GiveDirectly

About GiveDirectly What if the most effective way to fight poverty was also the simplest: give people money and trust them to decide what they need? Since 2011, GiveDirectly has proven that idea at scale. We’ve delivered more than $1B in cash directly to 2+ million people living in poverty and crisis across 15 countries, and rigorous research shows the results: healthier kids, stronger businesses, sturdier homes, and more resilient families and local economies. Cash is now widely recognized as one of the most scalable, cost-effective, and dignified forms of aid. Our ambition goes beyond our own programs. We want cash to become the benchmark for aid, much as the index fund became the benchmark for investing, so that every aid dollar is held to one question: is this doing more good than giving the money directly to people living in poverty? We’re growing fast, and this is a rare and important moment to join. We expect to hit $1B in revenue in 2026 with significant growth forecast for 2027. At the same time we are building a new technology stack and operating model designed for a roughly 10x change in scale, and we are actively pursuing partnerships with major funders to move even more money in bigger ways, to people who need it. We are known for our extensive integration of technology into field processes; our quantitative approach to performance measurement; and our commitment to rigorous, independent, experimental evaluation of our impact, with multiple Randomized Control Trials completed and others in progress. How we work Our team spans 20+ countries and 69 languages. Our culture is candid, analytical, and non-hierarchical. We expect high ownership and give people real responsibility early. Our values are central to how we hire, work, and grow, and they are deliberately opinionated: Recipients first. Recipients’ preferences come before those of donors or ourselves. Team next. We optimize for organizational success, not individual success. Be proactively candid. We say what we believe and share information openly. Create positive energy. We aim to be a source of energy for colleagues, not a drain. Think rigorously; act quickly. We reason from first principles, then act rather than debate. Know yourself and grow. We own our imperfections and seek feedback to grow. Accept reality. Propose solutions. We focus on what can change and bring solutions, not just problems. Be productively ambitious. We take risks for step-change impact, not incremental progress. If they describe how you like to work and they energize you, this could be a great fit. Want to learn more? Read and listen: We are one of Time100’s Most Influential Companies of 2026, and our work has been covered by The Economist , NPR , TED , and The Washington Post . We're now preparing to deliver billions of dollars a year to people in extreme poverty, if funding allows. Read our CEO's essay on what that will take. About this role: Are you an experienced engineer at the stage of your career where, above all, you want to do good? This role is about using engineering to support fundraising: delighting our donors; helping our fundraisers; getting donations recorded and safely started on their journey to our recipients; telling donors and the public about what happens to their gifts. A bit of website development. A lot of plumbing. The good news about this position: You will make a difference to people in extreme poverty You will work independently, with few constraints You will work directly with lovely people from across our fundraising teams The trade-offs: There is only one other fundraising engineer and mostly you will be working on your own Our technology is a mixture of boring (Laravel, PHP, plain JS, HTML and CSS) and legacy (Salesforce, Wordpress, wrangling CSV files sent by our partners) We're growing, but this is a role for someone who values depth and impact over a fast title ladder. The maybe good maybe bad news about the role depending on who you are: We are all in on AI where it allows us to get more $ to people in extreme poverty If you want a role where you will be part of a bigger engineering team, working in Python or working on more complex tasks, then please take a look at our other engineering roles . This role is right for you if: You care about our mission You agree with our values You have the right to work in one of the countries we're able to hire from (you can check the current list here ). You're happy working remotely, and taking meetings across East Africa Time and US Eastern Time. You are happy to travel to meet your colleagues in the US, Europe and Africa a few weeks a year You are fluent in English You have 4+ years of engineering experience You're happy working autonomously: defining what needs doing, doing it, getting it tested and launched, fixing the bugs, and hustling to make progress every day. You're comfortable being on-call on peak donation days (Giving Tuesday and the last weeks of the year), including owning an

