Own Kairos’s hiring and build a recruiting process that can keep up with our rapid growth.

Note: This role description is a first draft. Scope, salary, and responsibilities may evolve, and we’ll keep you in the loop about any changes if you apply.

Applications are due by October 16, 2026. We’ll review applications after the deadline and get back to everyone shortly after.

About Kairos

Kairos is a nonprofit accelerating talent into AI safety and policy. In just over two years, we’ve trained 1,200+ people through our flagship programs:

• SPAR: The largest AI safety research fellowship, with 800+ mentees per round mentored by researchers from Anthropic, Redwood Research, RAND, MIT, the UK AI Security Institute, and others.

• Generator Residency: In partnership with Constellation, a platform for generalist talent to pitch, build, and ship projects that build capacity and infrastructure across the AI safety ecosystem, with advisors from OpenAI, AI Futures Project, METR, and more.

• Global Challenges Project: A workshop series introducing promising students to careers in AI safety and biosecurity, run several times a year across Oxford, Boston, and Berkeley.

• Pathfinder Fellowship: Helping grow the global network of AI safety university groups from a few dozen to nearly 100, with $9.5M in funding over the next two years to support their work.

We see ourselves as a portfolio of highly impactful projects in a fast-evolving field. Over the next six months, we expect to double in size and launch several new initiatives addressing critical gaps in the ecosystem.

The Role

Who we hire over the next year, and how quickly we hire them, will shape which programs Kairos can run and how ambitious they can be. Until now, our hiring has been run by our co-directors and a few staff alongside their other work, so we’re looking for a recruiter to take it on full time. You’d run our hiring rounds, find strong candidates, and build the processes that let us hire well as we grow.

What You’ll Do

• Run Kairos’s hiring rounds end to end. You’ll manage every stage of the pipeline, including application review, work tests, interviews, reference checks, work trials, and offers.

• Source candidates. Many of our best hires have come to us through people we know, so you’ll draw on our programs, our network, and the broader ecosystem to find strong candidates.

• Build and improve our hiring infrastructure. You’ll design and refine applications, work tests, interview questions, and candidate tracking. You’ll also think a lot about how AI is changing the way people apply and how we can use it to run hiring better.

• Help build the team. Beyond running hiring processes, you’ll help scope new roles and weigh in on org design questions, like who we need next and how roles should fit together.

• Support hiring for Kairos Labs. Kairos Labs, our upcoming incubator for new AI safety organizations, plans to launch in early 2027, and you may help the organizations it supports find their first hires.

Who You Are

• Experience with recruiting. Ideally you’ve run hiring processes before, whether as a recruiter or in a role where hiring was a big part of your work.

• Strong judgment about people. You’ll make many calls about who should move forward, and you should be comfortable making them well under uncertainty.

• Good with people. Candidates should enjoy talking with you and come away excited about Kairos.

• Organized and reliable. We often have 5–10 hiring rounds running at once, so you’ll need to keep track of candidates, interviews, work tests, and work trials across all of them without dropping balls.

• Mission-aligned with context on AI safety. You care deeply about making advanced AI go well, and you have enough context on the ecosystem to recognize promising people and understand what our roles need.

Why Work With Us

• You’ll be working toward reducing risks from advanced AI, potentially the most important challenge of our time. The people you help us hire over the next year will determine how ambitious Kairos can be, including our capacity to launch new, impactful projects and grow the programs we already run.

• You’d be Kairos’s first dedicated recruiter, with a lot of room to shape how we hire.

• We’re building a world-class team, so you’ll be in good company. Work alongside people who’ve come to Kairos from METR, Coefficient Giving, Rethink Priorities, the UK AI Security Institute, and CEA who share your commitment to impact.

• Collaborate regularly with leading AI safety researchers, policy professionals, funders, and organizers.

What We Offer

• Salary: $105,000–$145,000 (baseline), $130,000–$180,000 (supported hubs, like London, DC, Boston, and NYC), or $145,000–$200,000 (San Francisco Bay Area), depending on experience, with potential for additional compensation for exceptional candidates

• Location: This is a remote role. We provide access to office space in San Francisco, Berkeley, London, or Boston, with optional coworking elsewhere. If you work from an AI safety office in one of these cities, we cover food, lunches, and office expenses. If you work from home, we cover home office expenses.

• Benefits: Flexible working hours, highly competitive health insurance, dental and vision coverage, generous vacation policy, and professional development budget

• Team retreats: We host all-team retreats three times a year to connect in person, collaborate, and build team culture.

• Travel: Work-related travel and expenses covered.

Logistics

• Start date: Flexible, though we generally expect new hires to be able to start within a couple of months of applying

• Remote, with expected travel 3–6 times a year for conferences and events, predominantly in the US

• We’d also be happy for you to work out of any of the AI safety hubs in San Francisco, Berkeley, London, or Boston.

• We prefer candidates who can attend meetings in the ET time zone (though our team currently spans GMT-8 to GMT+1).

• Kairos is happy to sponsor visas to the US (typically H-1Bs or O-1As) and will likely be able to sponsor UK visas in the coming months. We can’t guarantee visa approvals, however.

Our Culture

We’re a small, high-trust team motivated by the urgent challenge of making advanced AI go well. We try hard to figure out where we’re wrong, which means we say uncomfortable things to each other and change our minds fairly often. We value collaborative truth-seeking, a scout mindset, agility, and an alliance mindset with the broader ecosystem.

We also believe meaningful work should be enjoyable. We support each other’s well-being, celebrate wins, and maintain a healthy sense of humor even when the work is hard.

Application Process

Applications are due by October 16, 2026. We’ll review applications after the deadline and get back to everyone shortly after.

1. Application form (10–20 mins)

2. Screening call (15 mins)

3. Take-home assignment (1.5–3 hours, paid)

4. Interview (45 mins)

5. Reference checks

6. Work trial (3 days, paid)

7. Offer

If you’re excited about this role but unsure whether you meet every qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway. If you’re interested in multiple roles, apply to the one that best fits your skills and interests, and note in your application the other roles that you’d like to be considered for.

Questions? Reach out at careers@kairos-project.org.

Know someone who might be a good fit? If your referral gets hired and completes two months with us, we’ll pay you a $10,000 referral bonus. Learn more here.