Head of Groups

Own Kairos’s support for AI safety university groups and make it far more ambitious.

Note: This role description is a first draft. Scope, salary, and responsibilities may evolve, and we’ll keep you in the loop about any changes if you apply.

We’re reviewing applications on a rolling basis.

ABOUT KAIROS

Kairos is a nonprofit accelerating talent into AI safety and policy. In just over two years, we’ve trained 1,200+ people through our flagship programs:

• SPAR https://sparai.org: The largest AI safety research fellowship, with 800+ mentees per round mentored by researchers from Anthropic, Redwood Research, RAND, MIT, the UK AI Security Institute, and others.

• Generator Residency https://generatorresidency.org/: In partnership with Constellation, a platform for generalist talent to pitch, build, and ship projects that build capacity and infrastructure across the AI safety ecosystem, with advisors from OpenAI, AI Futures Project, METR, and more.

• Global Challenges Project https://www.globalchallengesproject.org: A workshop series introducing promising students to careers in AI safety and biosecurity, run several times a year across Oxford, Boston, and Berkeley.

• Pathfinder Fellowship https://pathfinder.kairos-project.org: Helping grow the global network of AI safety university groups from a few dozen to nearly 100, with $9.5M in funding over the next two years to support their work.

We see ourselves as a portfolio of highly impactful projects in a fast-evolving field. Over the next six months, we expect to double in size and launch several new initiatives addressing critical gaps in the ecosystem.

THE ROLE

University groups are where many people first get involved in AI safety, and Kairos provides most of the support these groups get today. Through the Pathfinder Fellowship https://pathfinder.kairos-project.org, we provide mentorship and funding to organizers of AI safety university groups around the world, and through OASIS we bring top organizers together for in-person workshops. Over the past year, this work has grown from a fraction of our time to one of our core priorities, and we’re now building a team around it.

We’re looking for a Head of Groups to own this area as a whole and make it more ambitious. You’d set the strategy for how we plan to support AI safety university groups, decide which new initiatives we pursue, and build the team behind them. You would report to Neav Topaz (co-director).

It’d be up to you what the groups team pursues, but we’re weighing several ambitious directions, like hiring full-time organizers in key regions, running residencies for top organizers, seeding new groups at strong universities we’re not yet reaching, and giving the strongest groups much more hands-on support.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Set the strategy for how we support university groups. You’ll decide where the work goes next, how our programs fit together, and what we should start, stop, or scale.

• Launch new initiatives. You’ll choose which new directions we pursue, like regional organizers, residencies, and focused support for top universities, and get them up and running.

• Own how we support and fund groups. You’ll set the bar for which groups and organizers we invest in, and decide where our funding goes.

• Represent the work externally. You’ll be the face of Kairos’s university groups work with organizers, universities, funders, and partner organizations across the ecosystem.

• Build and lead the groups team. A more ambitious version of this work means bringing on more people. You’ll define the new roles, own their hiring and onboarding, and manage the team as it grows.

• Contribute to Kairos more broadly. As bandwidth allows, you’ll help shape org-wide strategy, weigh in on new programs, and participate in cross-cutting work.

WHO YOU ARE

• Experienced with university groups firsthand. You’ve organized an AI safety university group (or similar), run programs that support them, or worked c