Director of Community Growth

Job description

Please note that we may review applications for this role on a rolling basis and we encourage you to apply early. We're hiring a Director of Community Growth (or, for exceptionally qualified candidates, a Chief Community Growth Officer) to lead talent growth for the whole EA ecosystem by scaling four of CEA's flagship programs (Events, Groups, Online, and Courses) into their next era. This is one of the most important roles for EA’s future in the coming years – shaping the EA community and building the next generation of high-impact talent. Reporting to the CEO, you'll join CEA's senior leadership team and collaborate with teams across the organisation to help shape the future of CEA. We are open to hiring at the Director or Chief level. ABOUT CEA The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) stewards the movement of people putting effective altruism principles into practice to solve the world's most pressing problems. We’re working to build a flourishing future by applying evidence, reason, and compassion to challenges like global poverty, animal suffering, and risks from transformative AI. Our work centers on growing and supporting a global community of people who rigorously analyze where they can do the most good – and take action on those insights. Current strategic priorities include increasing understanding of effective altruism and its principles, growing the number of people who are motivated by EA principles to take significant action to address pressing problems, and diversifying funding sources for high-impact work. We had significant success in 2025, building momentum within CEA. Our headcount grew from 42 to 66 core staff. Program participation (e.g., events, courses, groups) grew https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NKrpEdg7wAgcoHNRG/cea-is-growing-again-25-more-people-engaged-with-our-1 by 20-25% year over year. We merged https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BLvTcMMEQGFYsh6Jw/ea-funds-and-cea-are-merging with EA Funds https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/ and are rapidly scaling up our capacity for grantmaking and associated fundraising. In 2026, we’re maintaining ambitious momentum https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Dy4iGHbAkKAQ4t2Dw/building-sustainable-momentum-progress-report-on-cea-s-2025 while building the foundations for a step-change in the wider EA ecosystem’s growth trajectory from 2027 onwards. We’re in the midst of the best fundraising year in CEA’s history (currently on track to raise $100M+) and are looking for the right talent to help us take advantage of the many opportunities in front of us. ABOUT THE ROLE We're hiring a senior leader to own and grow one of CEA's highest-leverage engines for growth: Events, Groups, Online, and Courses, which will soon be united as one Community Growth Team. This role represents an opportunity to be a transformative leader at an inflection point for both CEA and the wider EA ecosystem: - For CEA: We’re in the midst of our best fundraising year ever, building off a year of accelerating growth. We reversed a slightly negative growth trend into 20–25% year-over-year growth across our programs in this portfolio in 2025, and we're now scaling from that momentum. Our headcount has approximately doubled over the past two years, and we’re looking to grow even faster. We’re merging our historical programs into one united Community Growth Team to enable faster and better coordination. You’ll have the opportunity to be a builder leading the way on our updated community growth strategy and team. - For the EA community: There’s a new wave of philanthropy leading to a wide variety of new impactful opportunities across the EA community. These opportunities are increasingly bottlenecked by having enough highly talented people to take them on. Ecosystem-wide data has shown CEA to be one of the organizations most credited with moving people into high-impact roles. You’ll have the opportunity to build on our existing success to enable the ecosystem to take advantage of a transformative opportunity. ABOUT THE TEAM The Events, Groups, Online, and Courses teams are the core of CEA's historical work. Together, they carry our talent growth pillar and the pipeline through which people move from early interest in effective altruism into deeper engagement and high-impact work. - The Events Team organizes EA Global https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-global, our flagship conference series: three conferences a year across San Francisco, London, and New York, drawing more than 3,000 attendees. It also runs the community-organised EAGx conferences and EA Summits (10 EAGx events and at least 23 Summits across more than 26 countries in 2026). - The Groups Team empowers and stewards the global network of EA groups, equipping https://www.effectivealtruism.org/groups-mentorship-and-funding/ community builders with the direct support, infrastructure, grants, and mentorship they need to help their groups flourish. Over a period of many years, these groups have been repeatedly cited as one of the most cited pathways into high-impact work: when Coefficient Giving ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iJNFfmcmbMMx-xw19Wnlin9ZXWQz1PJtcoS1GAGN8K8/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.kn4usy8zz1jkformerly Open Philanthropy) surveyed https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iJNFfmcmbMMx-xw19Wnlin9ZXWQz1PJtcoS1GAGN8K8/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.kn4usy8zz1jk 217 people likely to have high-impact careers, respondents cited EA groups as an important factor more often than books, podcasts, or conferences, and in Rethink Priorities' 2024 EA Survey https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/r8XoHhKKzmQgxm2Lf/ea-survey-2024-how-people-get-involved-in-ea, almost a third of community members named an EA group as important to getting involved. - The Online Team builds CEA's digital products: the EA Forum https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/, the EA Newsletter https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-newsletter-archives, and the Opportunities Board https://www.effectivealtruism.org/opportunities. These reach people at scale, with around 700,000 annual visitors to the Forum and more than 63,000 newsletter subscribers, and are among CEA's highest-leverage channels for moving people toward more impactful work. - The Courses Team designs and delivers online programs that help talented people explore how they can best help others, offering structured guidance and support to take tailored next steps toward high-impact opportunities, from the Introductory Program https://www.effectivealtruism.org/virtual-programs/introductory-program and the In-Depth Program https://www.effectivealtruism.org/courses/in-depth-program to the Career Bootcamp https://www.effectivealtruism.org/courses/bootcamp, a free online program that helps accomplished professionals identify high-impact opportunities and take concrete steps toward a career transition. The Bootcamp's most recent launch drew 1,818 applications. This number is well above the 100 to 500 typical of comparable programs. Program graduates have gone on to work in organisations including Secure Bio, the Centre for the Governance of AI, Coefficient Giving, New Roots Institute, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Probably Good, with some founding their own nonprofits. In addition to these existing programs, we expect you and your teams will eventually create new programs to fill strategic gaps. This is a role with opportunities to innovate and build. