We’re advancing practical, scalable solutions for animal welfare
Careers at Innovate Animal Ag
Our mission is to leverage technology to build an agriculture system that’s humane, sustainable, and also compatible with the food abundance that industrialization has made possible. We are bringing together the pioneers, ideas, and resources to make this new system a reality.
But when it comes to accelerating technological innovation, there’s no one-size-fits all approach. Each technology brings its own mix of biological, economic, regulatory, and operational challenges, so interventions must be tailor-made. Sometimes it’s new research to answer a crucial question; sometimes it’s spinning out a company; sometimes it’s securing financing to de-risk scale-up.
Our team, culture, and organizational structure are built around this unique set of challenges. We are strongly influenced by DARPA, the US defence innovation program, where each program area (like GPS or self-driving cars) is owned by a dedicated leader with deep expertise, individual accountability, and strategic autonomy. We apply the same model to animal health and welfare technologies: identify high-potential projects, run disciplined experiments, and move resources quickly from what isn’t working to what is.
Therefore, instead of coming up with ideas of things to do and then hiring people with experience doing them, we look for exceptional people who can rise to whatever new challenge they may face. If you’re an entrepreneurial generalist who learns fast, reasons from first principles, and executes without hand-holding, you’ll do well here. We value people who deeply engage deeply with how innovation actually moves the real world, who are comfortable making decisions under uncertainty, and failing fast.
Within Innovate Animal Ag, there’s no typical day. One day, you might conduct a deep literature review to understand the biology of a particular welfare challenge. The next day you might negotiate the details of a partnership with a large corporation. The next day, you might create a financial model to decide whether an academic research proposal is worth funding. You don’t have to have done all this before, but you have to be able to jump in if that’s what needs to be done.
If you’re someone with exceptional ability and agency, who feels like Innovate Animal ag is the organization you’ve always been searching for, we want to hear from you. Especially if you see an opportunity that we’re missing, if you can bring a perspective to the table that we lack, or if you’re the best in the world at whatever you do, we want to hear from you.
“I believe that animal welfare as a social and political cause is massively underperforming its potential because practical, scalable solutions are not yet at the center of discussion. We focus so much on telling people what they shouldn’t eat, and telling businesses what they shouldn’t do. The climate movement achieved success by centering technologies like renewable energy and electric vehicles, then mobilizing massive social and political capital towards their adoption. Animal welfare is structurally similar, ultimately being about mitigating negative externalities of industrialization. The broadest ambition of Innovate Animal Ag is to bring a techno-optimist revolution to animal welfare, advancing technological solutions to major challenges and seeking to reward innovative and disruptive companies that are doing things better.”
— Robert Yaman, CEO
Open Roles
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In this role, you’ll be responsible for a large part of Innovate Animal Ag’s core programs–from identifying new technologies to support, to deeply researching and understanding the bottlenecks to their development and adoption, then developing and executing plans to alleviate those bottlenecks.
About the role
Full-time
US applicants only
Remote
Key responsibilities
Conduct deep, high-quality research into a key animal health area
Identify gaps, bottlenecks and opportunities across existing research
Propose interventions needed to fill these gaps or accelerate progress, such as research grants, competitions, investments, market shaping initiatives, or whatever you think will make the biggest impact
Proactively oversee a portfolio of diverse interventions
Directly support grantees and key partners to collaborate and progress towards key technological milestones
About you
You are deeply aligned with our mission to improve animal health and welfare through technology.
You understand and buy into our unique theory of change, and are excited by the opportunity to push it forward.
You are a creative problem solver.
You can quickly and critically absorb new information about a novel field.
You have a track record of stellar achievement in any field, especially with a research or entrepreneurial focus.
You are excited to work in an early-stage startup nonprofit environment. This means:
You have an entrepreneurial drive, are ambitious and anti-complacent.
You’re comfortable navigating ambiguity and creating structure from scratch.
You’re eager to jump into whatever task is needed—even if it’s tedious, unglamorous, or outside your job description.
You are comfortable with repeatedly failing, learning, and adjusting (then failing again).
If you’re interested, please send a resume and a short personal essay (<1 page) to careers@animalinnovation.org. In your personal essay, be sure to mention your relationship to our mission, and why you want to work at Innovate Animal Ag in this specific role.