Responsibilities

CAIS is scaling quickly across Research, Public Engagement, and Policy, and our operational infrastructure needs to keep pace.
We're looking for a Senior Manager to join our Special Projects team and work across a variety of high-priority initiatives for CAIS. Special Projects sits close to leadership and takes on the highest-priority, least-defined problems across the organization: the ones without an obvious owner, that span multiple teams, or that need someone to build the plane while flying it.
This is a generalist role by design. You might spend a quarter building the operational backbone for a new program, the next helping scope and launch a go-to-market plan for an initiative, and the one after that designing a process that lets a team run a function on its own going forward. What stays constant is the standard: fast, structured, data-informed execution, and full ownership from A to Z.
A Note on This Opening
This particular req is likely to be dedicated to our Public Engagement team, which runs a growing slate of campaigns, programs, and partnerships in service of one mission: make AI safety legible, urgent, and personal for every American. In this capacity, you'd work closely with the Head of Public Engagement to become the operational backbone behind that work, translating ambitious goals into clear workstreams, owners, milestones, and measures of success, and building the mechanisms that let programs repeat and scale so key work doesn't depend on any one person holding all the pieces together.
Illustrative scope on this team includes standing up the operating model for a new creator program, turning an emerging opportunity into a cross-functional execution plan, building the systems used to prioritize investments and measure impact, or coordinating a complex initiative spanning researchers, communications, agencies, partners, and leadership.
As with all Special Projects roles, the specific focus may shift based on organizational need, but candidates should be excited about the possibility of this placement.
What Unites the Work
Whether focused on Public Engagement or another priority area, the core of the job is the same: bring structure to ambiguity, establish accountability, and keep high-priority work moving without requiring close supervision. You should be equally comfortable structuring an ambiguous problem, influencing decisions, and getting into the details required to make a program work.
Who We're Looking For
You've operated as the connective tissue in a fast-moving organization — someone who can take an ambiguous mandate, build the plan, and pre-wire the decisions that keep research, policy, communications, creative teams, agencies, and outside partners moving in lockstep. You are a strong generalist who can enter an unfamiliar problem space, understand what matters quickly, and build a path from an ambitious goal to a concrete outcome.
Your specific background may look different. What matters most is a track record of independently owning complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives end-to-end and building systems that make an organization more effective over time.

Qualification

Are strong with dataHave experience scaling a teamCommunicate excellentlyPrior experience in a startupSQL or other data-querying experience$150

Required

Have 4 to 6 years of experience in management consulting, investment banking, business strategy, GTM strategy, program management, or a strategy/operations role at a high-growth company
Have a track record of taking projects from an ambiguous starting point to a finished outcome with limited guidance, including managing complex, multi-stakeholder programs and influencing senior stakeholders without direct authority
Are comfortable moving across very different problems and picking up context quickly, rather than specializing narrowly in one function
Are strong with data: you can structure an analysis, build a model, and use it to drive a decision, not just report a number
Are skilled at turning strategy into concrete processes and execution plans, with demonstrated systems thinking: you build repeatable mechanisms, not one-off documents
Have excellent program management and operational judgment: you know how much process a problem needs, and when process will simply slow things down
Have experience scaling a team, function, or program, and/or launching something into market
Have a bias toward speed and a high bar for quality: you'd rather ship an 80%-right plan this week and iterate than wait for a perfect one next month
Communicate excellently, in writing and in person, and can distill complexity and trade-offs for leadership and non-specialist audiences alike
Have consistently good judgment under uncertainty, making sound decisions with incomplete information and knowing when to move quickly, investigate further, or escalate
Care genuinely about AI safety and CAIS's mission, with the willingness to develop deep domain knowledge

Preferred

Prior experience in a startup, scale-up, or other fast-moving, resource-constrained environment
Experience working directly with executive or founder-level stakeholders
SQL or other data-querying experience
$150,000 - $200,000 annually, depending on experience.

Senior Manager, People Operations at Centerforartificialintelligencesafetyinc · LumiJobs

Senior Manager, People Operations

Responsibilities

Qualification

Required

Preferred

Benefits

Company

Centerforartificialintelligencesafetyinc

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