SPAR Research Manager / Generalist

Support mentors and mentees in the largest AI safety research fellowship in the field.

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

We’re looking for a Research Manager (RM) or Generalist to support mentors and mentees in SPAR, our research mentorship program. SPAR is a remote, part-time research program that runs twice a year, with 800+ mentees, 250+ mentors, and 6,000+ applicants in the latest cohort. RMs are the main point of contact for mentors and mentees during the round, and play a central role in keeping the program running smoothly. There’s also significant room to take on broader ownership in running and shaping the program.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Support mentors. You’ll check in with mentors regularly across the round, provide ongoing Slack and email support, help scope projects, and troubleshoot mentee situations.

• Support mentees. You’ll have brief 1:1 chats with mentees during the round, respond to questions in Slack and email, and follow up when midterm feedback flags issues.

• Run programming for the cohort. You’ll plan and deliver monthly events for mentors and mentees, like workshops or speaker sessions.

• Co-own Demo Day. You’ll help run our end-of-round Demo Day https://demoday.sparai.org/, where teams present their research to the broader community.

• Help run SPAR more broadly. Beyond direct mentor and mentee support, you’ll contribute to how SPAR runs, including timeline decisions, recruiting, matching, and feedback systems. The exact scope here depends on your interests and experience.

What you won’t do. With 800+ mentees and 250+ mentors per round, you won’t be able to engage with each project’s research in depth the way a research manager at a smaller program (like MATS) does. Your job is to support the people and keep the program running well, not to direct, co-author, or closely supervise the research itself.

As SPAR grows and we bring on more research managers and generalists, the role may involve somewhat closer work with individual projects over time. Even so, given the program’s scale, we don’t expect it to ever resemble the high-touch research supervision you’d find at smaller fellowships.

WHO YOU ARE

• Good with people, with energy for lots of 1:1s. A big part of this role is talking to mentors and mentees, often many times a day during the round.

• Highly organized. SPAR has many overlapping workstreams and hard deadlines. You’ll need strong systems to keep track of the work.

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