Expert Support Manager (Contract, San Francisco)

Patronus AI; United States; Remote; USD 69,000 - 207,000; Part time

Job summary

Patronus AI, based in San Francisco, seeks an on-site contractor to manage payments for expert contractors and oversee onboarding, access, and invoicing processes. You will own the end-to-end payment path, ensuring accuracy and timeliness while coordinating with expert managers across multiple domains.

The role emphasizes trust, attention to detail, and proactive problem solving, with opportunities to automate repetitive tasks using AI while maintaining clear communication in professional

Qualifications

• Experience in high-volume support and contractor/payroll operations.
• Invoicing, rates, approvals, corrections, and underpaid situations handling.
• Clear, professional English writing with calm tone.
• Ability to work independently while coordinating with multiple time zones or teams.

Responsibilities

• Run the support queue for the expert bench: onboarding and access, tooling and environment issues, invoicing and payment questions. Resolve what you can, escalate what you cannot, and keep an honest record of both.
• Own the payment path end to end. Know what is owed, what has been submitted, what has been approved and what has actually landed, and chase the gaps before anyone has to ask you.
• Get new experts set up and productive: accounts, access, contracts, payment details, and the first week of small problems that stop people starting.
• Work with the expert managers who own the relationships. They know their people, you know the systems, and an expert should never have to work out which of you to ask.
• Fix causes, not tickets. When the same issue arrives for the third time, write the documentation, change the workflow, or take it to the engineers who own the tool.
• Tell us plainly when a process is the problem.
• Use AI aggressively. Triage, drafting, reconciliation and reporting should all be automated as far as they go, so your hours are spent on the cases that need a person.

Skills

High-volume support

Payroll operations

Attention to detail

Professional English writing

Independent work

Job description

About Patronus AI

Patronus AI is a frontier lab developing simulation research and infrastructure to accelerate progress toward human-aligned AGI. We are on a mission to simulate all of the world’s intelligence.

Patronus AI is the team behind some of the earliest and most influential research in AI evaluation like FinanceBench, Lynx, SimpleSafetyTests, CopyrightCatcher, Humanity’s Last Exam, and more. We are formerly AI researchers and engineers from companies like Meta AI, Amazon AGI, and Google. Our customers include foundation model labs and Fortune 500 enterprises like Adobe. We are backed by top-tier investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Notable Capital, Stanford University, Noam Brown, Gokul Rajaram, and more.

At a glance

• Engagement: Independent contractor, on site
• Pay: $50/hr - 150/hr
• Start: Rolling
• Location: San Francisco headquarters, in office 5 days a week
• Team: Expert Operations

The role

Our work is produced by practicing domain experts on contract, across many specialist domains. You keep them working.

When an expert cannot submit, cannot access a project, or has not been paid what they expected, that is yours. It covers onboarding paperwork and access, tooling and environment problems, and the whole invoicing and payment path from submitted work to money arriving. Volume is high and it spans every domain we hire into, so you will be the one person who sees the same breakage three times and goes and fixes the cause.

Getting paid correctly and on time is the clearest signal of whether a company is worth working for.

This is a position of trust. You will see what people are owed and you will sit on the path that money takes to reach them. We hire for that first and the rest second. It is also why the role is on site with the team rather than remote.

To support close collaboration, this role is based in our San Francisco headquarters and requires in-office attendance 5 days a week.

What you’ll do

• Run the support queue for the expert bench: onboarding and access, tooling and environment issues, invoicing and payment questions. Resolve what you can, escalat what you cannot, and keep an honest record of both.
• Own the payment path end to end. Know what is owed, what has been submitted, what has been approved and what has actually landed, and chase the gaps before anyone has to ask you.
• Get new experts set up and productive: accounts, access, contracts, payment details, and the first week of small problems that stop people starting.
• Work with the expert managers who own the relationships. They know their people, you know the systems, and an expert should never have to work out which of you to ask.
• Fix causes, not tickets. When the same issue arrives for the third time, write the documentation, change the workflow, or take it to the engineers who own the tool.
• Tell us plainly when a process is the problem.
• Use AI aggressively. Triage, drafting, reconciliation and reporting should all be automated as far as they go, so your hours are spent on the cases that need a person.

Who we’re looking for

Required

• Three or more years in high-volume support, operations or contractor and payroll operations, with people rather than companies as the customer.
• You are comfortable with money. Invoices, rates, approvals, corrections, and the conversation when someone has been underpaid.
• Precision under volume. A payments mistake is not a typo to the person it happens to.
• A track record of being trusted with money or sensitive personal data, and references who will say so without hesitating.
• Clear, calm writing in professional English. Most of this job happens in text, often with someone who is frustrated and has the right to be.
• Ability to work independently, prioritising without being told what is urgent, while working alongside experts in time zones that are not yours.
• Enough technical confidence to debug an access or environment problem a step or two before escalating.
• Comfort working inside internal tooling that is still being built, and reporting the bugs rather than working around them.

Nice to have

• Experience supporting a contingent, freelance or marketplace workforce.
• Experience with international contractor payments, including the ways they fail.
• Familiarity with ticketing and support tooling, and with building the macros and documentation behind it rather than only using it.

What this role is not

You are not the point of contact for an expert's work. Feedback, performance and retention sit with the expert managers, and the quality bar sits with the quality team. Your job is to make sure nobody is blocked by anything other than the work itself.

How hiring works

• Resume review and a conversation with Talent Operations
• A practical exercise: a real support and payments scenario, handled in writing
• Interview with the team you will sit with
• Reference checks, and a background check before you start
• Onboarding and your first week on the queue

Patronus AI is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.