Head of Talent Operations

Build the talent operations function that places early-career talent in high-impact AI safety roles.

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.

Update: We’ve updated this description to move recruiting out of this role and into a separate Recruiter https://kairos-project.org/careers/recruiter role.

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

Thousands of people apply to or take part in Kairos’s programs every year. Talent operations is our new function for identifying the most promising of these people, supporting them, connecting them to high-impact opportunities, and tracking where they end up. Getting people into impactful careers is much of why we run our programs, and there’s much more Kairos and the wider ecosystem can do to help, especially for early-career talent.

We’re looking for a Head of Talent Operations to lead this function, set its strategy, and build the systems behind it. You’d also help grow Talent Commons (our shared, consent-based talent database for the AI safety ecosystem) and manage the recruiter we’re hiring to run Kairos’s own hiring.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Set the strategy for talent operations. The function is new, and there are many directions it could go. It’ll be up to you to decide what we prioritize, what we build first, and how talent operations grows over time.

• Identify top talent. You’ll build better ways to spot the most promising people in our programs, such as gathering mentors’ signals on SPAR mentees and asking the GCP team which participants stood out at each workshop. You’ll also keep our records on people accurate and up to date, so what our team learns is written down where others can use it.

• Support them. You’ll design what top participants get during and after our programs, such as career advice, introductions to funders, or visits to AI safety hubs, and build relationships with other organizations so they always have good next steps.

• Place them. You’ll match people to open roles, fellowships, grants, and our own programs, both when organizations ask us for referrals and proactively. Part of this is turning informal referral work into a structured and repeatable process.

• Track outcomes. You’ll measure where people from our programs end up, and use it both to improve how we match people and to show what our programs achieve.

• Help shape Talent Commons. Talent Commons lets organizations find promising people who have come through each other’s programs. You’ll help decide how it’s used across the AI safety eco