Hiring a research writer working across developing world

ExpWithEVs is an independent media, data and research platform covering EV charging infrastructure. We publish a subscriber newsletter, build our own datasets on charging networks and vehicle sales, and sell market intelligence to charge point operators, hardware manufacturers and investors.

Most of what gets published about charging in these markets is press-release arithmetic. Companies count their own chargers, governments count sanctions rather than installations, and the same number gets repeated across a dozen outlets without anyone asking what it measures. Our work exists because we count independently.

We currently cover India closely and are expanding coverage into Southeast Asia and Latin America.

The organization started with a single person passionate about electric vehicle roadtrips. The curiosity about the infrastructure took ExpWithEVs from passion to recognition. We sought and found another collaborator in Garvit and ExpWithEVs went from recognition to business. We are a small team with big ambition. We are looking for someone to help us grow big, yet again!

The role

We are a small team. The person we hire will be the second person writing here, which means your work goes out under our masthead and is read by the operators it describes.

You will:

• Work from our own datasets — station-level charging data, connector counts, vehicle registrations — and find the story in them before anyone else publishes it.
• Write two to four pieces a month: quarterly data drops on a market, operator profiles, explainers on a policy change and what it actually does.
• Check figures published elsewhere. A great deal of charging coverage confuses charge points with stations, and sanctioned capacity with commissioned capacity. You will be the person who doesn't.
• Build sources — operators, hardware manufacturers, policy people — mostly over email and video call, across three regions and several time zones.
• Contribute sections and data checks to our paid research reports.

What this role is not. It is not a content marketing job: no SEO briefs, no listicles, no ghostwriting for clients. It is also not a job where someone hands you a fully-formed brief. Most weeks you will be given a dataset, a deadline and a reader, and asked what the story is.

What we're looking for

Essential

• You can open a spreadsheet and find the story in it. This is not a statistics requirement. It is the habit of refusing to take a number at face value, and of asking how it was collected before quoting it.
• Clear, plain English. Short sentences, no throat-clearing, no adjectives doing the work that evidence should do.
• Independence about evidence. We sell data to some of the companies we write about. You will sometimes find something a company disputes, and the job is to hold the line where the evidence supports you — and to correct yourself quickly and visibly where it doesn't.
• The resourcefulness to work on markets you don't live in. Much of what matters in Indonesia or Brazil sits in a tender document or a regulatory filing in a language you don't read. You should be willing to work through it in translation and cross-check what comes out. You must be able to read reports, tenders and documents and not just AI summaries.
• Enough organisation to work unsupervised against a publishing calendar.
• Your own laptop and a reliable internet connection.

Fresh graduates should apply. We have no minimum years of experience. We care about what you have written and how you think about evidence, not where you have worked. If you have been writing for a student publication, a newsletter nobody reads yet, or your own blog, send it.

Helpful, not required

• Existing knowledge of EVs, energy or infrastructure. We can teach the sector; we cannot teach judgement.
• Any experience reporting on or researching a market you don't live in.
• Comfort with spreadsheets beyond the basics, or any experience with data-led reporting.

On AI tools

We use AI tools here and you will too. They are permitted — openly — in our live interview round, and we would rather see how you direct one than pretend you won't.

What we don't accept is unchecked output: a figure nobody verified, a source nobody opened, a confident sentence nobody can defend. You are accountable for every sentence published under your name, whoever or whatever drafted it. Candidates who can explain why they kept a line, and which line they would bet is wrong, do well here.

Engagement and pay

Full-time, remote, open to applicants based in India. Working hours are flexible, but we publish on a schedule and you will occasionally take calls outside Indian business hours to reach sources in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Up to 40 hours per week is expected along with weekly calls as required.

Pay is ₹35,000 per month, with a six-month review. Approved expenses, including travel to industry events, are covered.

Hiring process

We have designed this to take as little of your time as possible before we take a real decision.

1. Application. Details below.
2. Round one — two written questions. If your application is shortlisted, these reach you by email within two days of applying, and you have 96 hours to return them. Two answers of 200–250 words each. Neither question is about EVs. Should take under an hour.
3. Round two — a two-hour live round, within a week of Round 1. The exact date and time will be confirmed by email. You get twenty minutes to ask us anything about the brief, roughly an hour to write a short piece from real data in a Google Doc, and half an hour to walk us through it. AI tools permitted.
4. Decision, within a week of the live round.

How to apply

Email with the subject line "Research Writer — ExpWithEVs", and include:

1. Your CV.
2. Links to two or three things you have written. Any subject. They do not need to be about EVs, or published anywhere.
3. One paragraph: a number you have seen published that you thought was wrong, and what made you doubt it.

Applications are reviewed as they arrive and shortlisted candidates hear from us within a day, so applying early helps.

Summary

Applications open - 14th September 2026

To apply - send your CV, links about two three things you’ve written on any subject, one paragraph about a number you saw that was wrong and what made you doubt it.

Once you apply, if you are shortlisted, you will get questions for Round 1. Two answers of 200-250 words are expected within 96 hours of receipt.
If you are further shortlisted, there will be a live round of ~2 hours.

Applications will close as soon as we find the right candidate.

ExpWithEVs is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of religion, caste, gender, sexual orientation, disability, race or class, and we encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

Questions about the role can be sent to the same address.