Senior Manager, Special Projects

CAIS • San Francisco, CA

17h • Onsite

About The Position

The Center for AI Safety (CAIS) is hiring a Senior Manager for its Special Projects team, which addresses high-priority, ambiguous problems spanning multiple teams and builds operational infrastructure as the organization scales across Research, Public Engagement, and Policy. The role calls for structured, data-informed execution and full ownership of initiatives from start to finish.

This opening is likely to focus on the Public Engagement team. The Senior Manager would work closely with its Head to translate goals into workstreams, owners, milestones, and measures of success, and to build repeatable mechanisms that enable programs to scale. Potential projects include establishing the operating model for a creator program, developing cross-functional execution plans, creating systems to prioritize investments and measure impact, and coordinating complex initiatives across researchers, communications, agencies, partners, and leadership. The specific focus may shift as organizational needs change.

The successful candidate will bring structure to ambiguity, establish accountability, influence decisions, and keep important work moving with limited supervision. They will move between projects as priorities change, convert strategy into practical execution, and use data and retrospectives to improve outcomes and create reusable systems and playbooks.

Requirements

• 4 to 6 years of experience in management consulting, investment banking, business strategy, go-to-market strategy, program management, or strategy/operations at a high-growth company.
• Demonstrated ability to independently take projects from an ambiguous starting point to a finished outcome with limited guidance.
• Experience managing complex, multi-stakeholder programs and influencing senior stakeholders without direct authority.
• Ability to move across different problem areas and quickly understand unfamiliar contexts.
• Strong data skills, including structuring analyses, building models, and using analysis to drive decisions.
• Ability to turn strategy into concrete processes and execution plans, with systems thinking and a focus on repeatable mechanisms.
• Excellent program management and operational judgment, including knowing how much process a problem requires.
• Experience scaling a team, function, or program and/or launching something into the market.
• Bias toward speed and a high bar for quality, with a willingness to ship and iterate.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain complexity and trade-offs to leadership and non-specialist audiences.
• Good judgment under uncertainty, including knowing when to act, investigate, or escalate.
• Genuine interest in AI safety and CAIS's mission, and willingness to develop deep domain knowledge.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience in a startup, scale-up, or another fast-moving, resource-constrained environment.
• Experience working directly with executive- or founder-level stakeholders.
• SQL or other data-querying experience.

Responsibilities

• Turn ambiguous leadership mandates and priorities into scoped plans, timelines, deliverables, owners, and sequenced dependencies.
• Manage complex, cross-functional work across teams, agencies, vendors, and external partners.
• Design and establish new processes, systems, programs, operating cadences, and repeatable mechanisms that can run and scale.
• Lead scaling and go-to-market efforts for new initiatives from strategy through execution and iteration.
• Analyze data to diagnose problems, size opportunities, and support decisions; assess impact, feasibility, cost, and risk.
• Partner with leadership and cross-functional teams as an operator on high-priority problems and establish accountability.
• Influence without formal authority by preparing stakeholders for decisions, surfacing risks, and managing trade-offs.
• Own governance and reporting for initiatives, monitor program health and the broader portfolio, and keep leadership informed.
• Use data and retrospectives to improve outcomes and turn successful approaches into reusable systems and playbooks.
• Shift between projects, re-scoping and re-prioritizing as organizational needs change while maintaining momentum.

Benefits

• Health insurance for the employee and dependents.
• 401(k) plan with 4% matching.
• Unlimited PTO.
• Lunch and dinner at the office.
• Annual professional development stipend.
• Access to talent working on technical and conceptual research in AI safety.
• Referral program with a $1,500 bonus if a referred candidate is hired and remains at CAIS for 90 days.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed