General Counsel

Safe AI Forum; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 192,000 - 262,000; Full time

Job summary

Safe AI Forum is seeking a General Counsel to own our legal function and act as a strategic partner, weighing legal risk against mission and operational reality. You will balance policy, governance, and compliance across US and UK programmes, and help leadership navigate complex decisions.

As SAIF's first in-house lawyer, you will design scalable processes, manage outside counsel across jurisdictions, and provide practical risk guidance grounded in business needs and program priorities.

Responsibilities

• Serve as strategic partner to leadership on cross-functional decisions involving legal, operational, governance, and reputational considerations — helping scope what's possible, not just what's permitted.
• Identify, assess, and mitigate legal risks across SAIF and its programmes; track regulatory developments in the US, UK, and China and keep us on the right side of applicable rules and regulations; contribute to annual risk assessments from a legal perspective.
• Own SAIF's trade control obligations: risk analysis, developing policies and safeguards, screening, and internal education.
• Own FARA and lobbying exposure across our programmes.
• Design and run the safeguards our work requires (e.g. researcher vetting, background checks).

Job description

We are looking for a General Counsel to own our Legal function and act as a strategic partner to help us weigh legal risk against mission and operational reality.

Location : Remote (UK or USA), or in-person at London, UK. We can sponsor UK work visa for exceptional candidates.

Compensation:

• For US: $258,634 - $353,716 + up to 3.5% 401(k) match

If our posted range would meaningfully affect your decision to apply, we'd encourage you to apply anyway and flag it in your application. We’re happy to discuss compensation in more detail before an offer if it would affect your decision.

Ideal start date: As soon as possible.

About SAIF

The Safe AI Forum (SAIF) is a US 501(c)(3) and we advance international cooperation to reduce extreme AI risks. We focus on fostering coordination, cooperation, and communication across the most important AI jurisdictions. Our flagship programme, the International Dialogue on AI Safety , brings together senior computer scientists and AI governance experts from multiple jurisdictions, and we also run workshops, working groups, and a variety of other programmes.

We're a team of 16 based across the UK and North America. Over the next 12-18 months, the SAIF team will grow a lot, expand and launch new programmes, and move into a new phase of our organisational history. We're impact-focused and move quickly, balancing rigour with speed and taking genuine ownership of outcomes. Our culture is warm and collaborative. People make time for each other and assume good intentions, even while working at pace on high-stakes problems.

About the role

To succeed in this role, you'll see yourself as a strategic partner first and a lawyer second: someone who understands our mission and its risk universe, and helps leadership navigate decisions, balancing legal considerations with operational realities and mission priorities. We're inviting you to have a seat at the table, pushing for good outcomes for the organisation as a whole, not just the lawyer.

We work in an unusually sensitive field: international cooperation on AI safety, centered on US–China engagement, with growing attention on it. SAIF itself is growing quickly and expanding our programmes; there is very little "business as usual.". We operate through two entities: a US 501(c)(3) and a UK company, and may add further entities in other jurisdictions as our work grows.

You will be SAIF's first and sole in-house lawyer, owning the legal function end-to-end: designing policies and safeguards, setting templates and processes, and managing outside counsel across jurisdictions. You'll give calibrated, practical advice — not just technically correct, but grounded in understanding when a risk is worth taking and when it isn't — and communicate it clearly to non-lawyers: specific risk pathways, their likelihood and severity, ending in a recommendation.

What you'll do

Strategic thought partner

• Serve as thought partner to leadership on cross-functional decisions involving legal, operational, governance, and reputational considerations — helping scope what's possible, not just what's permitted.

Legal risk management and reduction

• Identify, assess, and mitigate legal risks across SAIF and its programmes; track regulatory developments in the US, UK, and China and keep us on the right side of applicable rules and regulations; contribute to annual risk assessments from a legal perspective.
• Own SAIF's trade control obligations: risk analysis, developing policies and safeguards, screening, and internal education.
• Own FARA and lobbying exposure across our programmes.
• Design and run the safeguards our work requires (e.g. researcher vetting, background checks).

Legal operations