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Why join Our World in Data?

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

The problems the world faces are very diverse: global poverty, CO₂ emissions, child mortality, mental health, and many more. Our World in Data readers who are concerned about these problems should be able to rely on our compilation of research, databases, and visualizations to understand them clearly and learn how progress can be made against them.

All data on Our World in Data is available for download, all visualizations are Creative Commons licensed, and all tools are open source.

Join us if you are committed to helping us achieve this mission!

Impact

We reach a large audience (over 5 million visitors every month), and we rank within the top few results on Google Search for queries including “CO₂ emissions”, “population growth”, “global poverty”, “COVID-19 vaccinations”, and many others. Our readers include researchers, journalists, teachers, policymakers, students, and engineers looking for the data and research that enables them to do their work.

Our work is cited and referenced in hundreds of articles, reports, books, lectures, videos, and talks every year, including high-profile publications from academics and multilateral organizations such as the UN. In 2020, our rate of academic citations was above 15 per day, and citations in popular media were even more common.

During the pandemic, hundreds of media outlets cited our work daily, and all major international organizations rely on the data we collect. Dr. Anthony Fauci has used our charts to answer questions about the COVID-19 pandemic in the US Congress, and the White House has also used our work.

It is very motivating for us to work on this publication because we receive great feedback from readers. Many teachers and professors worldwide get in touch because they use our work as assigned reading or rely on our visualizations for their in-class presentations — high-school teacher Matt Cone wrote about it here. Professionals in international organizations, governments, and NGOs rely on our work regularly to understand the challenges ahead.

We have even heard from medics and psychologists who use our work to help their patients and give them a more fact-based, positive attitude towards the world — Dr Jill Gordon wrote about how she uses Our World in Data in her work here.

But we are far from achieving the impact we can have. Our main constraint is that we are a small team; this is why we are looking for new, talented colleagues to join us. We can do much more in all areas of our work — research, writing, web development, and high-impact collaborations. This is why we want to work with you.

Read more about us

What is it like to work for Our World in Data?

Mission and impact

The mission of this work is our motivation: we are committed to making progress against the world’s largest problems. To do so, we need research and data to be available and accessible, and we believe that our work on this has a large positive impact on bringing us closer to a better future.

Team

We are a lovely bunch of people with an overwhelming passion for what we do. Well, of course, we are a bit biased here. But it’s not an exaggeration to say that we would still want to work on this publication even if we weren’t paid for it (we know this is true because, in the past, we weren’t paid for this work). We are a small team trying to have a significant impact: this means each of us has to take on large projects and lead them. We enjoy working together and have a lot of respect for each other’s work, knowledge, skills, and personalities. Outside of work, we are good friends.

Audience

We receive tremendous support and engagement from our readers. The feedback and discussion that our content generates create a mutual learning experience between us and our readers. Unfortunately, mutual respect is not always a given online, and sometimes, you must have thick skin. Nonetheless, close to 100% of all feedback is constructive and respectful, and we find this very motivating. It makes our work much better in the process.

Contacts and collaboration

We are a unique project with a wide reach. We bridge the gap between academia, high-level policy, and international journalism, which means we often work with fantastic people and impactful institutions.

Learning

We learn every day. By studying the data, working through the research, and discussing it with the other team members, readers, and collaborators, we continually reevaluate and challenge our understanding. It is a personal goal for all of us to understand our world a bit better every day. This makes working on Our World in Data an exciting journey for everyone on the team.