Vacancy title:
Chief of Staff, Technical AI Safety

[Type: FULL_TIME, Industry: Nonprofit, and NGO, Category: Management, Science & Engineering, Computer & IT, Business Operations, Social Services & Nonprofit]

Jobs at:
Open Philanthropy

Deadline of this Job:
Friday, November 28 2025

Duty Station:
Remote | Nairobi | Kenya

Summary
Date Posted: Wednesday, November 12 2025, Base Salary: Not Disclosed

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JOB DETAILS:

The Technical AI Safety (TAIS) grantmaking program sits under our broader focus area of Navigating Transformative AI and supports technical research aimed at reducing catastrophic risks from advanced AI. The team has grown by 3x over the past year to a size of six people and ~$150 million in annual grantmaking, and we expect it will continue to grow rapidly in the coming years. You can read more about some of the research areas we fund in our recent Request for Proposals.

We are seeking a strategic and highly organized Chief of Staff to report directly to Peter Favaloro and work closely with him to accelerate TAIS’ progress toward its goals.

This role will have significant responsibility in aggressively scaling a new team in a high-priority area for Open Philanthropy — designing systems to support the team’s work, managing stakeholders to generate buy-in on the team’s plans, and owning projects that resolve bottlenecks to the team’s growth.

Unique responsibilities

Compared to the other roles in this round, this opportunity will particularly emphasize partnering with Peter to scale and support the TAIS team. You'll both amplify Peter's impact as a team lead by serving as a thought partner and execution accelerator, and ideally also act as a leader yourself — overseeing complex projects, steering recommendations on team structure and trajectory, and representing the team to internal and external stakeholders.

Specific responsibilities will be customized to the abilities and fit of a given candidate. Example projects include:

• Work with Peter to draft the team’s growth strategy. This would involve collecting feedback from colleagues and collaborators, mapping out the merits and drawbacks of different trajectories, recommending refinements to the strategy, and presenting a plan to Open Philanthropy leadership.
• Own the launch of a new Request For Proposals. This might involve:
  • Setting excellent quality and efficient delivery timelines.
  • Ensuring the content and design will attract the applications we want.
  • Managing stakeholders at all levels across the organization.
  • Coordinating large team member contributions, like drafting the text or running the publicity.
• Design and execute a strategy to recruit senior technical talent. This would likely include meeting with senior AI researchers outside the organization to understand their interests and constraints, designing a role to appeal to the strongest candidates in that audience, and overseeing the hiring process.
• Line-manage program operations staff who track and analyze our grantmaking, coordinate communications with applicants and grantees, and own new operational projects.

Unique candidate criteria

You might be a particularly great fit for this role if you:

• Are excited about the work of the TAIS team and committed to achieving its goals.
• Are broadly familiar with the AI safety ecosystem. Technical expertise is a positive, but not at all required.
• [Ideally] Have experience in running and scaling a high-functioning team, including line management, team structuring, goal setting, and overseeing several multi-contributor projects in parallel.

Other details

Location: Peter is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and would strongly prefer candidates who can co-work in person (alternately in San Francisco and Berkeley).

We are open to exceptional candidates working remotely, but require that most of their working hours overlap with California business hours (~9 am - 5 pm PT).

We’ll support candidates with the costs of relocation to the Bay.

We’ll also consider sponsoring U.S. work authorization for international candidates (though we don’t control who is and isn’t eligible for a visa and can’t guarantee visa approval).

Compensation: This is a full-time, permanent position. The starting compensation for this role will be either $186,861.09 or $204,059.77 per year depending on the experience of the successful candidate, which would include a base salary of $163,861.09 or $181,059.77 and an unconditional 401(k) grant of $23,000.00.

These compensation figures assume you’d be working from the San Francisco Bay Area; there would be a downward adjustment for candidates based in other locations.

Start date: We would ideally like a candidate to begin as soon as possible after receiving an offer, but we are willing to wait if the best candidate can only start later.

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 48

Level of Education: bachelor degree

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