We're hiring: Policy Advisor

Climate change is causing devastating impacts in low and middle-income countries. Storms, floods, droughts, and heatwaves are causing widespread loss & damage (L&D) including the loss of lives, health, homes, infrastructure, and livelihoods. L&D is already estimated to cost hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and will likely rise to the trillions annually by 2050.

Despite doing little to cause climate change, developing countries and communities must increasingly invest in responding to more frequent and severe extreme weather events. However, they often lack the funding, capacity, and evidence needed to respond effectively and safeguard the needs of the most climate-vulnerable people. Responses to L&D are often paid for out of pocket by those most affected—the poorest people around the world.

We’re at a defining moment for how the world addresses loss and damage. As the newly-established Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) accepts its first requests for funding, many governments around the world are putting in place their first loss and damage policies and programmes.

This moment presents an opportunity to ensure loss and damage responses deliver real benefits to affected people. By advocating for L&D responses and governance frameworks that focus on impact, equity, and accountability, we can help set norms that can determine how the world addresses loss and damage for years to come. These early decisions will influence whether the Fund is a tool for justice, or another climate finance mechanism that fails to reach those most in need.

The Loss and Damage Policy Institute (LDPI) is a new non-profit organisation focused on ensuring loss and damage finance and policy deliver real impact for affected people. We launched in October 2025 after completing the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Programme.

In our first eight months, we’ve formed partnerships with two country governments – Antigua & Barbuda and Uganda, supporting them to design impactful proposals to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage.

Here is a summary of our work so far and our plans for the coming year.

We are now hiring our second full time staff member to join our founder for our second year of operations. We see this role as uniquely impactful, as it will help shape the organisation’s direction, with the potential to shape how the world responds to loss and damage more broadly.

The Policy Advisor role will focus on delivering LDPI’s core activities, as well as supporting on strategy and operations. This will include:

Some activities you might focus on in your first six months include:

We’re looking for someone with high agency, who is comfortable jumping in to get things done under uncertainty and with little structure in a start-up environment.

You don’t need to be a loss and damage expert, but we do value previous experience in relevant fields such as climate, development, adaptation, humanitarian or disaster risk management. We’d also like to see skills in policy advisory, technical assistance, evidence synthesis, report writing, and/or advocacy.

Here are some of the characteristics required for this role:

Here are some additional skills and experiences that would be beneficial in a candidate:

We recognise that no one candidate will meet all criteria perfectly. If you feel this role could be a good fit, you should apply anyways. We encourage candidates from under-represented backgrounds to apply.

Complete this application form. The form includes logistical questions, a CV / linkedin, and three written questions. We estimate this form will take 30-60 minutes to complete.

Please do not submit a cover letter for this role.

A small number of candidates will be brought forward to complete further application steps, including an asynchronous work test task, an interview, and a half-day work trial (in person where possible).

The deadline to apply is 17 August, 2026 at 9am BST.

However, applications will be considered on a rolling basis, and the posting may close sooner if we receive a sufficient number of suitable applications.

We ask that you don’t use AI to write the answers to your application questions. We want to see your own independent thoughts and writing shine! Feel free to submit your answers with imperfect grammar and spelling—those things are correctable with AI at a later date.

Feel free to share this job description and form with candidates you think would be a good fit.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Sadie DeCoste at sadie@ldpolicy.org or on Slack. We are not available for informational calls at this time.