Business Operations Manager

About Us

FAR.AI is a non-profit AI research institute working to ensure advanced AI is safe and beneficial for everyone. Our mission is to facilitate breakthrough AI safety research, advance global understanding of AI risks and solutions, and foster a coordinated global response.

Since our founding in July 2022, we've grown to 40+ staff, producing 40+ influential academic papers, and establishing leading AI Safety events. Our work is recognized globally, with publications at premier venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR, and features in the Financial Times, Nature News and MIT Technology Review. We conduct pre-deployment testing on behalf of frontier developers such as OpenAI and conduct independent testing for governments including the EU AI Office. Additionally, we help steer and grow the AI safety field through developing research roadmaps with renowned researchers such as Yoshua Bengio; running FAR.Labs, an AI safety-focused co-working space in Berkeley; and supporting the community through targeted grants.

About the Role

We're hiring a Business Operations Manager to join FAR.AI’s BizOps team as the right hand to our Head of Business Operations.

You’ll report to the Head of Business Operations and work closely with peers across Finance, People Operations, and Programs. BizOps is the connective tissue of FAR.AI – we design and maintain the systems that enable functional teams to focus on delivery. We own the problems that cut across the organization, fill gaps where there's no clear owner, and act as accelerants when teams need operational support to move faster.

This role comes with real ownership and autonomy at a key moment in our growth. As the BizOps Manager at FAR.AI, you'll help shape how we operate and scale. You will be responsible for defining problems, developing solutions, and driving these solutions to completion, maintaining ownership over the long term. While you'll start as an individual contributor, there's room to grow; whether that's into people management, expanded scope, or deeper specialization as the BizOps function evolves.

What You'll Do

No two weeks look the same. You'll shape your own priorities across a mix of core operational systems that need steady ownership and new organizational needs - learning new domains, solving varied problems, and staying close to the work that keeps FAR.AI running. The balance will shift depending on what's most pressing, but your work will encompass:

Systems & Cross-team Coordination

• Design and maintain cross-team coordination systems: project trackers, operational dashboards and workflow tools that support visibility, and decision making across FAR.AI.

• Manage FAR.AI’s operational requests pipeline – triaging cross-team support needs, assessing resource implications, and ensuring requests are scoped, prioritized, and resolved efficiently.

• Coordinate cross-functional initiatives that require alignment across multiple teams, managing dependencies, timelines, and stakeholder communication.

• Own operational projects end-to-end, from scoping through implementation (e.g. building a new grant tracking system, or re-designing onboarding workflows with team leads), or driving specific pieces of larger initiatives.

• Evaluate, optimize, and maintain FAR.AI’s operational tool stack and knowledge management systems, identifying opportunities for process automation and systems integration as FAR.AI scales.

• Support organizational processes like onboarding, quarterly retrospectives, and recurring operational rhythms.

• Spot operational risks, process gaps, and emerging compliance requirements, and propose solutions to leadership.

• Drive continuous improvement across FAR.AI’s operations – identifying inefficiencies, eliminating unnecessary complexity, and redesigning systems so the organization can scale with clarity, speed, and control.

Grants Infrastructure & Compliance

• Coordinate FAR.AI's grantmaking operations across the full lifecycle: from grant review and due diligence through disbursement, monitoring and evaluation, designing the systems and processes that support each stage, and ensuring compliance with internal policies and nonprofit regulations.

• Own end-to-end grant compliance across funds FAR.AI receives, managing funder reporting workflows and deadline coordination across internal teams.

• Coordinate organization-wide compliance processes, including documentation, record-keeping, regulatory filings, and deadline management, in partnership with Finance, People Operations, and external legal counsel.

• Support compliance-related research across international and domestic operations, flagging regulatory ambiguities to leadership and legal counsel.

About You

Required Qualifications

• 4-7 years of professional experience in operations, consulting, program/project management, compliance, or grants management, with demonstrated ownership of complex workstreams requiring analytical rigor and independent judgment.

• Experience designing or managing compliance processes, grant administration, or regulatory reporting.

• Track record of building operational systems or processes.

• Experience coordinating work across multiple teams or departments.

• Strong written communication skills, including the ability to produce clear policy documentation, process guides, and stakeholder communications.

• Genuine motivation for mission-driven work.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in startups, nonprofits, or organizations where you wore multiple hats.

• Background in grants management or tax-exempt organizations compliance.

• Familiarity with tools like Asana, Airtable, Notion, or Coda.

• Experience building automations or workflows for efficiency gains.

Logistics

You will be a full-time employee of FAR.AI, a 501(c)(3) research non-profit.

• Location: Preferred: Berkeley, CA (hybrid or on-site), and remote, US. We're open to candidates in other locations, provided there's at least 3 hours of overlap with US Pacific Time.

• Hours: Full-time (40 hours/week).

• Compensation: $105,000-145,000/year depending on experience and location. In addition to a comprehensive benefits package, we also pay for work-related travel and equipment expenses, as well as offer catered lunch and dinner at our offices in Berkeley.

• Hiring Process: A task test, a phone screen, in-depth interviews with the team, and a half-day work trial, followed by reference checks.

If you have any questions about the role, please do get in touch at [email protected].

Otherwise, if you don't have questions, the best way to ensure a proper review of your skills and qualifications is by applying directly via the application form. Please don't email us to share your resume (it won't have any impact on our decision). Thank you!