Head of Operations

OpenKrill; United States; On-site; USD 125,000 - 175,000; Full time

Job summary

SASH, a global research and operations nonprofit focused on AI safety, is seeking an experienced operator to own and scale the operations function from London or remote. You will work with leadership to formalize processes, HR, payroll, and program logistics as the team grows from 10 to 20+ FTE.

You will lead cross‑region governance, set policies, and build the infrastructure to support international collaborations with governments, academia, and industry partners.

Qualifications

• Experience leading operations across multi-jurisdiction contexts.
• Proven ability to scale organisations from 1 to 20+ staff.
• Strong governance and stakeholder engagement.
• Experience with payroll and HR processes.
• Comfort with ambiguous goals and proactive execution.

Responsibilities

• Lead the review and upgrade of our operating stack.
• Stand up organisational processes: goal setting, project management, performance reviews.
• Oversee incorporation and UK charity registration and visas.
• Drive security, policy, and governance improvements.
• Collaborate with leadership to shape culture and strategy.

Skills

Stakeholder management

Operations leadership

Policy & governance

Project management

HR/People ops

Tools

Payroll systems

HRIS

Job description

What we're building

We think that in the next few years the world will need to grapple with some of the toughest geopolitical challenges of our time in order to ensure the safe development of AI. Our work is focused on enabling international technical collaboration on AI safety, especially between the East and West.

We launched as a local community and field-building organisation in Singapore in early 2025. Since December 2025, we've been transitioning into a broader, international research organisation, growing from 1.2 FTE to 10 FTE, and doubling again to 20 FTE over the next few months. Our work splits across programmes (fellowships, events) and applied technical research.

Mission

Governing advanced AI will take technical solutions, policy judgement, and above all, coordination across regions. Rooted in Singapore, at the intersection of East and West, we build ecosystems and explore technical solutions that can mitigate risks from frontier AI.

We focus on three things:

• Bridging stakeholders across government, civil society, and industry, through convenings and collaborative projects.
• Fostering ecosystems and acting as a force-multiplier by developing talent, convening communities, and helping new organisations and capacity take root.
• Turning research into practice by tackling practical governance problems and shipping proofs of concept, giving the ecosystem something concrete to build on.

Key Accomplishments

80% of the below took place in the last 8 months.

• Built the world's first portable, physical proof of concept for inference verification https://www.aisafety.sg/blog/making-ai-verification-international, and used it to socialise verification with stakeholders from senior policymakers to frontier AI company employees, across the US, China, Europe, and Singapore
• Co-published research on cyber-risk https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.21956 and AI agent governance https://agent-id.org/memo with the governments of Korea and Singapore
• Published https://x.com/NeoResearchAI/status/2061745304312086942?s=20 the first comprehensive, independent frontier safety evaluations of a frontier Chinese model, and launched Asia's first independent frontier safety evaluator https://neoresearch.ai/
• Our programmes https://www.aisafety.sg/programs attract up to 6,000 applicants per cohort, with alumni now in government, frontier labs, and other AI safety organisations. We’ve partnered with academics at China’s leading universities to deliver them.
• Working relationships with FAR.AI http://FAR.AI, Concordia AI, SAIF, FLI, and the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative and various branches of the Singapore Government

Working style

We have a strong bias towards acting and building over higher-level strategic or conceptual work, and think of ourselves more as a collection of entrepreneurs than employees. Over 70% of the team had other careers before AI safety, and we're a family-friendly workplace. We're predisposed to close collaboration with other organisations, especially on China engagement.

Leadership & Team

SASH's team brings together policy, engineering, and operations expertise, based in Singapore, London, and remotely around the world.

Miro Plueckebaum: Managing Director, Founder. Miro leads overall management of SASH with a particular focus on research and stakeholder engagement. He has been involved in some of the leading efforts to engage China on AI safety via his previous roles at the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative and GovAI. Miro spent 6 years in China and Singapore, including as Product Lead at ByteDance and built one of the first corporate governance frameworks for AI in 2018. He is primarily based in London.

Vivian Leung: Director of Programmes. Vivian leads programmes and partnerships at SASH. She brings 12 years of experience in the UN and multilateral system, specialising in programme management, emerging technology governance, and international stakeholder engagement. She is based in Singapore.

Our team members contribute a diverse range of applied and research skills from their experiences in the Government of Singapore, The US Senate, The Australian e-safety commission, The Future Society, McKinsey and 80000h.

Where things stand on operations

There are several critical operational and organisational questions that require dedicated ownership. We're looking for an experienced operator to own this properly, working closely with the leadership team and owning the operations function.

What you'd own

The below is indicative and we would welcome your ideas for where else you would like to contribute or directions in which you would want to grow in.

Building out the function

• Lead the review and upgrade of our entire operating stack. Including: hiring, payroll, onboarding, expense management, office management, and applicant management for programmes with up to 6,000 applicants each
• Stand up the organisational processes we don't yet have at the right maturity: goal setting and review, project management, performance management, talent development and benefits

Organisational infrastructure and scaling

• Finalise the incorporation and Charity Commission registration of our UK entity, Seabridge AI: including the visa sponsor licence and London office decision (we're evaluating AI-safety-specific co-working space already home to peer organisations)
• Lead the operational work required to establish “Neo Research” as its own company
• Develop and implement security best practices across the organisation
• Lead our move to a permanent Singapore office for up to 40 people, alongside the London decision above

Partnering with leadership

• Work directly with the leadership team to develop our organisational culture, and to refine strategy by consolidating our efforts around our most successful bets
• Translate culture and strategy decisions into updated employee policies, handbooks, and governance structures.
• Support the implementation of our rebrand into a more global organisation

Core competencies

• Track record of scaling organisations from 1-n
• Multi-jurisdiction financial and legal/regulatory fluency, or the ability to get up to speed on it fast
• Comfortable executing on ambiguous goals, with a bias toward identifying operational needs and executing proactively rather than waiting for direction
• People leadership: hiring, performance management, and building HR/organisational infrastructure from a low base
• Excellent stakeholder and people management skills, including with government, funders, and academic partners
• Sound judgement on sensitive, high-stakes situations
• High reasoning transparency
• Enjoys building things

Nice to have competencies

• China/ Asia work experience or language skills
• Experience in a similar mission-driven nonprofit or fast-scaling startup
• Charity/nonprofit legal or compliance background
• Interest in or motivation around AI safety specifically (not required, but a plus)
• Experience operating a distributed or remote-first team

Process & Practicalities

Process

• After application review, we will conduct a screening interview. We will share more about SASH and our vision, you can ask questions and we can discuss the scope of the role.
• This would be followed by a 3h work test and 1-2 formal interviews and reference checks.
• We have a strong preference for a multi-day work trial during which you will have a chance to get to know the broader team. We won’t be considering more than two candidates for work trials.
• We are open to alternative arrangements e.g. starting as a part-time contractor and then quickly transitioning to full time if it's a good fit.

Salary: We would like to co-create this with you i.e. we look at our budget, current compensation etc. to determine an appropriate salary. We expect this to fall somewhere in the USD $125k-175k+ range.

Location: London (UK) or