About Security Level 5
Security Level 5 is a Bay Area AI security nonprofit working with AI labs and US intelligence agencies to defend frontier models from priority nation-state-level threats. We're a small technical team, we move fast, and we're growing quickly this year.
The mission
We're hiring for what's plausibly the most difficult, urgent, and interesting challenge in AI security engineering this decade (for humans, at least): designing and building the first datacenter purpose-built to Security Level 5, the standard for defending frontier AI labs against attackers with the resources of a nation-state and billion-dollar budgets. We're working on the first SL5 components this year and aiming for an at-scale SL5 datacenter build in 2027.
We wrote the first version of the standard with input from CISOs and senior security staff at the frontier labs, and US security and intelligence officials. Now we're designing the SL5 architectures purpose-built for frontier AI workloads, and standing up the reference tech stack to guide labs' buildouts. This stack has to hold against nation-states, not destroy researchers' productivity, not cost more than labs can pay, and ship in 2-3 years.
The role
Our ambitious technical goals can't be achieved without a well-run organization to support it. You'd own where we work and own many projects that let us perform it: the SF office we don't have yet, the way a new hire gets onboarded, our board logistics, the payroll, accounting and legal relationships, and the policies that keep us coherent as we grow. As our second operations hire, you'd be the person who runs the internals so that the rest of the team can stay on the technical mission.
Joining our team at this stage means you'd have considerable ability to shape the org's direction, in how we're set up and via our higher-level strategy. You get to run and improve our offsites, happy hours, rituals of how we work and celebrate wins, and the feel of the office you'll have just built.
You'd also become one of a very small number of people anywhere with working knowledge of Security Level 5: a niche that barely exists today and that the world will continue to need experts in. And being early means the path upward is open - we plan to grow a lot!
We're looking for a generalist. A good fit would independently manage and execute a wide swath of projects, many of which will be likely new to you.
Early projects
Find us a home in San Francisco. We're currently Berkeley-based but looking for our long-term home in SF. You'd own the entire process of selecting, leasing, and inhabiting an office in SF: search, broker and landlord negotiation, buildout, move-in, and running the space after.
Bring the team together regularly. Host our happy hours and plan and run our offsites.
Build onboarding from scratch. Design how a new hire's first days go: accounts, hardware, a clear path through their first weeks, and the small touches that make joining feel handled.
Be our liaison between our providers and our core team. Coordinate with our accountant, our payroll/HR providers, and legal counsel to keep our books and compliance in tip-top shape.
Own our internal policies and how we run. Drive and maintain the policies that keep a growing org coherent: google drive organization, expenses, calendar/travel, security (device, document-handling, key, visitor), and the everyday norms in between. Keep them as living documents people actually use.
Own our tooling. Work with our team to choose, provision, and manage our SaaS stack: the tools the team runs on, who has access to what, and what we spend on it.
Working on the endless stream of small tasks that just come up. Prepping documents, helping scheduling, and whatever else keeps the team moving.
You'd be a fit if you
Have 3+ years of operations, office management, executive support, or similar experience, ideally a startup or high-performing nonprofit.
Are impact driven
Have a track record of taking poorly scoped projects and proactively getting them over the finish line
Are detail-oriented and conscientious; colleagues hand you things because they know nothing will be dropped
Are service-minded and comfortable with some repetition; you're motivated by doing whatever has the most impact, even when it's not glamorous
Communicate in an information-dense, transparent style with engineers, vendors, and external stakeholders
Can be trusted with sensitive information and exercise good judgment about what to share with whom
Can make decisions with operational security in mind
Bonus
Communications or media background, extra bonus for technical comms
Logistics
San Francisco, in-person. Base salary $130,000 - 180,000. Full benefits, including healthcare, dental, vision, and 401k match.
Skills Required
- 3+ years of operations, office management, executive support, or similar experience
- Willingness and ability to work in-person in San Francisco
- Track record of taking poorly scoped projects and proactively completing them
- Detail-oriented and conscientious; reliable execution of tasks
- Service-minded and comfortable with repetitive operational work
- Communicate in an information-dense, transparent style with engineers, vendors, and external stakeholders
- Can be trusted with sensitive information and exercise good judgment
- Ability to make decisions with operational security in mind
- Experience in startup or high-performing nonprofit environments (ideal)
- Communications or media background, technical communications especially (bonus)
What We Do
Security Level 5 is a Bay Area 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on protecting frontier AI models from priority nation-state threats. It develops the technical roadmap, security standard, architectures, and reference stack for “SL5”—defenses spanning machine, physical, network, personnel, and supply-chain security. The organization convenes AI labs, national-security leaders, engineers, data-center operators, chip providers, researchers, and government participants to make high-assurance AI infrastructure deployable.
