views against evidence.
• Strong quantitative ability. Comfort with back-of-the-envelope calculations in domains with sparse data, such as estimating social returns and cost-effectiveness of potential grants.
• Pragmatism. Ability to make and justify reasonable estimates with limited data and prioritize key questions.
• Strong written communication and reasoning transparency. Ability to clearly and concisely communicate thinking, explain beliefs and reasoning, and address uncertainties.
• Strong listening ability and epistemic judgment. Comfort interviewing experts in unfamiliar areas, engaging with curiosity, asking the right questions, and updating conclusions with new information.
• Comfort with trade-offs. Ability to engage in prioritization and consider opportunity costs.
• Flexibility. Willingness to work across various topics and focus on what is most important.

Preferred backgrounds include policy research, strategy consulting, academia (especially social science or public health), and experience in AI or international development, particularly in analytical roles.

The ideal candidate will possess many of these skills and experiences, but there is no perfect candidate. Those on the fence are encouraged to apply.

Role Details & Benefits

• Compensation: The baseline compensation for both roles is $204,500, distributed as a base salary of $180,000 and an unconditional $24,500 401(k) grant. Geographic adjustments apply for candidates based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., or New York.
• Time zones and location: Remote work is offered in many countries, and candidates outside the U.S. are welcome. The team is currently split between the U.S. and Europe, with occasional flexible calls expected.
• Benefits: Comprehensive benefits include excellent health insurance, dental, vision, life insurance, four weeks of PTO, four months of fully paid family leave, flexible expense policies, support for remote work, and a continual learning policy.
• Start date: Ideally, new hires should start as soon as possible after receiving an offer, but flexibility is available for exceptional candidates.