Senior Programs & Strategy Manager

Job description

About FAR.AI FAR.AI http://FAR.AI is a non-profit AI research institute dedicated to ensuring advanced AI is safe and beneficial for everyone. We work at the intersection of machine learning, safety research, and policy, supporting a global community of researchers and practitioners. At FAR.AI, we believe in thoughtful, inclusive, and rigorous work that empowers our team and partners to do their best work. Since our founding in July 2022, we've grown quickly to 40+ staff, producing 30+ influential academic papers, and established the leading AI Safety events for research and international cooperation. Our work is recognized globally, with publications at premier venues and features in the Financial Times, Nature News, Forbes, and MIT Technology Review. We drive practical change through red-teaming with frontier model developers and government institutions. Most recently, we discovered major issues with Anthropic’s latest model the same day it was released https://x.com/ARGleave/status/1926138376509440433, and worked with OpenAI https://x.com/ARGleave/status/1946366030844141716 to safeguard their latest model. Additionally, we help steer and grow the AI safety field through developing research roadmaps with renowned researchers such as Yoshua Bengio. We also operate FAR.Labs, an AI safety-focused co-working space in Berkeley, housing 40 members, as well as support the community through targeted grants to technical researchers. About the Role FAR.AI http://FAR.AI is one of the best places in the world to shape the AI safety field through events. We have a large and growing budget dedicated to convening the field, and we are known for running some of the strongest technical AI safety events globally. Our events don’t just showcase the field; they create new subfields, seed research collaborations, and directly shape the global research agenda. As a Senior Programs & Strategy Manager, you will be the person who ensures that every event we run has a clear intellectual purpose and a program to match. You will own pre-event curation, shaping agendas, proposing speakers, and deciding who needs to be in the room. You will steward what happens after events end, ensuring that the conversations we convene have a life beyond the room. And you will act as content ownership liaison across our programme portfolio, bringing coherence and ambition to a growing and varied slate of events. Our events portfolio includes more than a dozen workshops, conferences, and partner convenings each year. Every event has its own goals, stakeholders, and timeline. Some run simultaneously. Most evolve quickly. You'll be the person who leads hands-on content design, speaker coordination, and participant targeting across this portfolio You will work closely with the Head of Programs, our in-house research team, and external partners to design programming that is intellectually rigorous, strategically considered, and occasionally takes a bold swing. You will also partner closely with our Senior Programs Manager and Infrastructure Specialist to ensure event visions translate thoughtfully to participant-facing platforms and communications. You will report to Lindsay Murachver, Head of Programs. Responsibilities Agenda design & curation - Design agendas for FAR.AI’s events portfolio (estimated 12+ events per year), from theory of change through to session structure, speaker selection, and attendee composition. - Propose speakers and attendees with genuine judgment about who will move a conversation forward; not just who is prominent in the field. - Read a draft speaker list and immediately see who is missing; read a draft agenda and immediately see what is not quite right. - Ensure programming reflects the current state of the field and anticipates where it is heading, working with FAR.AI’s in-house research team to pressure-test content decisions. - Take considered bets on emerging topics and innovative formats, and make the intellectual case for them. Pre-event content ownership - Own the content framing for each event developing event theory of change documents, briefing notes, and framing materials that give the programme a clear intellectual spine. - Lead the speaker invitation and engagement process, including drafting outreach, managing speaker preparation, and ensuring speakers are well-positioned to contribute to the event's goals. - Produce written content that extends the reach of FAR.AI’s events: framing documents, research summaries, speaker briefings, and post-event reports. - Act as content ownership liaison across programme tracks, working closely with program leads to ensure coherence and quality across different event types. Attendee targeting and communications - Develop participant strategies for each event, identifying the stakeholders, expertise, and perspectives required to achieve the event's objectives and ensure the right mix of attendees in the room. - Lead attendee sourcing and invitation processes, working with team members to build target participant lists, manage initial invitations and other pre- and post-event outreach, and cultivate relationships with priority stakeholders. Post-event continuity & impact - Design and steward the conditions for participant groups to keep generating value after the event ends; including virtual continuation formats, working groups, and follow-on convenings. - Track which relationships need tending, which conversations should continue, and which outputs are worth pursuing after each event. - Connect event outputs to FAR.AI’;s broader field-building work in grantmaking, communications, and research. Stakeholder & field relationships - Build and maintain relationships with senior researchers, lab representatives, policymakers, and field-builders across the AI safety ecosystem. - Leverage an existing network to bring the right people into FAR.AI’s orbit and ensure our events attract participants who will make them better. - Represent FAR.AI credibly in rooms with technical researchers and policy audiences alike. Required Skills & Experience Agenda design experience - Extensive experience designing agendas for technical, academic, or policy-focused events; with a track record of programs that were intellectually ambitious, not just well-organized - Demonstrated ability to translate a strategic goal into a session structure, a speaker list, and a room composition that will actually achieve it - Sharp instincts about who should be in the room and what the conversation needs; developed through years of working closely with researchers, practitioners, or policymakers Fluency in the AI safety space - Genuine familiarity with the AI safety field; its key questions, key players, and current debates; at a level where you can assess speaker quality, identify agenda gaps, and hold your own with senior researchers - You do not need a technical research background, but you need to have engaged seriously with the field and to understand why the work matters Content production - A track record of original written output event framing documents, research summaries, essays, reports, or equivalent; that demonstrates depth of thinking and a clear point of view - Able to translate complex technical or policy conversations into something a funder or decision-maker can act on, without losing the substance Stakeholder management - Proven ability to work with high-status or technical stakeholders and manage complex relationships with care - Comfortable proposing ideas that feel ambitious or unconventional and making the intellectual case for them to senior people Collaboration & working style - You notice things that need to be done and handle them without waiting to be asked. - Comfortable working quickly across a high-volume portfolio of quite different event types and adapting your approach to each. - Willing to take a hands-on operational role when needed, contributing wherever necessary to ensure successful delivery. - Collaborative and low-ego, with the ability to work closely with colleagues across teams while maintaining clear ownership and accountability for outcomes. Project management tools & systems - Proficiency in project management tools (e.g. Asana, Coda, Airtable) - Experience building or improving CRM processes and communications systems in a team that is scaling. Mission alignment - Strong motivation to contribute to AI safety and the future of the field. Nice-to-Have - Existing relationships in the AI safety research community; researchers and practitioners who know and trust your judgment. - Experience with post-event community building or continuation programming. - Background in a technical field, policy environment, or think tank. - Entrepreneurial experience: starting new initiatives or seeding programmes from scratch. - Experience working in a non-profit or mission-driven organisation. Logistics - You will be a full-time employee of FAR.AI, a 501(c)(3) research non-profit. - Location: both remote (US only) and in-person (Berkeley, CA) candidates are welcome. - Hours: full-time (40 hours per week). The role involves regular travel for events, approximately one trip per month. - Benefits: comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance, generous paid time off and holidays, and a range of other benefits. Our hiring process includes an initial application review, calls with the hiring manager, and paid test tasks. Successful candidates will then have in-depth interviews with team members and may be invited to a full-day work trial, followed by reference checks. If you have any questions, please contact us at talent@far.ai.