Generalist (Talent Ops)

Own Kairos’s hiring as we double in size, then grow into a generalist role spanning programs, strategy, and talent operations.

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

Kairos is a nonprofit accelerating talent into AI safety and policy. In just under two years, we’ve trained over 1000+ people through our flagship programs:

• SPAR: The largest AI safety research fellowship, with 400+ mentees per round mentored by researchers from Anthropic, Redwood Research, RAND, MIT, the UK AI Security Institute, and others.

• Generator Residency: 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: 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: Helping grow the global network of AI safety university groups from a few dozen to nearly 100, with $1.4M+ in funding to support their work.

We see ourselves as a portfolio of highly impactful projects in a fast-evolving field. By the end of 2027, we expect to double in size and launch several new initiatives addressing critical gaps in the ecosystem.

Kairos is entering a period of fast growth. We’re going from 7 people to up to 20 by the end of 2027, launching new programs, and expanding the ones we already run.

We’re looking for a generalist whose first mandate is driving that growth forward. Every hire we make has an outsized effect on how quickly Kairos can move and how ambitious our programs can be, and this generalist will be responsible for making this all happen.

As hiring stabilizes and we have more capacity, you’d likely take on broader generalist work across Kairos’s programs, in particular, focusing on our nascent Talent Operations function, a comprehensive function within Kairos to enable us to leverage our talent network by creating systems and processes for headhunting, lead sourcing, referrals and placement of top talent.

In your first 4-6 months, growth is the priority:

• Run internal hiring end-to-end. This may include writing job descriptions, sourcing candidates through our networks, screening candidates, running trial tasks and interviews, and tracking the whole pipeline.

• Build and scale the hiring infrastructure. You’ll design applications, trial tasks, interview rubrics, reference check templates, candidate tracking. Much of this doesn’t exist yet in a systematized or scalable way.

• Pitch in on broader Kairos work as capacity allows. Review grant applications, help on active programs like SPAR, Pathfinder, and Generator, build relationships across the AI safety ecosystem, and ship small cross-team projects alongside hiring.

Once hiring stabilizes:

• Generalist work across Kairos. This is inherently subject to change, but this candidate might do things such as shaping our org strategy, designing and managing programs, building relationships across the AI safety ecosystem, and shipping high-impact projects independently.

• Expansion into talent operations. Talent operations is Kairos’s emerging function for routing people inside and outside of our programs to high-impact roles across the AI safety ecosystem. Concretely, this could mean matching SPAR and Pathfinder alumni to open roles at partner orgs, proactively surfacing strong candidates to hiring managers before they ask, helping build out Talent Commons (our consent-based shared talent database for ecosystem partners like MATS, GovAI, and Horizon), or supporting grantmaking for Kairos Funds, our career transition funding program.

• Help build the team. Beyond running hiring processes, you’ll weigh in on org design questions: who we need next, how roles should fit together, and what kinds of people we’re missing.

• High agency and strong judgment. Hiring decisions are some of the highest-stakes calls Kairos makes, and a lot of them will come down to your read. You’re someone who can hold that weight, make good calls under uncertainty, and own outcomes.

• Mission-aligned with context on AI safety. You care deeply about making advanced AI go well, and you have enough context on the ecosystem to make good judgments about who’s promising, what work matters, and where Kairos should focus.

• You’re excited about hiring as a first mandate, but you’re the kind of person who wants to do many things well, work across whatever domains are most useful, and pick up new ones quickly.

• Fast and decisive. We’re trying to move quickly, and the role rewards people who can triage, prioritize, and ship rather than over-deliberate.

• Okay with unglamorous operational work, such as pipeline tracking, scheduling, and candidate communications.

• People-oriented. Much of hiring is reading people accurately: who has the right shape, who’s ready, who’s likely to thrive at Kairos. You should be someone candidates and the team enjoy interacting with.

• Comfortable in ambiguity. A lot of what you do won’t have a playbook. You’ll be designing processes as you run them, and adjusting Kairos’s approach to growth as we learn what works.

• Prior experience with recruiting, headhunting, or talent operations, particularly in AI safety, EA, or adjacent spaces

• Existing relationships across the AI safety ecosystem

• Experience as a generalist or early hire at a fast-growing org

• A track record of starting and shipping things independently

• You’ll be working toward reducing risks from advanced AI, potentially the most important challenge of our time. The hires you make will shape who’s working on this and how fast they can move.

• The hires you make over the next year will shape Kairos for years after. Few roles have a clearer line from your work to the org’s trajectory.

• Growth is the first focus, but the long-term shape of the role is open, with optionality to move into talent operations, program work, or other parts of Kairos as we figure out where your comparative advantage lies.

• We’re building a world-class team, so you’ll be in good company. Work alongside people from METR, Coefficient Giving, Rethink Priorities, and CEA who share your commitment to impact.

• Collaborate regularly with leading AI safety researchers, policy professionals, funders, and organizers.

• Base salary: $130,000–$200,000 USD, depending on experience and location, with potential for additional compensation for exceptional candidates

• Location: Access to office space in San Francisco, Berkeley, London, or Boston; optional coworking elsewhere. If you work from an AI safety office in San Francisco, Berkeley, London, or Boston, we cover food, lunches, and office expenses.

• Benefits: Flexible working hours, highly competitive health insurance, dental and vision coverage, generous vacation policy, and professional development budget

• Team retreats: We host all-team retreats three times a year to connect in person, collaborate, and build team culture.

• Start date: Flexible, though we generally expect new hires to be able to start within a couple of months of applying

• Remote, with expected travel 3-6 times a year for conferences and events, predominantly in the US

• We’d also be happy for you to work out of any of the AI safety hubs in San Francisco, Berkeley, London, or Boston, though we have a light preference for people to work out of Berkeley.

• We prefer candidates who can attend meetings in the ET time zone (though our team currently spans GMT-8 to GMT+1).

• We may be able to provide visa sponsorship to the US, depending on the circumstances (especially, but not exclusively, O-1As).

We’re a small, high-trust team motivated by the urgent challenge of making advanced AI go well. We try hard to figure out where we’re wrong, which means we say uncomfortable things to each other and change our minds fairly often. We value collaborative truth-seeking, a scout mindset, agility, and an alliance mindset with the broader ecosystem.

We also believe meaningful work should be enjoyable. We support each other’s well-being, celebrate wins, and maintain a healthy sense of humor even when the work is hard.

1. Application form (10–20 mins)

2. Screening call (15 mins)

3. Take-home assignment (1.5–3 hours, paid)

4. Interview (45 mins)

5. Reference checks

6. Work trial (3–4 days, paid)

7. Offer

If you’re excited about this role but unsure whether you meet every qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway. If you’re interested in multiple roles, apply to the one that best fits your skills and interests, and note in your application the other roles that you’d like to be considered for.

Questions? Reach out at [email protected].

Know someone who might be a good fit? If your referral gets hired and completes 6 months with us, we’ll pay you a $5,000 referral bonus. Learn more here.