Head of Special Projects

We have multiple open roles at the moment. Please submit an application for the role you feel you are the strongest fit for. You will have the opportunity to declare interest in other roles below, and we will consider your application for all the roles you express interest in.

About the role

We're a new AI safety organization called Quorum. Our mission is to advance research and public understanding of the safety and societal implications of emerging technologies, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. We run the Summit on Existential Security, the AI Horizons Forum and will be building a portfolio of events for the AI safety ecosystem.

Our events have a strong track record of impact by facilitating critical connections and strategic coordination among people working on AI safety. As a result of our events, attendees have founded new organizations, launched new research initiatives, expanded their teams, and secured funding for their projects. Attendees consistently report that the events are a better use of their time than the counterfactual, and senior figures in AI safety regularly pause their day-to-day work to participate.

We're hiring someone to lead a new team, Special Projects. This team sits close to organizations in AI safety, designs the convenings that need to happen, and turns them around on short notice. You would lead projects in partnership with key organizations, and take ideas from the field and design events to progress them. The role is research-heavy: you'd investigate issues in AI safety and governance to decide where a convening would help, decide what's worth measuring about our events, and design the analysis that tells us what's working.

In this role, you would join an ambitious team scaling from a successful flagship event to a portfolio of high-impact convenings across multiple locations.

Responsibilities

Research and analysis

• Map the field for your portfolio, working with our advisors: which issues in AI safety and governance are most consequential and time-sensitive, and who is making significant contributions. This informs where a convening would help and who should be in the room.

• Research those issues in depth, such as the state of a policy debate, a technical subfield, or AI development in a particular country.

• Design and run structured surveys of expert views in the communities we convene, and analyze the results.

• Decide what’s worth measuring for each event, design the analysis, and turn the results into recommendations that change what we run.

• Produce written analysis for partners and the rest of Quorum, drawing on participants’ pre-reads, discussions at our events and the wider literature. Some of this we may publish.

Finding the work

• Build and hold relationships across the AI safety ecosystem: labs, research organizations, policy groups, funders, and the people who convene them today.

• Identify where a convening would change something, and form a view on what that event would need to achieve to be worth running.

Owning the portfolio

• Decide what this team runs. You'd propose the portfolio and hold a discretionary budget for events within it.

• Build a theory of change for each event, taking a broad idea and fleshing it out into target audience, format, invitations, sources of value, and agenda.

• Hold accountability for delivery, working with a team allocated to your projects and with external production partners.

Building the team

• Hire the team. You'd start with staff allocated from the existing team, but we'd expect you to build out your own team of competent generalists over your first year.

• Manage them, set the standards they work to, and decide what we keep in-house versus contract out.

Feeding the rest of Quorum

• Bring back what you learn about the field, so it informs the portfolio, our flagship events, and our strategy.

• Contribute to team strategy with clear recommendations.

Requirements

We require a bachelor's degree or higher, or a foreign equivalent, in a field that prepares you for the research and analysis this role involves. Relevant fields include:

• A quantitative field such as mathematics, statistics, economics or computer science, which you'd use to design surveys and analyze data.

• A field directly relevant to AI governance, such as public policy, international relations, or the study of a country central to AI development, such as Chinese studies.

• A field that equips you to reason rigorously about key questions in AI safety, such as philosophy, psychology or law.

About you

You might be a great fit if you:

• Have AI safety context. You understand the AI safety landscape, including the key actors, threat models, and subfields, well enough to make informed decisions about event content and admissions.

• Are analytical and quantitative. You decide what's worth measuring, design the analysis, and turn it into recommendations that change what we run.

• Can build theories of change. You can work out what an event is for, what would count as it working, and what design follows from that.

• Iterate quickly. You take a rough idea, improve it against feedback, and know when to stop and run it.

• Have management experience. You've managed a team and can hire excellent people to help you achieve your team’s goals.

• Have run projects end to end. You've taken projects from a rough starting point through to delivery. Events experience is useful but not required.

Not essential, but valuable:

• An established network in AI safety.

• A confident writer, able to make clear asks of senior people and communicate promptly.

• Well organized, including following up with partners without being chased.

• High energy and collaborative, comfortable holding stakeholder relationships where expectations need managing.

Role details and benefits

Reporting: You would report to Amy Labenz, our Executive Director

Location: This role is based in the SF Bay Area only. We can provide a desk at Constellation.

Compensation: $228,500–$270,000, the Bay Area rate for this role.

Benefits: Benefits include health insurance with 100% of your health, dental and vision premiums covered, a 10% employer contribution to your 401(k), 25 days of paid vacation plus public holidays, time off in lieu for weekends worked at events, 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave, a $4,000 annual professional development allowance, the equipment you need to do your job, and more.

Process

We expect the hiring process to include the following steps, subject to minor changes:

• Application

• Initial screen

• Short interview

• Work test

• Final interviews (2–3)

• Reference checks

We may also ask late-stage candidates to complete further work tests to assess role fit. We’ll ask candidates to start as soon as they’re available.

Contact [email protected] for any questions, accommodations, or more information.

Quorum is an AI safety organization that runs events to coordinate senior leaders in the AI safety field.