Founding AI Safety Grants Lead

datadotorg; United States; Hybrid; USD 220,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

datadotorg is seeking a founding grantmaker for its AI Model Safety program in a hybrid role based in San Francisco. You will oversee grantmaking across independent testing, safety research, control, and new ideas, sourcing and evaluating opportunities, and granting resources to strong grantees.

You will build relationships with safety organizations, academia, funders, and AI companies, shaping the field through strategic funding and bold initiatives.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in AI safety, including hands-on research in model safety or evaluations.
• Deep fluency in AI model safety: evaluations, red-teaming, auditing, interpretability, control, and alignment research.
• Ability to follow frontier AI capabilities and risks to form independent judgments and identify what the ecosystem should do.
• Insight into where AI is headed and the risks it brings, with views on what needs safety work.
• Proven track record in owning ambitious, loosely scoped projects and driving them to success.
• Strong prioritization mindset: evaluate impact, tractability, and neglectedness, and act on ranking.
• Excellent writing and communication: clear, transparent documents outlining reasoning and risks.
• Deeply mission-aligned and motivated to ensure AGI benefits humanity.

Responsibilities

• Run the program’s grantmaking across domains from sourcing to granting resources to grantees.
• Conduct grant investigations and present recommendations to the board.
• Identify and seed high-impact safety projects and founders to advance the field.
• Collaborate with the AI Resources team to route resources to safety grantees.
• Develop the program strategy with the team lead and map funding priorities and gaps.
• Build and maintain relationships with safety organizations, AI safety institutes, academics, funders, and AI companies’ safety teams.

Skills

AI safety

AI safety research

Risk assessment

Futures thinking

Project leadership

Prioritization

Communication

Mission alignment

Job description

datadotorg is seeking a founding grantmaker for its AI Model Safety program in a hybrid role based in San Francisco. You will oversee grantmaking across independent testing, safety research, control, and new ideas, sourcing and evaluating opportunities, and granting resources to strong grantees.

You will build relationships with safety organizations, academia, funders, and AI companies, shaping the field through strategic funding and bold initiatives.