Senior Researcher

Remote (preference for China time zone or Pacific Time) · Full-time · Rolling applications

About Myrias

Myrias is an independent venture studio working on some of the largest, most neglected sources of animal suffering. We prioritize the most tractable, cost-effective opportunities at the largest scale. Our core focus is China, which farms more animals than any other country. We build whatever a problem needs: a nonprofit program, a for-profit company, or a research project. We work through technical, producer-facing improvements in equipment, breeding, and feed, and we invest in real operating capability where the impact potential is greatest.

The role

We’re building a small research team to act as Myrias’s in-house think tank. Our Programs Team generates a steady flow of field visit notes, interview transcripts, research results, and progress updates. You’ll read all of it, decide what matters, and turn it into fast, evidence-backed recommendations on which programs we pursue, how we design interventions, and where we invest. Our Program Directors then put those recommendations into practice.

Each researcher is the point person for one of our programs. You’ll build deep expertise in your focus area while bringing a fresh perspective to the broader team’s work. If you’d thrive at a place like Rethink Priorities or Faunalytics and want your work to drive direct programmatic decisions, this role is for you.

What you’ll do

• Work through everything coming in from the Programs Team, systematically and comprehensively, and decide for yourself what to look for.
• Weigh welfare impact and market reality side by side. On impact, that means BOTECs, counterfactual impact, and backfire risk. On the market side, it means firm incentives, value-chain economics, policy, trade, and substitution between proteins.
• Move quickly. Understanding is rarely complete, so you’ll make well-informed calls on solid initial background work and write deeper analyses when a decision calls for them.
• Explain what your findings mean for program and investment strategy.
• Use AI tools to process and organize material, with your own judgment driving the conclusions.

Who you are

• An experienced researcher whose work has informed real decisions, whether at a research organization, think tank, consultancy, investment firm, or in academia.
• Thinks in terms of impact, with a strong grasp of effective altruism ideas.
• Independent and self-directing. You find your own way to the answer and ask the right questions along the way.
• Decisive, with a bias to action. You make well-reasoned calls with imperfect information and say what you think in a few lines.
• Writes clearly and briefly, and backs claims with evidence.
• Cares about reducing animal suffering and respects the business realities producers face.

Bonus points for depth in one of these areas, and strong candidates from other backgrounds are very welcome too:

1. Economics and finance: comfort with complex market dynamics, competitors, and investment decisions.
2. Animal science: biological and production expertise, and the ability to pull the science out of interviews and field notes.
3. Engineering and technology: enough mechanical engineering or machine learning knowledge to judge whether a proposed technology is feasible and well positioned.

Experience in agriculture or aquaculture, or familiarity with international agricultural markets, is also a bonus.

What we offer

• Your research directly shapes what we do and where we invest.
• Ownership of a program area from day one, with real autonomy over what you work on.
• A chance to shape a new team as it grows.
• A small, fast-moving team working on some of the most important and neglected problems in farmed animal welfare.