Key Details

Compensation: $150,000 - $200,000

Contract: Full-time

Location: Fully remote

Reports to: CEO & Director of Research

Start date: ASAP

The Role

As Lead Economist, you will own Windfall's core research products and be the economic authority behind what we publish. We are interested in experts with an extensive background in labor economics, fiscal or welfare analyses, quantitative modeling, or development experience.

Depending on your strengths, that work could span ownership of our existing Policy Atlas, an upcoming Preparedness Map (a cross-country index of AI economic exposure and absorption capacity), an upcoming Scenarios Lab (a modeling platform that translates narrative AI futures into distributional and fiscal outcomes), or evaluating the assumptions behind our scenario modeling. In each case, ownership means the full arc: methodological design, data and analysis, drafting, external review, and standing behind the results when treasuries, central banks, and academic economists push back.

Windfall's research infrastructure is young, so you will be making foundational choices about methods, data, and framing, and living with their consequences. You will work directly with the CEO and Director of Research, alongside a small research team and external technical partners, and your work will feed directly into engagement with national governments and international institutions.

Responsibilities

You will:

• Own the methodology and delivery of one or more of Windfall's flagship research products: a v2 of a Policy Atlas, a Preparedness Index, a Scenarios Lab, or a Scenarios Report.

• Design and defend cross-country index methodology, including indicator selection, standardization, or weighting, and uncertainty.

• Translate narrative AI scenarios into quantified economic parameters and work with modeling partners to propagate them through household microdata into distributional and fiscal results.

• Analyze labor market resilience: which occupations and workers are exposed, how transitions historically play out, and what determines whether economies absorb or amplify a technology shock.

• Assess fiscal and welfare system resilience across countries at very different income levels, including how safety nets, tax bases, and transfer systems would perform under sustained labor market disruption.

• Cost and evaluate candidate policy responses under each scenario, from social insurance reform to transfer programs to capital taxation.