Chief Operating Officer

The Center for AI Safety (CAIS) is a leading research and field-building organization on a mission to reduce societal-scale risks from AI. Alongside our sister organization, the CAIS Action Fund, we tackle the toughest AI issues with a mix of technical, societal and policy solutions. Our work includes publishing a global statement on AI Risk signed by Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio and CEOs from the major AI labs, leading the charge on a major AI safety bill (CA SB 1047), and running a large compute cluster for global academic researchers working on AI safety research. Our founder and Director, Dan Hendrycks, is a leading AI researcher (contributed the most widely used LLM benchmark and has over 25,000 citations) and AI Safety Advisor to xAI.

The Center for AI Safety (CAIS) is seeking a strategic Chief Operating Officer (COO) to partner with the Director, Dan Hendrycks, to establish and drive strategic initiatives that will shape the future of AI safety, ensuring that our research translates into real-world impact and influences global policy on AI. As COO of CAIS, you’ll have a broad scope of responsibility that includes strategic planning through execution and improvement. You and your teams will oversee internal operations, such as finance, compliance and legal as well as external work, such as communications, partnership and fundraising.

The ideal candidate will have experience working in small organizations (<100 people) and leading multiple teams. They should possess strong organizational, leadership, and communication skills, along with a commitment to AI safety and risk.

The salary range for this role is $250,000-300,000 and is located in San Francisco, CA.

Job Responsibilities:

Partner with the Executive Director and leadership team to maintain a strategic plan with funding and board approval to support it

Manage, hire and develop the project, operations and communications teams

Increase productivity and reduce costs without decreasing quality across teams and functions

Ensure regulatory compliance and manage legal matters

Manage financial operations, including budgeting, financial reporting & cash flow

Oversee all things people: recruit, train and develop employees; promote a positive and productive work environment

See more detailed job responsibilities here.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

Experience leading multiple teams

Experience working in small, growing and agile organizations

Motivation to work on AI safety and risk and have experience or education (even if self-led) on the topic

Excitement to work in a dynamic environment on the frontier of AI safety in which new projects and ideas continually emerge

Openness to new ideas and feedback, honest with yourself and others; at CAIS, even when it’s slightly uncomfortable, we prioritize getting to the best answer

Excellent organizational and leadership skills, experience in an operations management role preferred

Effective written and verbal communication and strong interpersonal abilities

Benefits include:

Health, dental, vision insurance for you and your dependents

Competitive PTO

401(k) plan with 4% matching

Free lunch and dinner at the office

Commuter benefits

Personalized ergonomic technology set-up

Access to some of the top talent working on AI research

If you have any questions about the role, feel free to reach out to hiring@safe.ai.

The Center of AI Safety is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Some studies have found that a higher percentage of women and underrepresented minority candidates won't apply if they don't meet every listed qualification. The Center for AI Safety values candidates of all backgrounds. If you find yourself excited by the position but you don't check every box in the description, we encourage you to apply anyway!

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