Targeting Analyst, Emergency Cash at GiveDirectly

What You’ll Do

Analyze Humanitarian Needs for Program Targeting

• Implement approaches for systematically assessing needs in crisis-affected populations.
• Incorporate humanitarian data sources (e.g., needs assessments, poverty statistics, vulnerability indices, displacement monitoring, etc) into GD’s targeting systems.
• Surface, test, and use novel data sources, such as from geospatial imagery, call detail records, social media, crowd-sourcing, etc.
• Provide clear targeting analysis with relevant subpopulations for emergency cash programs as a service to other teams, visualizing data on maps and dashboards.
• Based on determined targeting criteria, general recipient lists of individuals to be enrolled in GD EC programs.
• Provide targeting analysis services for both GD’s preparedness and response states – scoping and prioritizing relevant subpopulations based on pre-existing risks and delivering on-demand analysis during response deployments (remote).

Monitor and Analyze Crisis Events

• Monitor global risks and crises, providing analysis for GD teams to make activation decisions.
• Communicate with humanitarian agencies, data providers, and crisis monitoring organizations to integrate reliable event and needs assessment data into GD’s workflow.

Systems

• Participate in product development from problem discovery and user requirements gathering to launch and iteration, working with engineering, data science, and operations.
• Conduct agile iterative experiments and pilots to validate assumptions about crisis detection and targeting, using results to refine strategy.
• Define and track success metrics for targeting tools, ensuring outputs are timely, relevant, and usable in the field.
• Maintain internal data source documentation, including a qualitative assessment of accuracy, reliability, and limitations of sources and datasets.

Drive Efficiency and Document Learning

• Continuously evaluate and improve targeting approaches for speed, accuracy, and inclusivity, while maintaining humanitarian principles.
• Stay abreast of emerging technology and new data sources to ensure GD is leveraging cutting-edge approaches to targeting.
• Document learning to scale best practices across different contexts.

What You’ll Bring

• Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity.
• 3-5+ years experience conducting humanitarian needs analysis — assessing vulnerabilities, interpreting crisis data, and applying frameworks such as the IPC, MIRA, or sectoral needs assessments — to directly inform operational planning.
• 2+ years of experience producing data tools, with a track record of providing actionable, humanitarian information products to decision makers and operational teams.
• Demonstrated ability to design and implement reusable analysis approaches that scale across multiple contexts.
• High technical fluency across data analytics and data science – ability to ask the right questions, internalize technical tradeoffs between approaches, and shape complex data and technical challenges into operationally viable targeting strategies.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences, including humanitarian agencies and data providers.
• Proven ability to thrive in fast-changing, high-stakes environments.
• Ability to adapt to change and navigate ambiguity and a curiosity-driven mindset.
• Ability to balance speed and rigor in high uncertainty.