I’ve been a writer at Our World in Data for more than eight years now. If you’d told me a decade ago that this job existed, I wouldn’t have believed you. I get to spend my days investigating important questions, communicating ideas to an engaged audience, and working with a team of skilled data scientists, engineers, and designers. Every day is challenging, but I feel incredibly lucky to get to spend my time this way and get paid for it.¹

But the hardest part of my role as Deputy Editor has been finding and hiring other writers.

What we’re looking for is quite a unique combination. We want someone who writes excellent narrative articles for a general audience, finding memorable framings to make hard ideas easier to understand, while being genuinely obsessed with the technical details: the scientific nuance, the caveats, the honest communication of what the evidence actually shows.

Our work is focused on helping people understand the world’s largest problems and how we make progress against them. The world is awash with data and information, so the right person for us needs to know which questions are important and what readers need to know to understand the answers.

It’s not easy to find writers who do this, so it’s incredibly exciting when we find one who does. In return, I think that Our World in Data can be a perfect home for someone with the passion and drive to do this work. We’re looking for an excellent match on both sides.

What’s difficult about finding the right match is that it’s not just about writing quality or your level of knowledge. It’s also about having a shared sense of the important questions that need to be asked; a commitment to getting things right; a commitment to meeting readers where they are. It's about outlook, values, and taste.

This is hard to gauge from a submitted portfolio and a few essays. That’s why we’ve structured the process in two stages, with a paid trial on the job to give both sides the opportunity to test whether it's a good match.

If you think you fit the criteria below and would like to work with me, I’d love to hear from you. This is an open application with no fixed deadline — we review submissions on a rolling basis.

What the process will look like

The full process from application to job offer will follow this structure:

• You submit an application (as described below).
• Your application goes through our initial screening as part of a monthly batch (which will be reviewed at the start of each month).
• Promising applicants will be contacted for a remote interview and preparatory exercise with me.
• Successful candidates will work directly with me as their editor to produce a great article for Our World in Data on an agreed topic. This work will be paid (more details below).
• The previous point repeats for the second article.
• Successful candidates will then be offered a contract as detailed below.

The paid work will consist of a writing residency (not a physical residency) during which a successful applicant would work directly with me to produce two articles that we would be happy to publish on Our World in Data. This work would be paid, regardless of whether we choose to publish the articles. If unsuccessful, the candidate would not receive a further offer.

Note that there is no expectation that candidates will work full-time with us during the initial writing residency period; we expect that many applicants will currently have a full-time position elsewhere. We are flexible with the timeline for this and are happy to make it work within your existing schedule.

Key responsibilities of the writer role

If, after the writing residency, you want to stay on with us and you receive an offer to join our team, you will have the following immediate responsibilities:

• Writing clear, engaging, and insightful articles on various aspects of the topics we cover (such as health, poverty and inequality, technological change, demographics, or human rights), to make important data and research findings on the world’s largest problems accessible to a large, non-specialist audience.
• Collaborating closely with data scientists to produce relevant data and interactive visualizations presenting evidence on the topics you are writing about.

As I say below, there's also scope to grow into other responsibilities.

What we’re looking for

Required skills and experience

• A track record of clear, engaging, and informative public writing for a general audience — pieces you conceived, researched, and wrote yourself — that rely on well-chosen data and build on the relevant research literature. We are looking for someone with high agency — who already thinks and writes frequently about topics relevant to OWID — so if you need to produce pieces specifically for this application, this role isn't the right fit.
• Good understanding of statistics and excellent ability to interpret and engage critically with data from different sources. You must be comfortable selecting the right data and framing for visualizations, and coming up with designs that make articles clearer and more compelling. The ideal candidate has experience creating visualizations themselves, but this could be taught.
• Interest and ability to write across a broad range of topics.
• A strong sense of editorial judgment — knowing which questions are worth asking, which data is worth using, and how to frame things for a general audience.
• Strong interest in global issues and a commitment to the values and mission of Our World in Data.

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.
• High sense of agency. A high degree of initiative and ability to work independently on projects from conception to completion.
• 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.

Growth and career trajectory

The initial position we’re hiring for is a full-time writer role. In this position, you will work closely with me to develop article ideas and produce them with editorial feedback.

This was exactly the role that I came into eight years ago when I first joined Our World in Data. I mostly wrote about topics and worked on projects assigned to me by Max, OWID’s founder. I loved it. I got to work on important topics, and learned a huge amount in a short period of time. I developed skills and taste in how to shape an article, write in a more engaging way, and work with data and visualizations to make the narrative even clearer for our readers. The learning curve was steep, and I relished the growth that it provided.

In the years since, my role has evolved. I moved from a writer position to a more editorial role, where I develop and shape my own projects from scratch, and help others to do the same. I started leading the work across whole sections of our publication, ensuring they aligned with our mission of delivering the most important data and information people need to understand a large problem and its solutions. Our World in Data, as a publication, has evolved and been partly reshaped through my work — most notably in the areas of environment, food, and energy — and so we’ve both grown together.

Our hope is that someone joining the team as a writer could follow a similar path. They would, in effect, be peers of Max and me on the writing team, shaping the publication’s focus and editorial lens. The timeline for that trajectory would depend entirely on the individual.

In a more senior editorial position, you would also have the following responsibilities:

• Working with our editorial team to identify and prioritize topics to cover. You would be instrumental in setting the agenda for the topics you cover, ensuring they are 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.

How to apply

This application will remain open until we make an offer. We will review applications in monthly batches, typically at the beginning of each month. So if you submit an application in mid-May, we’ll likely review it at the beginning of June.

Please submit your application via this Google Form, which will ask for the following information:

1) A CV giving basic information about you, your previous education and work, and your current position.

2) Links to 3 of your articles that you think are most closely aligned with the work we do at Our World in Data. Work we will accept includes:

• Articles published on Substack, Medium, or your own blog
• Articles in traditional media outlets

We will not accept the following:

• Long notes or threads on social media
• Academic articles or commentaries
• PhD theses or academic dissertations

Articles must have been published in English and before April 1st, 2026. If you have to write articles specifically for this application, then you’re not the right person for this role. We’re looking for someone with strong agency who has the drive to write outside the context of a job application.

3) Write a Data Insight of your choice on an indicator that we give you in the form (maximum 100 characters for the title and 850 characters for the text of the insight).

4) Links to social media profiles that you use to share your public writing (if you have any). This can also include your blog or Substack.

Based on previous hiring rounds, we expect a very high volume of responses and are therefore unable to respond to everyone. We aim to review applications in monthly batches and will only reach out to candidates we would like to take through to the next round of the process. If you saw the confirmation message “Thank you for applying! Your information has been recorded.” at the end of the Google Form, we have received your application successfully.

If you have any questions about this role, get in touch at jobs@ourworldindata.org; please use the subject line “Writer position 2026” as this will ensure that your email is routed properly.

Contract and salary

Contract type: Full-time, flexible hours. We are open to a part-time arrangement for the right candidate, but full-time is strongly preferred.

Compensation: £80,000 to £120,000 per year, based on experience and location.

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 collaboration with the rest of the team. Visa sponsorship may be considered for the right candidate, depending on individual circumstances and relocation preference.

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 directly to Hannah Ritchie.
• You will have flexibility around your hours within a full-time load. 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.

Hannah Ritchie (2026) - “We’re looking for a writer” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260415-082139/hiring-writer-2026.html' [Online Resource] (archived on April 15, 2026).

@article{owid-hiring-writer-2026,
    author = {Hannah Ritchie},
    title = {We’re looking for a writer},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2026},
    note = {https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260415-082139/hiring-writer-2026.html}
}

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