Summary

Deadline to apply: Sunday 12 May 2024 (23:59 London time)

Description: We are looking for a passionate and skilled writer to join our team on a permanent basis. The ideal candidate will bring excellent writing skills for a general audience, arguments and narratives built around trusted data, and an ability to drive a clear and exciting agenda in their area of work. This role offers the opportunity to work within a dynamic and supportive team environment, focusing on writing that reaches a wide, influential audience.

Contract type: Full-time, flexible hours.

Compensation: £55,000 to £65,000 per year for candidates living in the UK. For international candidates, rates are adjusted. Candidates with exceptional experience may be considered for more senior positions.

Location: Our offices are in Oxford, United Kingdom, but many people in our team work remotely. We welcome applications from international candidates, though working hours should partly overlap with core UK working hours to facilitate effective collaboration with our team.

See instructions for how to apply ↓

About this role

Joining Our World in Data as a writer is a fantastic opportunity for someone passionate about making complex global issues understandable and relevant to a broad audience. This role is central to our mission of presenting research and data to improve the public's understanding and awareness of the world’s largest problems and their possible solutions.

We are looking for candidates who are comfortable writing about a range of the issues we cover at Our World in Data. You could focus on poverty and inequality, health, demography, or any of the other topics we cover. The ideal candidate has core expertise on some of our topics but can write on a range of topics beyond their core expertise. We welcome applications from writers of any background that links to these areas.

Joining Our World in Data gives a writer a platform to explain some of the world’s most pressing problems to a large and influential global audience. Our pages have been viewed 800 million times in the last 5 years, from every country in the world. Our users include journalists, policymakers, academics, teachers, and many others. Our articles and charts are cited thousands of times per year in major academic journals and some of the largest media publications in the world, including The Economist, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, and many non-English media outlets. Policymakers and investors often rely on our work in decision-making.

This position is, in essence, a cross-over between research and journalism. Our writers have several goals in their work: they strive to write articles that stay relevant for a long period of time, by relying on data that gets regularly updated by our data team. Secondly, they work with data scientists to build up-to-date interactive visualizations that users can explore for themselves.

To thrive in this role, you’ll need to be an excellent writer and have good quantitative skills; you’ll need to understand complex research, be able to interpret large global datasets on a broad range of topics, and find a way to communicate these findings to a general audience clearly. Overcoming the “curse of knowledge” — ensuring that our data and research are accessible and engaging to those without existing knowledge of the topic — is crucial. Concepts need to be explained clearly to non-experts, avoiding jargon.

One of the most appealing aspects of this role is the opportunity to concentrate on your writing. Most research or journalist roles require you to dedicate much of your time to work other than writing — it requires you to dedicate time to administrative tasks, funding applications, data cleaning, or the promotion of the work. We’ve built a talented team of data scientists, designers, software engineers, product managers, and communications specialists who handle all these things to support the work of others. As a writer, you can dedicate your energy and creativity to what you do best: writing.

Key responsibilities

• Writing clear, engaging, and insightful articles on various aspects of the topics we cover, to make complex data and research findings accessible to a non-specialist audience.
• Collaborating closely with data scientists to produce relevant data and interactive visualizations presenting evidence on the topics you are writing about.
• Working with our editorial team to identify and prioritize topics to cover. You will be instrumental in setting the agenda for the topics you cover, ensuring they are relevant, impactful, and aligned with our mission.
• Participating in our editorial process by providing constructive feedback on colleagues’ drafts.
• Engaging in strategic discussions about the data and research we want to cover, the development of our website and tools, and how we engage with users.

What we’re looking for

Required skills and experience

• Proven track record of clear, engaging, and informative public writing for a general audience, that relies on solid data and builds on the relevant research literature.
• Good understanding of statistics and excellent ability to interpret and critique data sources. Comfortable working with data visualizations.
• Ability to develop a clear and exciting agenda for the area under your responsibility based on a strong and well-informed sense of what our audience needs to know and what data is required.
• Willingness and ability to write across a broad range of topics.
• Strong interest in global issues and a commitment to the values and mission of Our World in Data.

Skills and experience that will set you apart

• Experience in producing clear and engaging data visualizations.
• Proven track record of engaging with audiences through social media, public speaking, or writing for high-impact publications.
• Experience with giving feedback to other writers.
• Ability to develop content ideas and editorial strategies relevant to our mission and resonate with our audience.
• Skills in data analysis and statistical programming.

