Head of People at goodfire | AI Job Board

Job description

About Goodfire

Goodfire is a research company using interpretability to understand, learn from, and design AI systems. Our mission is to build the next generation of safe and powerful AI—not by scaling alone, but by understanding the intelligence we're building.

Scaling has proven powerful, but today's approach is fundamentally limited: we can't meaningfully understand, debug, or shape what models learn. Every engineering discipline has been gated by fundamental science and AI is at that inflection point now.

We're advancing the science of how AI systems actually work. Treating models as black boxes is an unnecessary handicap—we have access to the structures inside them, and understanding those structures lets us steer what models learn, make them safer and more useful, and extract the vast knowledge they contain. Our goal is to make AI that can be understood, debugged, and shaped like software.

Goodfire is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco with a team of the world’s top interpretability researchers and engineers from organizations like OpenAI and DeepMind. We're backed by over $200M from B Capital, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, Eric Schmidt, and others.

About the role

At Goodfire, talent is our competitive advantage. We’re hiring a Head of People to help scale the highest-performing AI research organization in the world so that we can achieve our mission. You’ll lead the strategy behind how we hire, develop, and retain exceptional talent while building the systems, processes, and culture that help us tackle the biggest and most ambitious problems.

We’re scaling fast, and we’re looking for someone who refuses to lower the hiring bar just to fill headcount objectives when the pressure is on. You find intensity exhilarating, move with urgency, and thrive when faced with challenges. You’re someone we can lean on to make exceptional judgment calls, and you go out of your way to make sure our people feel genuinely cared for and supported. You’ll be the secret weapon behind our ability to attract and build a world-class team, creating an organization that gives us a lasting competitive edge.

Key responsibilities

Own Goodfire’s hiring strategy and execution across all functions
Own compensation, leveling, and equity philosophy to ensure we attract and retain world-class talent
Own the end-to-end employee experience, from offer through onboarding, development, performance, and offboarding
Shape and reinforce a high-performance, mission-driven culture as the company scales while preserving trust, intensity, and high standards
Build scalable People systems, processes, and infrastructure that enable rapid growth
Partner closely with founders and leaders on organizational design, workforce planning, succession planning, and leadership development
Lead employee relations and navigate sensitive, high-stakes people situations with sound judgment, discretion, and empathy
Hire, develop, and lead a high-performing People team

What you’ll bring

Required experience

8+ years in People/Talent roles, including experience building or scaling a People function at a high-growth startup
Track record of hiring for technical/research roles under intense pressure without compromising quality
Comfortable operating with ambiguity and building processes from scratch
Strong judgment on sensitive, high-stakes people situations

Our values

Goodfire is looking for individuals who embody our values and share our deep commitment to making interpretability accessible. We are building a team first and foremost.

Put mission and team first

All we do is in service of our mission. We trust each other, deeply care about the success of the organization, and choose to put our team above ourselves.

Improve constantly

We are constantly looking to improve every piece of the business. We proactively critique ourselves and others in a kind and thoughtful way that translates to practical improvements in the organization. We are pragmatic and consistently implement the obvious fixes that work.

Take ownership and initiative

There are no bystanders here. We proactively identify problems and take full responsibility over getting a strong result. We are self-driven, own our mistakes, and feel deep responsibility over what we’re building.

Action today

We have a small amount of time to do something incredibly hard and meaningful. The pace and intensity of the organization is high. If we can take action today or tomorrow, we will choose to do it today.

Where we work

We are hiring for this position in our San Francisco office who’d be onsite 5 days a week.

What we offer

This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.

The expected salary range for this position is $400-500k.

This role reports to our CEO.

Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to join a vital mission at an important point in its trajectory — we are developing groundbreaking technology with a world-class team on the critical path to ensuring a safe and beneficial future for humanity. If you want to do your life’s work with us, even if you believe you do not meet every single requirement, apply now.