Research Program Manager

The AI safety field lacks the capacity, capability, and cooperation needed to safely navigate transformative AI. Constellation addresses these gaps, by mobilizing new and existing talent (to improve field capacity), incubating and growing projects, teams and organizations (to improve field capability), and convening field contributors (to improve field cooperation). 

While our overall mission requires work across all the necessary areas needed to address risks from transformative AI, Constellation is especially well positioned to support research, because of our established track record of hosting and collaborating with research organizations. We support research at multiple levels: we host and incubate research organizations, we support individual researchers via our Residency, and we support cohorts of independent researchers as Visiting Fellows (and previously our Astra research fellowship), and by partnering with external research programs like MATS and Anthropic Fellows.

But there’s so much more to do. There is more talent that can contribute to safety than has been mobilized into the field, and the field as a whole needs to grow to meet the demand for top talent working across all areas. Through our Research Programs, Constellation is building the talent engines that will mobilize the workforce needed to safely navigate transformative Artificial Intelligence, but we need to find entrepreneurially minded Program Managers who can pair with top researchers from nonprofit organizations, universities, AI companies, think tanks, and governments to design and build excellent structures for supporting and scaling research collaborations.

In this role, you’ll be responsible for designing, iterating on, and scaling research programs run at Constellation, in collaboration with top researchers across the AI Safety ecosystem. We think there’s an overhang of high-impact research project ideas to work on, an overhang of top talent wanting to work on them, and an overhang of experts excited to provide feedback on these projects. But, the field lacks the infrastructure needed to scale and support these research projects. Research Program Managers will engage directly with frontier research projects hosted here, requiring a mixture of people management of junior researchers, research project management, and stakeholder management across research supervisors. 

We’ve found that highly talented operators can do even more with exposure and context that’s only accessible through close collaboration with researchers. This can include collaborating deeply enough that Research Program Managers might merit authorship on top technical research papers - as we’ve seen limited promising evidence of in our support for the Anthropic Fellows Program.

You’ll be supported by Constellation’s operations, recruiting, and events teams to deliver on the initiatives you design. You’ll also work closely with other Program Managers to support you in designing programs you’re working on, and to collaborate on complementary services to build and scale the full stack of talent infrastructure needed for humanity to safely navigate transformative AI. 

- Design and run Research Programs hosted at Constellation, in partnership with senior researchers and the Constellation team

- Research manage(including a mixture of people management, project management, coaching, and performance management) research projects in programs and organizations hosted by Constellation

- Work with external partners to deliver excellent research support (for example, our work hosting and supporting the Anthropic Fellows Program)

- Support Constellation’s mobilization efforts to place talent you manage in full-time roles that match with their skills and values

You may be a good fit if you:

- Are an experienced manager (minimum 2-5 years) preferably on technical research or engineering teams

- Have experience designing and leading multi-stakeholder initiatives that recruit, evaluate, match, and place talent (especially for research opportunities)

- Actively enjoy people management and are experienced with coaching and performance management.

- Are a quick learner, capable of understanding complex technical topics and are motivated to learn about a wide array of research agendas across AI Safety (such as our focus areas)

- Have strong written and verbal communication skills

- Are motivated to rapidly elicit and address blockers, feedback, and needs as they appear from direct reports and program stakeholders

- Think AI might have transformative effects in the coming years, and are driven to help humanity to safely navigate periods of intense uncertainty and change

Strong candidates may also have:

- Prior experience writing or contributing to research papers in the AI Safety / Machine Learning more broadly (especially first or last author contributions)

- Demonstrated experience managing research or engineering projects

- Familiarity with machine learning infrastructure and computational research workflows

If you're excited about helping humanity safely navigate the development of transformative AI, we encourage you to apply—even if you’re unsure whether you meet every qualification.

We value diversity in all respects and base our hiring decisions on the needs of the organization and individual qualifications.  We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age or disability.

This is a full-time, on-site position at our Berkeley office (open to remote for exceptional candidates), just steps from the nearest BART (metro) and bus stop. On-site parking is also available.