Personal characteristics we look for

• Ability to analyze information critically and change your mind based on evidence.
• Openness to editorial feedback and an iterative writing process.
• A high degree of initiative and ability to work independently on projects from conception to completion.
• Natural curiosity and desire to learn in-depth about a diverse range of topics.
• Drive to present information in engaging and creative ways.
• Ability to understand and consider diverse perspectives, particularly when discussing sensitive or complex global issues.

How to apply

Please complete this form to apply (you will need a Google account). For longer answers, we recommend you prepare them in a separate document and copy them to the form before submitting.

The form will ask you for the following:

• Your CV/resume.
• Tell us why you want to work for Our World in Data and why you think you’re the right person for this job (maximum 3,000 characters).
• Links to social media profiles that you use to promote your public writing (if you have any). This can include a blog or Substack.
• Links to several pieces (up to 4) of your own public writing for a general audience. We strongly recommend that at least one of these pieces was published in English (i.e., not a translation). This is a crucial part of our selection criteria, so select articles that are your best work.
• Give a short description of three articles that you think should be on Our World in Data, but are not yet there (maximum 3,000 characters).
• Write a Data Insight of your choice on a given indicator (maximum 100 characters for the title and 700 characters for the text of the insight).
• Where you came across this job ad so that we can track the effectiveness of our advertising efforts.

We’ll aim to inform you about the status of your application within 2 weeks of the deadline. We expect a large volume of applications and will not be able to offer individual feedback at this stage.

Please also read our privacy notice regarding the personal data we collect from you during this hiring process.

If you have any questions about this role, get in touch at jobs@ourworldindata.org; please use the subject line “Writer position 2024” as this will ensure that your email is routed properly.

Expected timeline

• After the deadline has closed, we aim to review and respond to all applications within 2 weeks.
• Successful candidates will progress to the first testing stage. This will involve a few exercises focusing on key insights on global development, and a short data exercise.
• A smaller pool of candidates will progress to the second testing stage. This stage will be paid. It will involve writing an Our World in Data-style article on a particular topic and improving it based on feedback from our editors.
• Final candidates will progress to interviews with various members of the team.
• We expect to complete this process within 8 weeks of the application deadline.
• We would like the successful candidate to start working with us in the third quarter of 2024, although we can be flexible for exceptional candidates.

About us

Our World in Data is produced through a close collaboration between academic researchers, writers, data scientists, web developers, and designers.

Research and data are crucial to making progress against the large problems the world is facing and building a better future. At Our World in Data, we are building a publishing platform to make research and data on the world’s largest problems accessible and understandable.

The world’s problems are diverse: global poverty, greenhouse gas emissions, child mortality, mental health, and many more. Our World in Data readers concerned about these problems should be able to rely on our compilation of research, our database, and our visualizations to understand them clearly and learn how it is possible to make progress against them.

About our team and work environment

• You will work in our Data and Research Team (~8 people) and report to the Head of Data & Research.
• You will have flexibility around your hours within a full-time load. Ideally, candidates will partly overlap with core UK working hours to facilitate effective collaboration with our team but allowances can be made for exceptional candidates.
• We have a very positive team culture. To meet your colleagues across all teams, we organize weekly activities to get you in contact with everyone across our remote team — from meeting for virtual “tea” to discussing big ideas.
• Our full team meets in person at least once a year. For those based in the UK, there is a concentrated group of team members in the Oxford/London area who regularly meet in person.
• The overall team at Our World In Data is welcoming, supportive, and high-trust. We’re bound together by our common mission and the enjoyment we get from doing excellent work with talented colleagues.

Diversity and inclusion

• Remote work has allowed us to build a team of fascinating colleagues from a wide range of countries and backgrounds, a diversity we’d like to nurture and encourage.
• We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment and strongly encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.
• Our flexible hours make balancing care and other responsibilities easier to manage than many traditional roles.
• If you are excited about this role but are unsure about whether you’re the right fit, we encourage you to apply. We’re also happy to answer any questions by email at jobs@ourworldindata.org.

Reuse this work freely

All visualizations, data, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution.

All of our charts can be embedded in any site.