Hiring Manager

About the Team

GovAI was founded to help humanity navigate the transition to a world with advanced AI. One crucial input to achieving this mission is ensuring that we can identify and recruit exceptionally talented staff and visiting researchers. 

Since publishing our first research agenda in 2018, we have helped define and shape the field of AI governance. 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. DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic), 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 modelling, frontier AI regulation, technical governance, agent governance, AI economics, international cooperation, US-China relations, and AI forecasting.

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Why you might be interested in this role

• You'll own one of the highest-leverage problems that 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.

• You'll lead both people and strategy through rapid scaling. You’ll manage and build a team while simultaneously solving novel challenges that most AI governance organizations don’t face.

• You'll pioneer approaches that the entire AI governance ecosystem will learn from. As one of the first organizations dealing with hiring challenges at this scale in AI governance, the systems and approaches you develop will likely be studied and adopted across the field.

• You'll have unusual autonomy 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 the freedom to iterate rapidly on high-impact improvements.

• 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

You’ll be the directly responsible individual for ensuring that GovAI’s hiring identifies the best candidates, is a great experience for applicants, and operates smoothly and efficiently. You’ll report to Abraham Rowe, our Director of Operations, and work closely with Valerie Belu, our Director of Talent.

Our hiring faces major challenges: our seasonal fellowships receive (tens of) thousands of applications, and it becomes progressively harder to identify the best cohort from the applicant pool. We’re looking for a Hiring Manager who is excited to tackle this and other challenges, and to significantly increase our ability to scale our hiring.

Responsibilities will include: 

• Managing the hiring team:
  
  • You’ll be responsible for managing the hiring team at GovAI (currently 2 staff members, expected to be 3-4, including you), not only overseeing their work, but providing feedback and mentorship for staff.
• Overseeing GovAI’s hiring function:
  
  • We’re consistently running 3-4 simultaneous hiring rounds, and expect this volume to increase in the future. You’ll be responsible for working with the hiring team to keep these rounds running smoothly and efficiently.
• Creatively improving the hiring function at GovAI:
  
  • Due to the increasing number of applications in our hiring rounds, selection takes up increasingly many resources and we’re correspondingly constrained on vetting capacity.
  • Part of your role will be to creatively solve these challenges and make progress on improving the hiring function without dropping quality.
• In your first six months, we expect that you might:
  
  • Take over management of the team.
  • Directly project manage a hiring round to learn how recruitment works at GovAI.
  • Get up to speed on our applicant tracking system (Airtable) and the current challenges the hiring function faces.
  • Help onboard up to 2 new team members.
  • Begin directly making progress on the biggest challenges our hiring faces.

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Selection Criteria

We’re selecting candidates who are:

• Driven by a desire to produce consistently excellent work and an obsession with process improvement.

• Highly organized — our hiring has many moving pieces, and you’ll need to manage these different parts and hiring rounds.

• Strong at interpersonal communication and people management.

• Strong familiarity with Airtable or similar systems is preferred but not required.

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

• Experienced at running hiring rounds with high volumes of candidates is preferred but not required.

• Some profiles that might be an especially good fit for this role include:
  
  • A hiring manager at an organization in AI or tech.
  • A research manager in AI governance with extensive experience hiring, interested in testing their fit for more operational roles.
  • Someone who has led a recruiting or process-heavy function within a rapidly scaling organization.
• At the Head of Recruitment level, successful applicants might have a background like:
  
  • Someone who managed a recruitment function for a major AI governance organization with significant application volume challenges.
  • Someone who developed and significantly improved the internal processes at a rapidly scaling organization.

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Salary and Location

This position is full-time. Our offices are located in London, UK, and we strongly prefer team members to be based here, but are open to individuals who would need to work remotely. We are able to sponsor visas. 

The Hiring Manager will be compensated in line with our salary principles. As such, the salary for this role will depend on the successful applicant’s experience, but we expect the range to be between £71,000 (~$95,000) and £93,000 (~$125,000) if based in London. 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

Application Process

The selection process has three stages:

1. Written application
2. A paid remote work test
3. An interview and reference checks

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Special Circumstances

Please contact recruitment@governance.ai if you:

• Need a decision communicated by a particular date

• Require assistance with the application due to a disability

• Have questions about the application process

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Addressing complex AI governance challenges requires many different skillsets 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.