About GiveDirectly What if the most effective way to fight poverty was also the simplest: give people money and trust them to decide what they need? Since 2011, GiveDirectly has proven that idea at scale. We’ve delivered more than $1B in cash directly to 2+ million people living in poverty and crisis across 15 countries, and rigorous research shows the results: healthier kids, stronger businesses, sturdier homes, and more resilient families and local economies. Cash is now widely recognized as one of the most scalable, cost-effective, and dignified forms of aid. Our ambition goes beyond our own programs. We want cash to become the benchmark for aid, much as the index fund became the benchmark for investing, so that every aid dollar is held to one question: is this doing more good than giving the money directly to people living in poverty? We’re growing fast, and this is a rare and important moment to join. We expect to hit $1B in revenue in 2026 with significant growth forecast for 2027. At the same time we are building a new technology stack and operating model designed for a roughly 10x change in scale, and we are actively pursuing partnerships with major funders to move even more money in bigger ways, to people who need it. We are known for our extensive integration of technology into field processes; our quantitative approach to performance measurement; and our commitment to rigorous, independent, experimental evaluation of our impact, with multiple Randomized Control Trials completed and others in progress. How we work Our team spans 20+ countries and 69 languages. Our culture is candid, analytical, and non-hierarchical. We expect high ownership and give people real responsibility early. Our values are central to how we hire, work, and grow, and they are deliberately opinionated: Recipients first. Recipients’ preferences come before those of donors or ourselves. Team next. We optimize for organizational success, not individual success. Be proactively candid. We say what we believe and share information openly. Create positive energy. We aim to be a source of energy for colleagues, not a drain. Think rigorously; act quickly. We reason from first principles, then act rather than debate. Know yourself and grow. We own our imperfections and seek feedback to grow. Accept reality. Propose solutions. We focus on what can change and bring solutions, not just problems. Be productively ambitious. We take risks for step-change impact, not incremental progress. If they describe how you like to work and they energize you, this could be a great fit. Want to learn more? Read and listen: We are one of Time100’s Most Influential Companies of 2026, and our work has been covered by The Economist, NPR, TED, and The Washington Post. We're now preparing to deliver billions of dollars a year to people in extreme poverty, if funding allows. Read our CEO's essay on what that will take. About this role: We believe technology will play a critical role in enabling the next generation of cash delivery operations: from identifying recipients without needing to knock on doors to a modern payments infrastructure that gets dollars in recipients’ hands faster and more scalable. We are seeking a Technical Program Associate responsible for implementing and managing the technology used across our programs - including systems for recipient data collection, verification, payments, and monitoring. In this role, you will own all technology-related aspects of new project launches: working with our operations team to define and implement program requirements, project managing the implementation across multiple stakeholders, and analyzing, structuring, and acting on program data. You are a systems thinker who is comfortable assessing tradeoffs and deriving and communicating data-driven insights. You enjoy learning about technology in a variety of business contexts. You naturally take ownership, can navigate unfamiliar settings, and enjoy both building and managing ops. You can excel at both 10,000 feet as well as in the weeds of complex problems. Reports to: Senior Technical Program Manager Level : Open to Associate or Manager, depending on the candidate. We would rather find the right person than fill a predetermined level. A candidate with deeper experience, stronger technical skills, and the judgment to run their own projects and think critically and propositionally on project designs will be brought in at the higher end, with correspondingly more independence. Location: At this stage of GiveDirectly ’s growth and scale, we’re prioritizing hiring in the countries below, where we can employ you through a GD entity or an established employer of record: Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, DRC, Germany, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, and United States. This list reflects where our employment infrastructure is established today, and may evolve as we gro

GiveDirectly has delivered more than $1B in cash directly to 2+ million people living in poverty across 15 countries since 2011. We believe cash transfers are one of the most scalable, cost-effective, and dignified forms of aid, with the research to back it up. Our work has been covered by The Economist , NPR , TED , and The Washington Post . We are one of Time100’s Most Influential Companies of 2026. Our culture is candid, analytical, and non-hierarchical. We support high ownership and real professional growth. Curious about what it's really like to work here? Read our values and hear from the people who do . If they resonate, this could be a great fit! Priority application deadline: Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Early applications are heavily encouraged. We’re growing at incredible speed, and expect to hit $1B in revenue in 2026 with significant growth forecast for 2027. We’re hiring a Chief Technology Officer to lead the building and rebuilding of the technology, systems and ways of working that will enable a sustained $5B+ p/a operation. You will build software that safely and securely moves billions of dollars to millions of vulnerable people in some of the poorest and highest need parts of the world. This will require applying excellent engineering, team building and organizational judgment to complex, high-stakes operations: identity and fraud management, machine learning on large but imperfect datasets (cell phone data, satellite imagery, government registries), mobile money integrations, low-connectivity environments, rapidly evolving requirements all in diverse regulatory environments and country contexts. You’ll need to keep our legacy technology stack stable and performant, while in parallel building new systems from the ground up for our next level of scale. You will lead engineering, data, security and enterprise technology – with a small, mighty and rapidly growing engineering team of ~15, and the expectation that this can at least double to ~30 in the next 12 months if you want it to. You’ll report to a CEO with deep experience running technology companies, and partner with our VP Product. This role is remote, with working hours between US Eastern Time and East African Time, and some preference for candidates in our office hubs of New York, London, or Nairobi. What we’re looking for: An exceptional hirer, manager and organizer of technical talent. Proven record identifying, hiring, developing and retaining excellent engineers and engineering leaders, and creating team processes that consistently deliver software with quality and velocity. Deep technical judgment, applied close to the work. You can evaluate major designs, pressure-test architecture and build-vs-buy decisions, and recognize when a team is heading the wrong way, without becoming the primary implementer. Low-ego: you’ll investigate a problem yourself when that’s what the situation requires. Business judgment and decisiveness under ambiguity. You’re not just a technical leader, you’re also a business executive. You understand the business, are a strong cross-functional partner, and have a history of good judgment when navigating tradeoffs of long vs. short term, speed, reliability, security, flexibility, cost, technical quality, and user impact. AI first. You have a point of view on where AI meaningfully changes engineering productivity and organizational capability, and you’ve moved a team from experimentation to real, measured use. You can set the tools, culture, goals, and guardrails that leverage the opportunities and mitigate the risks of an AI first engineering culture. Embody and set an example for GD values. We take our values incredibly seriously, and expect our leaders to embody, nurture, and promote them in the way they work and the teams they build. Advantages, not requirements. Experience in an operationally complex or regulated domain (fintech, payments, humanitarian response, global development); systems involving financial controls, fraud risk, identity, or sensitive recipient data; operating across multiple countries, particularly lower-income or infrastructure-constrained ones; leading both modern product engineering and enterprise technology. What you’ll do Define our technology vision and target stack. Own the technical strategy for technology-first delivery at $5B+/year: architecture, platforms, build-vs-buy, and what we retire. Work with executive, product, finance, risk, and data leaders to turn program and product strategy into a sequenced, credible portfolio of technical investments. Balance a demanding portfolio. You'll manage six workstreams that all matter and won't all move at once: (1) building our new cash delivery stack (remote-first verification, fraud prevention, massive volume) (2) stabilizing our legacy stack until switchover, then managing the migration; (3) donor-facing fundraising products; (4) our global emergency cash system (and eventual white-labelling of that product