Senior Program Associate (Operations)

Title: Senior Program Associate (Operations)

Salary: $90,000-$110,000+ (incl. healthcare and retirement contributions)

Location: In-person, Washington, DC; visa sponsorship available

Job Type: Full-time

Application Deadline: Sunday, February 8, 2026

The Horizon Institute for Public Service is seeking a full-time Senior Program Associate (Operations) to build and manage the hiring and onboarding systems that will enable our continued growth. Horizon has grown from 2 to 18 employees in approximately three years, more than doubling our staff in the past year alone, with a rapidly growing multi-million dollar budget. As we pursue ambitious expansion plans, our ability to hire exceptional talent and integrate them is our biggest barrier to expanding our impact. This role will directly help us address our most critical organizational bottleneck, enabling the organization to scale its impact.

In this role, you'll gain deep experience in end-to-end hiring management, working across multiple complex processes simultaneously. You'll shape the employee experience at a rapidly growing organization during a formative period, with the opportunity to grow into broader people operations leadership as you master core responsibilities. If you're energized by the challenge of building systems that enable organizational growth and want to develop expertise in talent operations at a mission-driven organization, this role could be an excellent fit.

Competitive applicants will likely have completed at least a bachelor's degree and have at least 1-2 years of relevant work experience in hiring coordination, project management, or operations roles. Previous experience with hiring or other HR responsibilities is valued but not required. If you think the role is a great fit for your skills and interests, we encourage you to apply even if you don't have previous experience in this exact field. Our hiring process is designed to test for aptitudes and skills, not specific resume markers or past experience.

Our mission

The Horizon Institute for Public Service is a non-profit that supports the next generation of public servants with expertise in emerging technologies.

Emerging technologies, like biotechnology and artificial intelligence, are rapidly reshaping our world. The US government plays an essential role in developing and governing new technologies, crafting policies to take advantage of their benefits and avert the risks they pose. But policymakers' ability to stay ahead of the curve depends on access to the requisite expertise—and right now, that expertise is sorely lacking.

Since our launch three years ago, we've helped hundreds of professionals explore and launch critically needed careers in public service. For example, through our fellowship program, we’ve helped 100+ subject-matter experts fill vital roles at top think tanks, in Congress, and in agencies across government. Our online emergingtechpolicy.org career resource has reached 150,000+ users. We’ve also supported over 1,000 individuals through events and advising and headhunting services, leading to many dozens of job transitions. We participated in the first-ever government AI hiring fair and recently launched the AI Policy Leadership Network. We plan to both scale these existing programs and have several exciting new projects slated for launch in 2026. You can read more about our programs and impact in our 2025 year in review.

About the role

As the Senior Program Associate, you will lead our hiring and onboarding efforts as we continue to scale our team and programs. This role is central to ensuring we bring exceptional talent into the organization, set them up for success from day one, and create an exceptional culture where employees can grow and thrive.

As our people operations specialist, you'll be responsible for supporting complex hiring rounds from start to finish, coordinating with multiple stakeholders across the organization, and creating onboarding experiences for new staff that rapidly integrate them into the team and high-impact workstreams. As you grow in the role, you'll also have the opportunity to shape our approach to culture, development, and retention.

This is a full-time role within our operations team. We're looking for someone who combines strong project management skills with a genuine commitment to helping people thrive at work. If you're motivated by managing complex processes and building systems that enable organizational growth, this role will develop your expertise in talent operations and position you well for senior talent and operations leadership roles at high-impact nonprofits, mission-driven startups, or in government or industry.

Responsibilities

Manage hiring processes that bring the right talent to Horizon

• Project manage complex hiring rounds from start to finish. You'll coordinate multi-role hiring processes that often involve shared applications, varied outreach strategies, work tests, interview rounds, and in-person work trials. This requires juggling overlapping timelines, managing interdependent deadlines, and ensuring smooth communication between various internal stakeholders.

• Work closely with hiring managers to develop effective hiring materials. You'll work with hiring managers to understand their team's biggest bottlenecks, support in developing appealing job descriptions, and share the most effective empirical outreach strategies the organization has used to discover exceptional talent. You'll build systems and resources that enable Horizon's half-dozen hiring managers to learn from each other's work rather than reinventing the wheel each time.

• Serve as the primary point of contact for candidates throughout the hiring process. You'll manage all candidate communications and serve as the first impression candidates have of Horizon, responding to logistical questions and ensuring candidates are informed and have a positive experience at each stage. Over time, you'll identify ways to continuously improve the candidate experience based on feedback.

• Share hiring learnings across Horizon’s work. Beyond staff hiring, Horizon runs programs that recruit and select hundreds of participants each year. You'll work with and share your hiring insights with these program teams, magnifying the impact of your work beyond internal hiring.

Create welcoming onboarding experiences that set new hires up for success

• Welcome and integrate new team members into Horizon. You’ll guide new hires through their first days and weeks at Horizon, which includes ensuring they have access to all necessary systems, resources, and support to succeed from day one. You'll coordinate with the executive team on priority cultural messages and working norms to communicate as you create an experience that’s both welcoming and reflects what makes Horizon a great place to work.

