We're looking for a writer
Posted 3 days 1 hour ago by Our World in Data
Permanent
Full Time
Other
Oxfordshire, Oxford, United Kingdom, OX1 1
Job Description
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 team. Visa sponsorship may be considered for the right candidate, depending on individual circumstances and relocation preference.
Description : We are looking for an experienced writer. The ideal candidate already writes single authored pieces regularly and publicly for a non specialist audience, builds arguments based on data and research, and has the range to cover many of the topics we work on. This is a senior role: the person we hire will work closely with Hannah Ritchie, our Deputy Editor. The hiring process involves a paid writing residency before any full time offer.
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:
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:
What we're looking for Required skills and experience
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:
Compensation : £80,000 to £120,000 per year, based on experience and location.
Location : Our offices are in Oxford, United Kingdom . click apply for full job details
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 team. Visa sponsorship may be considered for the right candidate, depending on individual circumstances and relocation preference.
Description : We are looking for an experienced writer. The ideal candidate already writes single authored pieces regularly and publicly for a non specialist audience, builds arguments based on data and research, and has the range to cover many of the topics we work on. This is a senior role: the person we hire will work closely with Hannah Ritchie, our Deputy Editor. The hiring process involves a paid writing residency before any full time offer.
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:
- 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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
Compensation : £80,000 to £120,000 per year, based on experience and location.
Location : Our offices are in Oxford, United Kingdom . click apply for full job details