Operations Associate / Manager

Summary

• We think the role presents an unusually strong combination of breadth and high independence/ownership, with strong mentorship/training from an experienced manager and leadership team.
• We’re looking for someone reliable, organised and detail-focussed, who enjoys logistical challenges; and who is excited to support Forethought’s mission. We consider this an entry-level to mid-seniority position, ideal for someone looking to get into operations work in the AI safety space.
• Salary £75-100k/year. Oxford office 3+ days per week preferred, and we can sponsor UK visas in most cases.

About Forethought

Team and role

Responsibilities

• Managing financial systems and outsourced services, including for payroll, bookkeeping, payments, and grant reporting.
• Ownership and development of HR and compliance systems and policies, such as for staff onboarding/offboarding, benefits and leave tracking, and immigration compliance.
• Managing our IT administration & cybersecurity; including in a context where staff are increasingly using individual custom AI tools and integrations.
• Logistics for our quarterly research retreats.
• Managing our recently-renovated 15-person office space in Trajan House, Oxford.

Seniority

What we hope you get out of it

• The role includes a lot of ownership and independence.

  • From the beginning, we'll look to hand over substantial areas for you to independently own. In some areas, this will look like you owning a whole function (e.g. office management, retreat logistics or cybersecurity); in others it’ll be substantial sub-functions (e.g. payroll or onboarding/offboarding). You’ll immediately be shaping how we work and making key decisions.
• You’ll gain exposure and experience across a wide variety of operations areas, rather than having to specialise in one or two.
• You’ll receive mentorship and training from, and operate in an org set up by, an experienced leadership team with a strong reputation for management and operations skill in the effective altruism and AI safety spaces.

  • You’ll be line-managed by Amrit, who’s been in AI safety operations for ~6 years. You can read his public writing on operations work here.
  • You’ll have monthly “skip meetings” with Max Dalton, Forethought’s Director, who previously led the Centre for Effective Altruism and worked as an executive coach. You can read Max’s writing on management and leadership here and here.
• Flexibility: Forethought is a young org, with loosely defined roles. New work often arises that’s not anyone’s clear responsibility and, although we’re looking for someone who’s excited for the role as it is, it’s also likely that, if you're especially excellent at one part of the role (or an adjacent function in Forethought), you'll be able to move in that direction.

• Forethought plans to pilot an incubation program later this year, recruiting and equipping people to found concrete projects implementing actionable insights from our research. A strong performer would be well-placed to take a founding operational position in a spinout org.
• Growing into a more ambitious version of the role over time internally at Forethought.

  • In some scenarios, Forethought may choose to stay small and focussed as an organisation. In such cases, the main opportunity for growth is into full ownership of multiple ops verticals, or taking over from the Director of Operations if he moves on (which is not planned).
  • In other scenarios, Forethought’s operational needs may greatly increase, because we scale either the research org or the incubation arm. For example, we might start offering more operational support to incubated spinouts; or, as AI capabilities increase, we may need to deploy a radically greater budget than now on compute for automated research, requiring greatly increased infrastructure.
• Gaining valuable skills, context and network at Forethought, then leaving to take a more senior or specialised role in another organisation in the AI safety space; or as a cofounder of a new project. Regardless of the incubation program, at Forethought you will be exposed to lots of early-stage projects whose founders e.g. ask us for advice, visit our office, or attend our monthly research workshops. We’re supportive of our staff moving to more impactful opportunities and happy to, e.g., give time off for work trials.

About you

• Ownership. When you take on a project, you take deep ownership for doing whatever is needed to achieve its goals – identifying assumptions, getting feedback, nudging others, solving problems.
• Attention to detail. You're motivated to get into the details, identify discrepancies, and get things right.
• Reliable and organised. You're able to keep track of a large number of responsibilities, prioritise between them well, and not drop things.
• Proactiveness and multiplier mindset. You're motivated to help others succeed, and to find opportunities to do that even better. As part of a small team, you're willing to take on more routine tasks and processes, alongside complex strategic work.
• Communication. You can communicate clearly, with a high level of reasoning transparency, in a way that makes other team members’ lives easy.
• Contextual judgement. You can quickly absorb context in a new area, consider tradeoffs, and make judgements in light of what you learned.
• Drive to support Forethought’s mission.

• Familiarity with the norms and communication style of the effective altruism community.
• Previous experience in an operational role or successfully managing complex projects, especially in a small or quickly-growing organisation. This could be in a paid role, or an independent project or as a volunteer.

Compensation and role parameters

• Salary: Depends on experience, location, and office presence, with an indicative range of £75-100k (Oxford), $118-150k (Bay Area). Candidates may be appointed as Operations Associate or Manager, depending on skills and experience.
• Working hours: We prefer full-time or close to it, but are open to 3+ days per week. Most full-time staff work an ordinary working week (~40 hours, weekdays only); a minority choose to work more.
• Location: We substantially prefer candidates who will come into our office in Oxford, UK (Trajan House). Ideally this would be for at least 3 days per week, though we’re open to 1-2 days per week. In exceptional cases we’ll consider candidates who’ll work from our office in Berkeley, California (Constellation); or remotely.
• Contract: permanent employment, with a 4-month probation period.
• Immigration: We expect to be able to sponsor UK visas for this role in most cases.
• Benefits

  • £5k/yr personal development budget
  • Support for mental health and wellbeing costs
  • 33 days annual leave/yr, including public holidays (and a culture where it’s very normal to use it)
  • Pension scheme with 200% employer match, up to a maximum employer contribution of £10k ($13.5k) per year.
  • Health insurance: US: platinum health insurance plan, with 100% coverage for employee and 90% for dependents, plus dental and vision. UK: private health insurance for employee only.
  • Income protection insurance and travel insurance

Timeline

• A brief application form asking for your CV/resumé and to answer a couple of questions.
• A take-home work test, compensated at 60GBP/hr
• An interview.
• For the final 1-3 candidates, reference checks and an in-person paid work trial at our office for 1-3 days.

How to apply

• If you apply by 9th July, I may move your application along faster.
• We’ll aim to respond to all candidates by the end of Friday 21st August.

Contact