• Strengthen onboarding systems to support rapid growth. You'll coordinate with team members to understand what new hires need, identify friction points or gaps in the current process, and propose improvements. Since Horizon has more than doubled in size in the past year, refining our onboarding systems is critical for maintaining our culture and effectiveness as we continue to grow.

Support building a culture where talented people grow and thrive

• Support and drive culture, development, and wellbeing initiatives. You'll source ideas from staff about what would help them thrive at Horizon and propose your own initiatives based on your observations. This includes supporting existing programs like celebrating staff birthdays and organizational achievements, organizing team dinners, and creating moments for the team to connect.

• Build resources and systems for professional development. You'll centralize resources for both manager development and employee professional development, making it easier for people to find growth opportunities and support, helping ensure Horizon remains a place where talented people want to build their careers.

• Take on other strategic HR projects as you develop in the role. Based on your interests and organizational needs, you'll have the opportunity to expand into projects like informing compensation frameworks, performance evaluation systems, or other talent initiatives. This allows you to grow into broader people operations leadership over time.

Horizon has a strong culture of internal growth and supporting staff to take on additional responsibilities as needed. Depending on your interests and organizational needs, you may also gain visibility into and contribute to other operational areas over time, such as finance and budgeting, office management, legal and compliance work, information security, or special projects like unique visa or tax situations. Your manager will support you to pursue professional development opportunities aligned with your interests and goals.

You may be a good fit if you

• Excel at project management and can juggle multiple tasks and deadlines at the same time

• Communicate professionally in writing with diverse stakeholders

• Enjoy and are skilled at creating great experiences for people, by collecting user feedback, prototyping, and iterating

• Are conscientious and have strong attention to detail. You take pride in getting the details right, even on routine work

• Find interpersonal work motivating and enjoy supporting Horizon employees to be productive and successful

• Navigate digital platforms (Airtable, Notion, Slack, etc.) confidently and are open to leveraging AI tools to improve quality and automate manual processes

• Have some hiring experience (ideal but not required), which has given you an understanding of what good hiring looks like and ideas for how to do it well

Additionally, Horizon has a strong team culture, and we expect you would fit well if you:

• Are entrepreneurial and a team player, adapting to new responsibilities as our fast-growing organization’s needs may change over time

• Are growth-minded and excited to give and receive regular feedback in order to maximize performance and impact across our team

• Are motivated by Horizon’s mission and excited to be part of a public service-oriented, user-focused, low-ego, and collaborative team

• Can work in-person in Washington, DC

Salary and benefits

The Senior Program Associate (Operations) will receive a salary of $90,000 - $110,000+ based on experience and seniority. As a small non-profit Horizon has arranged its benefit structure to maximize flexibility for staff. Staff are not required to enroll in a fixed health insurance or retirement plan. Instead, staff have access to a benefits-equivalent cash stipend, which they can use to purchase any of the two dozen health insurance plans on the DC public market (or just keep as an additional salary top-up if they already have health insurance coverage through a parent or spouse) and contribute to a retirement account of their choosing.

Horizon additionally offers:

• Unlimited vacation

• 12 weeks of paid parental leave

• Up to $3,000+ per year in professional development funding

• Flexible working hours

• A productive, collaborative office

We can provide visa sponsorship for qualified candidates.

As an additional benefit in select cases, employees with subject-matter expertise in emerging technology can get the unique opportunity to utilize Horizon’s placement expertise to do a public interest rotation for up to 12 months after working at Horizon for 2 years. At least 6 months notice must be given to redeem this benefit.

Application process

Interested candidates should express initial interest by filling out an application (<15 minutes) by Sunday, February 8, 2026 at 11:59 PM EST. The application process will involve paid work tests, a structured interview, reference checks, and a paid in-person work trial. We will acknowledge receipt of all applications and aim to get back to candidates within 10 business days of the application deadline. Our ideal start date is April 2026, though flexibility is offered for exceptional candidates.

We welcome candidates from diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply. Strong candidates may not always fulfill all our required or desired criteria. Studies show that individuals from underrepresented groups may underestimate their qualifications. Therefore, we urge you not to self-disqualify prematurely. If you are excited about this work, we strongly encourage you to apply.

This role directly addresses the organization's most critical organizational bottleneck by building and managing hiring and onboarding systems, enabling Horizon to scale its impact and bring exceptional talent into public service roles focused on emerging technologies.

Required skills and qualifications:

• Excel at project management and can juggle multiple tasks and deadlines simultaneously
• Communicate professionally in writing with diverse stakeholders
• Enjoy and are skilled at creating great experiences for people by collecting user feedback, prototyping, and iterating
• Navigate digital platforms (Airtable, Notion, Slack, etc.) confidently and are open to leveraging AI tools

Salary: $90,000-$110,000+ based on experience and seniority. Benefits include:

• Benefits-equivalent cash stipend for health insurance or retirement (can be kept as salary top-up if already insured)
• Unlimited vacation
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• Up to $3,000+ per year in professional development funding
• Flexible working hours
• Productive, collaborative office
• Visa sponsorship available
• Potential public interest rotation opportunity after 2 years

The Horizon Institute for Public Service is a non-profit that supports the next generation of public servants with expertise in emerging technologies like biotechnology and artificial intelligence, helping professionals explore and launch careers in public service through fellowships, career resources, and programs.