Executive Assistant

This position is now CLOSED

FAR AI is seeking applications for an Executive Assistant to our CEO (Adam Gleave) and COO (Karl Berzins). In this role you will have a front row seat to our organization’s inner operations, driving impact and efficiency as you support and elevate our executive team.

About Us

FAR AI is a technical AI research non-profit, focused on ensuring the safe development and deployment of frontier AI technologies.

Since starting in July 2022, FAR has grown to 12 FTE, produced 13 academic papers, hosted events for some of the world’s leading AI & computer science researchers, and opened our AI safety focused co-working space which is home to around 40 members.

About FAR Research

We explore promising research directions in AI safety and scale up only those showing a high potential for impact. Unlike other AI safety labs that take a bet on a single research direction, FAR aims to pursue a diverse portfolio of projects. We also put our research into practice through red-teaming engagements with frontier AI developers. Our current focus areas are building a science of robustness (e.g. finding vulnerabilities in superhuman Go AIs), finding more effective approaches to value alignment (e.g. training from language feedback), and model evaluation (e.g. inverse scaling and codebook features).

Other FAR Projects

To build a flourishing field of AI safety research, we host targeted workshops and events, and operate a co-working space in Berkeley, called FAR Labs. Our previous events include the International Dialogue for AI Safety that brought together prominent scientists (including 2 Turing Award winners) from around the globe, culminating in a public statement calling for global action on AI safety research and governance. We recently hosted the New Orleans Alignment Workshop for over 140 researchers from academia and industry to learn about AI safety and find collaborators. For more information on FAR AI’s activities, please visit our latest post.

About the Role

As our first Executive Assistant, you will support our executive team with a variety of daily tasks and operational responsibilities, including but not limited to calendar management, communications, meeting preparation, event support and travel coordination. As part of a young and quickly growing research non-profit, you will tackle a variety of intellectually stimulating and novel challenges. We expect even strong candidates will have experience in only a subset of these areas, and are open to hiring people across different levels of experience.

Key responsibilities:

• Leadership Support: Support and empower FAR’s leadership team through task management, inbox/calendar management and as a sounding board for decisions.
• Workplace and Socials: Support us to make FAR a vibrant and engaging place to work, which may include suggesting office fitout improvements, organizing regular social events, sourcing company swag, and building a learning and development program.
• People & Culture administration: Respond to HR related queries, assist in headhunting, and update people-related content on our website, including updating team member profiles and publishing blog posts.
• Social Media and Content Management: Develop strategies for and manage FAR’s social media presence. Create and publish content showcasing FAR’s work and research.
• Event and Workshop Support: Assist in planning and executing events (like company retreats), liaise with caterers, and manage administrative tasks for workshops.
• Information Management: Gather information and make recommendations on vendors, contractors, and partners. Respond to partner and customer requests. Manage and document meeting minutes as required.
• Financial Administration: Handle invoice payments and receipt matching for the Operations team.
• Team Onboarding and Support: Manage administrative aspects of team onboarding and support the relocation of team members.
• Travel Coordination: Organize flights and travel bookings.
• Role cover: Depending on the candidate, you may be asked to cover various team roles as required for travel and/or leave.

Depending on the candidate, this role could evolve to include other responsibilities that come up as FAR launches new projects and initiatives.

About You

Generally speaking, we are looking for someone who is reliable, proactive and constantly on the lookout for ways to improve our internal systems and support our leadership team.

Strongly preferred:

• Professional experience in a role supporting executive leadership, or operations experience in a startup environment: You know what it takes to “get stuff done” and are happy to wear different hats, embodying a service mindset.
• Strong organizational and time management skills: You juggle multiple tasks and responsibilities and have a good sense of prioritization between competing priorities. You get energized by bringing order to chaos and making decisions under uncertainty.
• Excellent communication skills: You target your language to an audience and can manage different stakeholders. You excel at drafting documents and at communicating clearly, efficiently and transparently.
• Technical skills: You know how to use Google Workspace tools and other systems to organize workflows and keep track of different tasks. You get excited when you can use technology to reduce your own work.
• Confidentiality: You handle confidential information carefully, and have a security mindset when it comes to sensitive information and data.

Nice to have:

• Experience in HR, especially in the US/California: It may be useful to have some experience in HR, particularly in the jurisdictions we currently operate in, although we do expect this can be learned on the job.
• Event planning and coordination: Excellent candidates may have organised and managed events, allowing them to hit the ground running and help the delivery of one of our programs within months of starting the job.
• Financial administration: Budgets don’t scare you, and you’ve previously handled financial tasks, including fiscal sponsorships, payroll, insurances etc.
• Social media management: The right candidate may also have experience handling the social media accounts of small to medium enterprises, working together across teams to create engaging content in line with our mission and our values.

Logistics

You will be an employee of FAR AI, a 501(c)(3) research non-profit.

• Location: Given the nature of the role, we strongly prefer applicants who can be in-person. We may be able to sponsor visas for this role.
• Hours: Full-time (30 to 40 hours/week).
• Compensation: $70,000 - $95,000 FTE / year* depending on experience and location. We will also pay for work-related travel and equipment expenses. We offer catered lunch and dinner at our offices in Berkeley. *For exceptional candidates with an outstanding track record we may be able to offer additional compensation.
• Application process: Our application process will likely include a first screen, 1-2 test tasks and 1-2 interviews with our executive team. For some candidates, we may offer a short work trial to test mutual fit. We expect that filling in the initial application form will take less than 15 minutes.
• Deadline: This position is now closed.