How to Find a High-Impact Engineering Job

As engineers, there are so many ways to have a high impact with your career. However, finding a job that will let you have a positive impact is not always so easy. This post will hopefully help make the job hunt a little easier.

Before diving into job hunting, the first step is to identify the problem and potentially the most high-impact solutions to that problem that will let you have the highest impact with your career; we hope these resources that we put together can help you with that decision. Another useful tool is to make a career plan. If you’d like to explore your options or get feedback on your career plans, feel free to book a career conversation with us.

Finding A Role

Job Boards

Roles in high-impact organisations are often difficult to find because these small organisations are likely to have a small budget, resulting in a low reach. These organisations often advertise by getting their roles on job boards.

Signing up for notifications for a particular tag (e.g. the ‘engineering’ on the 80,000 Hours job board) will keep you up-to-date on any opportunities.

There are so many job boards out there that we hope to consolidate into our High Impact Engineers job board one day. Until that happens, here are the job boards that we’ve been keeping an eye on. There are quite a few, so if you want a summary of our top picks each month, you can subscribe to our newsletter!

General

• High Impact Engineers job board

• 80,000 Hours job board

• EA Opportunities board

• Effective Thesis board

• This list of social good job boards

• Jobs for Humanity

• Join High Impact Professionals’ talent directory

• High Impact Recruitment job board

Climate Change

• Climate&Hand DB (hands-on engineering, US)

• Awesome Sustainability Jobs (programming background)

• Climatebase

• Vegan Jobs

• Impactify (Germany, paid)

• Jobverde (Germany)

• Sustainablejobs.nl (Netherlands)

• Greenjobs.nl (Netherlands)

• GreenJobs.co.uk (UK)

• Green Jobs Network (mostly US)

• Terra.do

• ClimateTechList

• US Fusion Energy (US)

Alternative Protein

• Talist job board (comprehensive, also offer a matchmaking system)

• Protein Directory (directory of alt protein companies)

• GFI's Alternative Protein Career Portal

• Pivot Food Investment’s job board

• Jobs in Cell Ag

• Blue Horizon job board

• Animal Advocacy Careers

• Beyond Animal

• Food+Tech

• FoodHack

• ForceBrands

• IndieBio

• Protein Report

• Vegan Job Board

• VegNews

• Vegpreneur

• Vevolution

Civilisational Resilience

• ALLFED

• Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (not a job board, but has some opportunities)

• Volunteering to reduce the threat of Nuclear Weapons

Biosecurity and biorisk

• Global Biodefense

• UN jobs for biosecurity

Word of Mouth

A LinkedIn survey found that 85% of roles are filled via networking. This means that increasing your surface area to opportunities by making connections can be vital to landing a role. Joining a network such as High Impact Engineers, attending conferences and events, and speaking to people will increase the chance of serendipitous encounters, which could lead to opportunities you wouldn’t have found otherwise. Remember - people are generally very willing to help, hiring is difficult, and employers are often looking to increase their reach, so don’t be afraid to ask about opportunities!

Platform Searching

There are many more mainstream platforms that advertise jobs such as LinkedIn, as well as more country-specific platforms (in the UK there is Indeed, Reed, Total Jobs, Student Ladder, etc.). Most of the jobs advertised here will not be particularly high-impact, but might be good for career capital. As with the other job boards, taking advantage of the advanced search function and notification settings should reduce the work you have to put in.

Make Your Own Role!

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, but could be incredibly impactful. As a for-profit entrepreneur, you could drive forward innovation, build career capital (you have to learn quickly), and potentially combine both high earnings and large direct impact. 80,000 Hours has an in-depth exploration of how to become a tech entrepreneur and have an impact.

Non-profit entrepreneurship can also be highly impactful. Only a small number of nonprofits are founded based on rigorous evidence and research, so many global problems go unidentified and unaddressed or are tackled with ineffective solutions. To contribute, you can apply to an incubation program with Charity Entrepreneurship. Charity Entrepreneurship identifies the most effective charity ideas, and connects their incubatees with training and funding to turn these ideas into high-impact organisations. If you’re considering working in non-profits, here are some tips from non-profit leaders for working in non-profits.

Conclusion

Job hunting is difficult. There are many considerations at play and impact might not take top priority (and that’s fine!) – however, we hope that these resources will help you broaden your search so that you can find more roles that suit you and your unique considerations, and help you achieve your impact goals. Feel free to schedule a career conversation with us if you’d like to chat through your options and find connections and resources.