About GovAI

GovAI was founded to help humanity navigate the transition to a world with advanced AI, by producing rigorous research and fostering talent. Our researchers have published in top venues, including Science and Nature, and work closely with decision-makers across government, industry, and civil society. Our alumni have gone on to influential roles in government (US, UK, EU), leading AI companies (e.g., Anthropic, DeepMind, OpenAI), top think tanks (e.g., CSET, RAND), and leading universities (e.g., Oxford, Cambridge).

Our team and affiliate community possess expertise across risk management, threat modeling, frontier AI regulation, technical governance, agent governance, AI economics, international cooperation, US-China relations, and AI forecasting. Since publishing our first research agenda in 2018, we have helped define and shape the field of AI governance.
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Why You Might Be Interested in This Role

• ‍You'll lead the work on one of the highest-leverage problems GovAI faces. The difference between hiring the 95th-percentile candidate and the 99th-percentile candidate compounds across everything GovAI does. You'll be responsible for ensuring we consistently identify and attract exceptional talent in a field where such people are rare and typically have multiple good opportunities.
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• You'll lead both people and strategy through rapid scaling. You’ll manage and lead the hiring team as GovAI's hiring expands, and solve selection challenges that few organizations in AI governance face at this scale.
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• ‍You'll have a mandate to experiment and improve. We need creative solutions to unprecedented challenges. You'll have the backing to experiment with new approaches, the data to measure what works, and a short path from a well-grounded recommendation to a change in how we hire.‍
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• You'll pioneer approaches that the entire AI governance ecosystem will learn from. We select from thousands of applicants, and our field has little shared practice for doing this well. What you learn here about what works, and what doesn’t, will be useful to other organizations in the field as they grow.
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• ‍You'll directly shape the next generation of AI governance leaders. The people your team helps hire won't just work at GovAI—they'll go on to influence AI policy at major governments, lead research at top institutions, and build the field's intellectual foundations. 
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Role Description

The Head of Hiring leads GovAI's hiring team, oversees the delivery and continuous improvement of our hiring processes, and works with leadership and function owners to turn GovAI's plans into well-scoped roles and effective hiring strategies.

This is an increasingly challenging task. Our seasonal fellowships attract thousands of applications, evaluating candidates takes up substantial time, and GovAI needs to recruit for an increasingly diverse range of roles. We're looking for someone who is excited to tackle these challenges, make thoughtful trade-offs between hiring quality, speed, and efficiency, and lead a team that delivers excellent results.

You'll report to Katherine Gilmore, Head of Operations, and work directly with the executive team and function owners on hiring matters. 
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Core Responsibilities

• Hiring planning and role scoping‍
  
  • Work closely with the executive team and function owners to understand their hiring needs, define the capabilities they're looking for, and translate these into well-scoped roles, scorecards, and assessment plans.
  • Help leadership plan and prioritize hiring across the organization, providing recommendations informed by organizational needs, available capacity, and the expected value of different hires.
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• Leading hiring delivery‍
  
  • Oversee the delivery of hiring rounds across GovAI's staff roles and fellowship programs, ensuring processes run reliably, efficiently, and to a high standard.
  • Make sure candidates have a positive experience throughout the process and that internal stakeholders have the information and support they need to make timely decisions.
  • Ensure our hiring systems, processes, and resources can support a growing volume and variety of recruitment without compromising selection quality.‍
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• Improving how GovAI hires‍
  
  • Lead the ongoing evaluation and improvement of our hiring processes, using evidence from previous rounds, feedback, and relevant research to identify what works and what could be improved.
  • Develop recommendations to improve how we source, assess, and select candidates, work with senior leadership to agree on major changes, and oversee implementation.
  • Identify opportunities to make our processes more effective and scalable, including through better use of data, technology, and automation.‍
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• Sourcing and attracting candidates‍
  
  • You'll build GovAI's capacity to find candidates who don't apply, including headhunting for roles where the organization is bottlenecked, such as research supervisors and senior operational positions.
  • Develop effective sourcing strategies, drawing on professional networks, referrals, targeted outreach, and other approaches to reach strong candidates for hard-to-fill roles.
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• Leading and developing the hiring team‍
  
  • You'll lead a growing team (expected to grow from 5 members to 8-10 members over the next year). As the team grows over time, you’ll design updates to the team structure, including introducing sub-leads and managing managers where appropriate, while maintaining high standards and clear accountability.
  • Support team members' professional development, establish clear priorities and ownership, and build a team that can operate effectively with increasing autonomy.
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Key Priorities in Your First Six Months 

We expect your initial priorities to include:

• Take over the team and the hiring rounds already underway, and learn how our processes work in practice before changing them.
• Map GovAI’s hiring needs for the next 6–12 months with function owners, and recommend priorities and sequencing.
• Identify the most important improvements, especially how to maintain selection quality as application volumes grow, and start testing the most promising ones with leadership.
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Selection Criteria

Essential

We're looking for candidates who:

• Are excited by the opportunity to use their careers to positively influence the lasting impact of artificial intelligence, in line with our organization’s mission.

• Have worked in AI safety, or in a comparably mission-driven setting: Professional experience in organizations focused on AI safety or governance, or on other high-priority global problems, where decisions are made on the basis of expected impact.
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• ‍Have strong selection design expertise and hiring judgment: Demonstrated success translating role requirements into clear selection criteria and designing effective assessment methods, such as work tests and structured interviews, to identify strong candidates.

• Can lead complex operations: Experience overseeing multiple projects simultaneously, coordinating people and resources, managing competing priorities, and ensuring timely, high-quality delivery.
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• Have experience leading and developing teams: Able to set clear expectations, delegate responsibilities effectively, provide constructive feedback, and support team members' development.

• Can diagnose problems and improve processes: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including using evidence to identify weaknesses, evaluate trade-offs, recommend solutions, and implement improvements.
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• Can work effectively with senior stakeholders: Able to understand organizational needs, challenge assumptions constructively, and communicate clear, well-reasoned recommendations, both verbally and in writing.
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Nice to Have

• Familiarity with the AI safety and governance talent landscape and the networks within it.
• Experience building or substantially improving an operations function as an organization grew.
• Experience evaluating the effectiveness of selection methods, including using hiring outcomes or structured experiments to assess and improve how candidates are evaluated.
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Salary and Location

This position is full-time. We have offices in London, UK, and Washington, DC, and we strongly prefer team members to work from one of them. We are also open to candidates who would need to work remotely, provided their working hours overlap substantially with UK or US East Coast business hours. We are able to sponsor visas in the UK and the US, and can support relocation.

The Head of Hiring will be compensated in line with our salary principles. The salary will depend on the level at which we appoint (Hiring Manager or Head of Hiring), as well as the successful applicant’s experience and location, but we expect it to fall between £120,000 and £170,000 if based in London, or between $176,500 and $250,000 if based in Washington, D.C. In rare cases where salary considerations would prevent a candidate from accepting an offer, there may also be some flexibility in compensation.

We also offer competitive benefits, including a 10% pension/401k contribution and private medical cover.
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How to Apply and What to Expect

The application process consists of a written submission in the first round, a paid remote work test in the second round, and interviews in the final round. We also conduct reference checks for all candidates we interview. 

Please feel free to reach out to recruitment@governance.ai if you need a decision communicated by a particular date, if you need assistance with the application due to a disability, or if you have questions about the application process.
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Addressing complex AI governance challenges requires many different skill sets and perspectives. We welcome applicants from a wide range of backgrounds. If our mission excites you, we encourage you to apply, even if your experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification listed. Your unique combination of experience and motivation might be exactly what we're looking for.

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