Regional principal, ai economic preparedness

Key Details

Compensation: $160,000 - $205,000

Location: Remote, with regular overlap with European and US working hours

Start date: January 2027

Travel: ~20–30%, including international travel

About Windfall

Windfall Trust is a policy research organization preparing governments and institutions for AI-driven economic disruption. We bring together researchers, economists, and decision-makers to map out impacts and surface policy options.

Windfall's mission is to ensure that the economic benefits of advanced AI are broadly shared, rather than captured by a few. We advise countries on their economic preparedness for transformative AI (TAI), drawing on our wider research, scenario workshops with economists, policymakers and civil society leaders, and the Policy Atlas, an evolving repository of policy options available to governments. We also have an internal database of AI economic indicators called the Windfall Observatory.

About the role

Windfall is running AI economic preparedness programs with national governments across Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Each program examines how advanced AI could affect a country's development model (e.g., job automation exposure, labor-intensive manufacturing, traded services, remittances or commodity exports, fiscal situation), and helps its government decide what to monitor and how to respond.

Windfall is hiring a full-time Principal to run a portfolio of these country engagements within one region (e.g., Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, West Africa, East Africa). You'll be Windfall's senior counterpart for governments and partners in the region, set the direction of each engagement, lead the scenario workshop, convene the working groups that carry policy forward, and guide governments from diagnosis to monitoring, policy and institutional change. We are building out our country preparedness approach with a range of international and local partners, and you'll help shape how it works in your region.

You will be supported by a Senior Researcher who provides analytical and content support, as well as Windfall senior management for high-level direction as needed.

What you'll do

Your work will span seven areas:

• Engagement leadership: Own each country engagement from scoping to close, agreeing objectives and measures of success with government counterparts, setting scope with delivery partners, leading collaboration, and owning milestones.
• Research direction: Set the starting hypothesis and research questions for each country, direct the analysis and research tools behind each engagement, and review outputs before they reach governments and partners.
• Scenarios and workshops: Adapt Windfall's reference scenarios to each country's context and lead workshops with ministers, senior officials, local experts and international partners, and turn their outputs into agreed next steps. Learn more: https://windfalltrust.org/scenarios.
• Working groups: Identify and convene economists, think tanks and officials in each country and across the region, establish them as standing working groups with a local counterpart institution, and keep them active between workshops.
• Preparedness planning: Guide governments and local partners as they set up early-warning indicators, select policy options from Windfall's Policy Atlas, and develop national preparedness plans and research agendas.
• Partnerships and funding: Represent Windfall in the region, participate in conferences and other Windfall workshops, build relationships with multilateral country offices, regional institutions, regional knowledge partners and funders, and contribute to proposals that fund new country work.
• Learning across countries: Track what each government monitors, decides and funds, feed lessons from the region into Windfall's shared approach to country AI economic preparedness, and help shape Windfall's strategy for the region.

What you'll bring

8+ years in economic policy, international development, government advisory or strategy consulting, including leading multi-stakeholder programs

A track record of leading engagements with governments, ideally ministries of ICT, finance, education, economy or planning in developing countries or those of the region

A grounding in development economics and public policy, such as labor markets, informality, structural transformation, trade or public finance, and the judgment to turn analysis into a clear argument for a minister

Experience designing and facilitating workshops or convenings with senior officials

Experience building and running expert networks, working groups or coalitions

Experience managing teams, consultants or partners, and holding budgets and timelines across several workstreams

Clear, persuasive writing and speaking for senior government, multilateral and funder audiences

A serious interest in how advanced AI could reshape economies, jobs and public finances

A collaborative, reliable working style suited to a small team spread across time zones

Nice to have:

Experience with a multilateral or development organization (e.g., World Bank, IMF or OECD), or strategy consulting

A background in foresight or scenario planning

An existing network of economists and policymakers in the region

A working language or experience in the region

Experience writing funding proposals or managing funder relationships