Founder's Associate

Would you like to use your analytical and strategic skills to help shape decisions that save lives? Join us!

Application Deadline: Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The position will remain open until filled

Location: Preferably based in the UK; candidates from India are also welcome to apply.

Salary: Competitive, commensurate with skills and experience, with flexibility for exceptional candidates.

How to Apply: Fill out this application form

About Suvita

Suvita is an impact-driven, evidence-based nonprofit focused on increasing uptake of routine childhood vaccinations in India. Over 4 million children born every year still miss their basic vaccinations in India, leading to far too many vaccine-preventable deaths. We run two rigorously tested, complementary programmes:

SMS reminders: We send personalised SMS messages to caregivers to prompt timely attendance for vaccinations at government clinics.
Immunisation ambassadors: We identify and train local influencers to volunteer as advocates for vaccination with families in their communities.

Since our founding in 2019:

We reach one in ten children born in India through our SMS vaccination reminders. In partnership with the governments of Bihar and Maharashtra, we’ve reached more than 6 million families with routine immunisation SMS reminders and more than 4 million pregnant women with antenatal care-related SMS reminders.

We’ve enrolled almost 15,000 community influencers as local ambassadors in districts in Bihar and Maharashtra.
GiveWell estimates that our SMS reminders increase vaccination rates by approximately 2 percentage points at a current cost of $0.40 per child reached in Maharashtra and $1.71 per child reached in Bihar. The immunization ambassadors program increases vaccination rates by around 7 percentage points and costs $1 to $2 per child reached.
We are partnering with J-PAL to run a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to test our immunisation ambassador model.
We have been incubated and funded by sector leaders like The Nudge Foundation, Ambitious Impact (formerly Charity Entrepreneurship), Mulago Foundation, GiveWell, D-Prize, Founders Pledge, and Schmidt Futures.
We have appeared in Vox, Giving What We Can, and the 80,000 Hours Podcast.

About the role

The Associate will work closely with the CEO to support decision-making and execution. This role is ideal for an analytically rigorous generalist who enjoys structured reasoning, back-of-the-envelope modelling, and writing with scientific precision. You will distil complex questions into decision-ready frameworks, support cost-effectiveness analysis, and produce clear, logically structured drafts for internal and external audiences.

A week at Suvita

Monday: You model different scale scenarios for the Ambassador programme under varying baseline vaccination rates and cost assumptions, preparing a short memo outlining expected value trade-offs.
Tuesday: You define evaluation criteria, compare trade-offs across project management tools, and present a structured recommendation to the CEO and Head of Operations.
Wednesday: You draft sections of our quarterly updates or annual report and proofread for errors and misses in the morning. In the afternoon, you restructure the team OKRs into a coherent, decision-relevant format.
Thursday: You work with the Suvita Communications consultant to reorganise our “Careers” webpage to attract high-calibre talent. This could include writing up an FAQ page, writing a Q&A video script for the Suvita team members, or coordinating “A day in the life of” blog piece.
Friday: You look through the EAG San Francisco attendee list to explore relevant contacts for Suvita, and look into Skoll and allied events to determine which ones (if any) Suvita should participate in.

Core Responsibilities

We’re looking for someone who is deeply curious, analytically sharp, and motivated by impact. Someone who enjoys turning messy information into clear insights, can think through trade-offs and risks with rigour, and is excited to work closely with the CEO on high-priority strategic decisions. This is a role for someone who is comfortable with ambiguity, proactive in spotting gaps, thoughtful about governance and confidentiality, and ready to take ownership of research, coordination, and special projects from idea to execution, all in service of strengthening Suvita’s mission and long-term impact.

Research, synthesis, and decision support:
- Conduct back-of-the-envelope cost-effectiveness analysis and quantitative modelling to inform strategic trade-offs
- Synthesise information across documents, conversations, data, and external sources into clear summaries. For instance, what is the external evidence on SMS reminders for routine immunisation, and what is our internal evidence on the impact of our programming
- Distil complex or ambiguous topics into structured options, trade-offs, and key questions
- Sense-check assumptions, surface risks, and flag missing information proactively
- Help create codebooks /document the metadata regarding information in our dashboards and database more generally, so it is easier to understand where things come from and how much manual editing has happened
- Prepare short internal memos or external write-ups based on our research and field notes (e.g., on demand generation approaches), as well as external-facing outputs that can be shared with government partners about what we do
Board and external engagement support
- Support preparation for trustee meetings, including papers, agendas, and synthesis notes
- Coordinate communications and scheduling with trustees and key external stakeholders
- Maintain strong confidentiality and governance awareness
Special projects
- Support time-bound CEO priority projects that require research, synthesis, or coordination
- Coordinate logistical undertakings such as team travel for government or funder meetings or offsite.
- Identify opportunities to improve how information flows to the CEO
- Build and refine simple systems that support better decision-making and execution

Who should Apply?

This could be a great fit for a recent generalist graduate with ~1-3 years of experience in research-heavy, analytical, or intellectually demanding environments. You are comfortable engaging with data, evidence, and structured arguments. You have some exposure to strategy, policy, consulting, operations, or a rigorous nonprofit setting. You have a track record of learning quickly across unfamiliar domains.

You’ll gain the breadth of exposure, mentorship, and responsibility that can set you up to have a career in entrepreneurship and the impact space long-term. The impact per hour will be very high as our work is impacting millions of lives and is expected to impact many more. The Founders Associate position is particularly a good fit for someone who wants high task variety. The expected variety of tasks per day in this job will be high, spanning across research, communications, operations, programmes, and innovation.

We value building long-term relationships with people committed to evidence-based impact, whether their journey remains at Suvita or extends elsewhere.

Essential requirements

Ability to perform rapid quantitative reasoning and structured back-of-the-envelope analysis
Exceptional writing precision: ability to draft logically rigorous, evidence-informed documents with minimal supervision
Strong comfort with probabilistic reasoning and operating under uncertainty
High intellectual honesty: comfort explicitly stating assumptions, uncertainties, and confidence levels
Ability to take ownership in a fragmented, low-context, and high-ambiguity environment
Low ego and high alignment with Suvita values, evidence-based ethos, and obsession with impact

Nice to have

Prior experience as a Founder’s Associate, research assistant, or generalist operator
Familiarity with global health, development, or impact measurement
Experience working in distributed or international teams

Do you have a question?

We have made a significant effort to include the key info in this Job Description, but of course, we can't have covered everything. If you have any question please feel free to write to us at careers@suvita.org.

If you meet some of the criteria and are not sure this is a great fit for you, we encourage you to apply!