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 lead IAA's work in China, from promoting innovations like in-ovo sexing and immunocastration, to identifying Chinese innovations that could be promising in other markets like the US, Brazil, and Europe.
About the role
This role is remote and based in China, or requires the ability to travel there frequently.
We envision this becoming a full-time position, but it could begin as a part-time contractor engagement depending on the right candidate's situation.
You'll report to the CEO and work closely with IAA's core team, with regular collaboration across time zones.
Key responsibilities
Conduct deep, high-quality research into the bottlenecks to adoption of existing technologies like in-ovo sexing and immunocastration in China and the broader APAC region.
Develop and execute interventions to fill these gaps or accelerate progress—such as research grants, investments, market shaping initiatives, and other approaches you identify as high-impact.
Identify Chinese innovations that may be applicable in markets like the US, Brazil, and Europe. Analyze these technologies for both their potential welfare benefits and commercial prospects.
Develop and execute interventions to help the most promising innovations expand domestically or internationally.
Lay the groundwork for IAA's growing presence in China over the next 1–2 years, with the potential to build and lead a team.
About you
You are deeply aligned with our mission to improve animal health and welfare through technology, and you understand and buy into our theory of change.
You are fluent in Mandarin and English.
You have a strong track record of achievement in business or technology—whether in launching products, conducting applied research, building organizations, or driving adoption of new technologies in complex markets.
Experience in agriculture, deep tech, or biotech is a plus but not required.
Existing relationships in China's agricultural, biotech, or technology sectors are a strong advantage.
You are a creative problem solver with high agency.
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).
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In this role, you’ll function as an intrapreneur at IAA—embedding deeply in the organization's work, understanding how we think and research, and proactively finding opportunities to use AI to automate, accelerate, and extend what we do. You'll also build internal tools and software to support our programmatic work.
About the role
Remote, based in the US. [adjust as needed]
We envision this becoming a full-time position, but it could begin as a part-time contractor engagement depending on the right candidate's situation.
You'll report to the CEO but collaborate heavily across the entire team.
Key responsibilities
Develop a deep understanding of IAA's research processes, analytical frameworks, and decision-making—then design AI-powered workflows to automate, complement, and accelerate them.
Proactively identify opportunities across the organization where AI could save time or improve our work, and build solutions to address them.
Leverage frontier AI tools and multi-agent workflows to conduct deep literature reviews, red-team our analyses, and accelerate research.
Build internal tools and software to support programmatic work, from data pipelines to custom applications.
Help teammates improve their own use of AI tools as needed.
About you
You have a strong technical foundation—whether as a software engineer, data scientist, or a technical professional who's deeply comfortable building with code.
You have deep, practical familiarity with frontier AI tools and how people are using them.
You learn new domains quickly and can translate messy, qualitative processes into structured, automatable workflows.
You can hold two things in your head at once: the substance of a domain (e.g., agricultural technology, research methodology) and the question of how to systematize and automate work within it.
You have a track record of building things that are actually useful—creating MVPs, talking to stakeholders, and iterating relentlessly until the solution fits.
You are excited to work in an early-stage startup nonprofit environment. This means:
You have an entrepreneurial drive and 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).
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We're a small team where most of our staff focus on programmatic work—research, technology acceleration, and market shaping. But there's a growing set of functions that are critical to our success and don't yet justify dedicated roles: communications, fundraising, operations, and ecosystem building. We need a versatile generalist to own all of it.
This role is for someone who thrives on breadth and variety. You'll craft a press release one day, plan a fellowship program the next, and sort out a compliance issue the day after. You'll be a strategic partner to the CEO on how to grow the organization and the broader welfare technology field. Over time, as IAA scales, you'll help determine which of these functions need dedicated staff—and potentially build and lead those teams.
About the role
Full-time
US applicants only
Remote
Responsibilities
Define and execute strategy to build the welfare tech ecosystem as a whole—attracting talent into the field, improving coordination between organizations, and designing programs like fellowships and convenings.
Support the CEO on fundraising strategy, donor engagement, stewardship, and fundraising materials.
Lead IAA's external communications—website, newsletters, reports, social media—and manage our visual identity and design.
Be a strategic communications partner to program staff, shaping how we tell our story and identifying narratives we're missing.
Manage day-to-day operations including HR, finance, compliance, and legal coordination, and build organizational infrastructure to support anticipated growth.
About you
You are deeply aligned with our mission to improve animal health and welfare through technology, and tou understand and buy into our unique theory of change.
You have a passion for organization building and are equally excited to tackle nitty-gritty issues of execution as questions of big-picture organizational strategy and direction.
Experience across communications, fundraising, and operations is preferred but not required—we're looking for someone who can grow into breadth, not someone who's already done every piece of this job.
You are an excellent writer and communicator with a sharp eye for narrative and design.
You have a strong track record of achievement in business, communications, operations, or nonprofit management.
You are a creative problem solver with high agency.
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).
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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.
Innovate Animal Ag is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply—if you're excited about this role but aren't sure you meet every qualification, we'd still love to hear from you.