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES In this role, you will: - Build and develop a team of exceptional leaders. Day-to-day, that means you’ll be hiring, developing, and coaching the people who run Events, Groups, Online, and Courses. You'll empower outstanding leaders, set priorities across the team, decide how to allocate resources and make trade-offs, and foster teamwork that makes a team stronger together than the sum of its parts. - Shape CEA’s direction. As part of the Leadership Team, you’ll help set organization-wide strategy, coordinate across functions, and help build the next era of CEA. You'll also be responsible for cultivating a collaborative culture and proactively looking for how your teams can move CEA's other core goals of funding growth and a strong EA brand. - Own the strategy for talent growth. Work with product owners on your teams and leaders across the organization to define CEA’s overall talent growth goals, decide where to invest, and make the calls about what to grow, change, or stop. - Drive results via a product mindset. You’ll be responsible for leading a team to accelerate the growth of the EA community. We’ll expect you to have strong instincts for both product (e.g. what potential users want to engage with) and impact (we frequently discuss the concept of “product-market-impact fit https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DyncXLQ2ysb9K9dfR/you-need-user-buy-in-to-scale-your-impact”). WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR You might be a great fit for this role if you have: - Strong value alignment and high context with effective altruism principles and CEA’s mission, including comfort with tradeoffs and a commitment to acting with integrity in a high-trust ecosystem. You should have enough familiarity with the EA community to be able to drive strategic insights and understand the ecosystem-wide implications of your decisions. - A strong track record of senior leadership in a complex organization, including setting direction, making high-quality decisions under uncertainty, and reliably translating strategy into execution. - An established track record of building and leading high-performing teams, including hiring and developing managers, creating clear ownership and accountability, setting high standards and expectations, and driving the feedback and performance management process to address performance issues when needed. People should join CEA because they are excited to work with you. - A product-development mindset. You understand what makes products and programs compelling, and have experience designing experiments with clear success criteria and making hard decisions based on both qualitative and quantitative data. - An entrepreneurial drive. You're comfortable with ambiguity and decisions under uncertainty, and you create structure and new offerings in a fast-moving, rapidly scaling environment. You self-identify as a builder, and are excited to grow yourself and your team beyond your current responsibilities. - Strategic vision. You can set the direction for a core part of CEA’s strategy, empower the team to implement and build upon the strategy, and motivate the organization to achieve shared goals. - Strong stakeholder skills. You can work with other functions at CEA, as well as collaborate with leaders at other EA organizations. We should be excited for you to be a face of CEA. We're open to many different backgrounds. We can imagine experience in product roles, programmatic leadership at other non-profits, senior generalist roles (like consulting), growth-oriented roles, or startup generalist roles being helpful in this role. But if your background looks different and the responsibilities and skills above resonate with you, we'd love to see an application. While we want to hold open the possibility of hiring an exceptional candidate at our most senior level, we expect there are few candidates who meet all of these criteria. We expect a Director level candidate will have substantial experience in many of the core areas above but may also have some important areas for growth, whereas we expect a Chief level candidate to match all of the above skills and traits. OTHER INFORMATION - This is a full-time, remote position. We prefer applicants who are able to work in time zones between US Pacific Time and CET. - We have an office in Oxford, UK, that you would have access to. - Start date: Ideally as soon as possible, but we have reasonable flexibility for top candidates and understand that it may take time to responsibly transition out of responsibilities at another organization. - Reports to: Zachary Robinson, CEO - Compensation - In the US or UK, total compensation will start at $264,000, comprising a base salary of $240,000 and a 10% unconditional pension contribution. - Other locations: For candidates outside the US and UK, we base compensation on the same total compensation package and adjust for the cost of employment and fixed local benefit costs to create an equivalent package - Benefits in the US/UK include private health insurance, flexible work hours, a $6,000 / £5,000 annual professional development allowance, a $6,000 / £5,000 mental health support allowance, extended parental leave, ergonomic equipment, 25 days of paid vacation, and more. - This role will involve travel. You should expect to attend CEA retreats, conferences, and other events, likely totalling 5+ trips per year, including several international trips. We are committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply. We especially encourage applications from self-identified women and people of colour who are excited about contributing to our mission. The Centre for Effective Altruism is an equal opportunity employer. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact jobs@centreforeffectivealtruism.org. CEA participates in E-Verify for US employees. We are committed to protecting your data. See our privacy policy https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/privacy for more information. EVALUATION PLAN We expect the interview process to include the following steps, subject to changes: - Application - Test task 1 - Short interview - Test task 2 - Final interviews (3-4, non-sequential) - 1-2 day work trial - Reference checks