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This role is offered at either the Program Officer or the Senior Program Officer level. The salary range covers multiple seniority steps across these levels, and where an offer falls will depend on your experience and performance during the selection process. See "Levels and compensation" below. We may be open to hiring two people in this round.
To apply, please click "Apply Now" to respond to the initial questions in the application form and attach your CV. We ask that you spend no more than 90 minutes preparing your responses to the prompts.
Application Deadline: Sunday, October 11, 2026, end of day (23:59) Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12:00).
Note Before Applying: We invite anyone who is interested in this role to apply, and will assess applications primarily on anonymized responses to the application prompts, so please ensure they represent your fit for the position well. We also ask candidates to attach their CV: it will not be scored, but we will use it later in the process for verification. Please do not include a cover letter, photograph or headshot, or any personal information not relevant to the role (including marital status, age, identity traits). Please also do not ask staff involved in the hiring process to meet with you — to ensure fairness, such requests will be declined.
Contact: Please email
[email protected] if you have any questions.
About the Position Rethink Priorities' Animal Welfare Department advances evidence-based and reason-driven change for animals. Within it, the Neglected Animals Program works on animals that are overlooked relative to how many of them there are — farmed invertebrates and wild animals. These are populations counted in the hundreds of billions and upwards, almost entirely outside the scope of existing animal welfare protections, and receiving a tiny fraction of the attention directed at farmed vertebrates.
We are looking for a Program Officer or Senior Program Officer to take a substantial share of this program's work and run with it, primarily focused on terrestrial invertebrate welfare — both farmed and wild.
The program's bottleneck is finding out which questions matter, getting them investigated by the most appropriate talent, and ensuring the analysis is acted upon. Sometimes that means doing the research in-house. But often it means finding and managing the right contractor, or convening the handful of organizations working on a particular problem.
Where your time would go. Roughly half your time on farmed terrestrial invertebrates and half on wild ones. The balance will shift as opportunities move. The wild side of this work is at an earlier stage of strategic development than the farmed side. In the future, this role could expand to cover other wild animals.