Overview

GiveDirectly is seeking a Senior Product Manager, Targeting to design and scale the systems that allow us to rapidly and equitably identify who to serve in moments of crisis. This individual will serve as the strategic and technical lead for targeting within the International Rapid Response (IRR) Product team and build the infrastructure that ensures GD knows:

• When and where a crisis event has occurred that fits GD response criteria.
• Which subpopulations are most affected and relevant for our programs.
• The actionable lists of individuals to enroll for assistance.

A core part of this role is applying humanitarian needs analysis frameworks to ensure that our crisis response is data-driven, inclusive, and contextually grounded. The ideal candidate will combine humanitarian analysis experience with strong product management skills—you will drive continuous discovery to define our products for targeting, working in tight collaboration with engineers, data scientists, and operations partners to run rapid experiments, validate assumptions, and scale solutions across contexts.

Reports to: Senior Product Director, International Rapid Response

What You’ll Do

Lead Humanitarian Needs Analysis for Targeting

• Design and implement approaches for systematically assessing needs in crisis-affected populations.
• Incorporate humanitarian data sources (e.g., needs assessments, poverty statistics, vulnerability indices, displacement monitoring, etc) into GD’s targeting systems.
• Translate complex needs analysis into clear eligibility criteria and operational plans as a service to other teams.

Detect and Prioritize Crisis Events

• Develop systems and frameworks to monitor global crises and determine when GD should mobilize.
• Partner with humanitarian agencies, data providers, and crisis monitoring organizations to integrate reliable event and needs assessment signals into GD’s workflow.

Identify Relevant Subpopulations

• Define methodologies and establish systems for determining which groups within a crisis are most relevant for GD’s programs, using vulnerability analysis and humanitarian standards.

Generate Recipient Lists

• Establish the tool kit for producing accurate, actionable lists of individuals to be enrolled in GD IRR programs.

Technical Product Management

• Lead and steward the roadmap for targeting capabilities, including capability prioritization
• Lead end-to-end product development from problem discovery and user requirements gathering to launch and iteration, hand-in-hand with engineering, data science, and operations
• Pair strong technical expertise with deep understanding of users and humanitarian realities to design reusable, leveraged systems
• Conduct agile iterative experiments and pilots to validate assumptions about crisis detection and targeting, using results to refine strategy
• Define and track success metrics for targeting products
• Direct engineering and data science and partner with operations teams to ensure outputs are timely, relevant, and usable in the field.

Drive Efficiency and Learning

• Continuously evaluate and improve targeting approaches for speed, accuracy, and inclusivity, while maintaining humanitarian principles.
• Stay abreast of technology and industry developments to ensure GD is leveraging cutting-edge approaches to targeting.
• Document learnings and build playbooks to scale best practices across different contexts.

What You’ll Bring

• Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity.
• Proven experience conducting humanitarian needs analysis — assessing vulnerabilities, interpreting crisis data, and applying frameworks such as the IPC, MIRA, or sectoral needs assessments.
• 5+ years of product management experience, with a track record of shipping data-intensive or humanitarian-focused products and collaborating closely with engineers and data teams.
• High technical fluency across data engineering, data analytics, and data science – ability to ask the right questions, internalize technical tradeoffs between approaches, and shape complex data and technical challenges into operationally viable targeting strategies.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences, including humanitarian partners.
• Proven ability to thrive in fast-changing, high-stakes environments.
• Ability to adapt to change and navigate ambiguity and a curiosity-driven mindset.
• Strong product sense and ability to balance speed and rigor in high uncertainty.
• Demonstrated ability to design reusable systems, processes, and technology that scale across multiple contexts.
• Supervisory and team leadership skills, including setting direction for analysts, data scientists and data engineers. Proven ability to set priorities, provide mentorship, and build collaborative cross-functional teams.

Nice to Have

• Prior field experience in humanitarian response or international social protection programs in resource constrained contexts.
• Familiarity with data security and privacy frameworks in sensitive contexts.
• Comfort working in SQL, Python, or R for data manipulation and monitoring.
• Experience using generative AI for decision support.

Compensation

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to ensure that staff’s total compensation package (base compensation + bonus) falls within the 75th percentile of similar roles, at similar organizations. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles. Read more about our compensation philosophy here.

• The United States base salary for this role is $129,000.
• The Kenya base salary for this role is $101,221.

This role is fully remote, so if you are not based in the US or Kenya, we will share an estimated salary benchmark for the country you are based in during the hiring process.