Operations Generalist

Constellation Institute; Berkeley (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 158,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthy meals and dinners

Unlimited snacks & drinks

Generous vacation policy

401(k) with employer match

Employer-paid commuter benefits

Health, dental, vision insurance

Job summary

Constellation Institute seeks an Operations Generalist to increase team capacity and scale impact at our Berkeley campus. Reporting to the Director of Operations, you will handle capacity planning, space allocation, and a portfolio of operations projects in a fast-paced, startup-like environment.

The role is in-person, full-time, with occasional evenings/weekends for large projects or urgent issues. You will collaborate with Operations and Programs teams and support AI safety researchers and

Qualifications

• Experience building and maintaining scalable systems in a fast-growing org.
• Able to track, manage, and prioritize many tasks, threads, and deadlines.
• Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Clear, concise written communication with good grammar.

Responsibilities

• Capacity planning: forecast future space needs and resource requirements.
• Office space allocation: manage relationships and collect requirements from host orgs.
• Process improvement: design and automate processes, leverage data for accuracy.
• Own additional operational projects as needed in collaboration with your manager.

Skills

Scalable systems

Task prioritization

Stakeholder management

Cross-functional collaboration

Written communication

Portfolio ownership

Job description

About Constellation

Constellation is an independent research center that brings together people throughout the AI safety ecosystem to accelerate insight, research, and talent through better cooperation. Unlike a conference or summit, Constellation operates continuously, in the form of a physical workspace as well as conference‑style talks, workshops, and training bootcamps. Continuous operation allows for relationships and conversations to develop over time, meaningfully fostering trust, collaboration, and shared insight. It also makes Constellation a natural field‑building hub by rapidly inspiring, orienting, and connecting people who are newer to the field.

About Constellation

Constellation is an independent research center that brings together people throughout the AI safety ecosystem to accelerate insight, research, and talent through better cooperation. Unlike a conference or summit, Constellation operates continuously, in the form of a physical workspace as well as conference‑style talks, workshops, and training bootcamps. Continuous operation allows for relationships and conversations to develop over time, meaningfully fostering trust, collaboration, and shared insight. It also makes Constellation a natural field‑building hub by rapidly inspiring, orienting, and connecting people who are newer to the field.

Based in Berkeley, CA, our shared workspace hosts over 300 people per week across dozens of AI safety organizations in nonprofits, academia, industry, and government. Hundreds of other researchers spend time at Constellation for shorter visits each year. We believe this is the strongest and highest‑output network of AI safety researchers in the world; dozens of participants in past Constellation programs have gone on to safety‑focused roles at companies such as METR, Redwood Research, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and the US and UK Safety Institutes.

About The Role

We’re seeking an Operations Generalist to increase our team’s capacity and scale up our impact. Reporting to the Director of Operations, you will be responsible for capacity planning, office space allocation, and a flexible portfolio of operations projects to support and enable our AI safety research center and programming.

The exact scope of responsibilities will depend on your experience and areas of expertise. It will include some combination of: resource allocation, project management, process design and optimization, workflow automation, hiring, and people management.

The ideal candidate has significant professional experience in 1-2 of these domains in a fast‑paced and dynamic work environment. (Constellation’s vibe and pace is much closer to a growing startup than a traditional nonprofit.) In this cross‑functional role, you’ll work closely with our various Operations and Programs teams. You’ll also get to interact with and support many of the world’s top AI safety experts.

This is an in‑person, full‑time position. This role requires being onsite from approximately 9am‑5pm on weekdays. Periodic work is required on evenings and weekends, e.g. when coordinating large projects or handling urgent issues.

Core Responsibilities

• Capacity Planning
  • Create and maintain forecasts of future space needs
  • Identify and solve resource crunches (e.g. from overlapping programs)
  • Develop scenarios to propose solutions
  • Engage stakeholders to align on organizational priorities
• Office Space Allocation
  • Develop good relationships with key stakeholders at each org we host
  • Proactively collect requirements on future needs
  • Identify opportunities for resource optimization (e.g. office swaps)
  • Triage inbound requests for space
  • Communicate decisions thoughtfully to external stakeholders
• Process Improvement
  • Identify improvements to current capacity planning and space assignment processes
  • Build/implement better tools to reduce manual work, improve accuracy, or support other teams
  • Work closely with Data & Systems Lead to leverage existing data for improved accuracy or automation

In addition to these core responsibilities, you’ll own other operational domains or projects over time. The specific projects will be selected in collaboration with your manager based on your skills and interests.

Skills & Experience

• Experience building and maintaining scalable systems and processes at a fast‑growing organization
• Able to reliably track, manage, and prioritize a high volume of tasks, threads, and deadlines
• Experience balancing urgent requests with ongoing responsibilities and longer‑term initiatives
• Skilled at synthesizing complex and disjointed data points into concrete, cohesive scenarios
• Strong social skills and emotional intelligence; able to be friendly and professional with a wide range of external stakeholders, including executives
• Able to gracefully set clear expectations and deliver difficult news
• Clear, concise written communication with good grammar.

You might be a good fit for this role if you:

• Care about AI safety and improving researcher productivity
• Love solving optimization and spatial problems, like Tetris or jigsaw puzzles
• Enjoy working in a fast‑paced office environment
• Can effectively prioritize and juggle a variety of competing requests
• Have a service mindset and care about delivering a high‑quality user experience
• Like taking responsibility for and owning your portfolio of work

Compensation & Benefits

The base pay range for this role is $100,000 – $158,000 per year.

Our benefits are hard to beat! They include:

• Healthy lunches and dinners catered by our amazing kitchen team
• Unlimited snacks & drinks
• Generous vacation policy
• 401(k) with employer match
• Employer‑paid commuter benefits
• High‑quality health, dental, and vision insurance
• Friendly and supportive team
• Regular interaction with AI safety researchers and thought leaders

Additional Information

This is a full time, on‑site role. Our Berkeley office is a few steps from the nearest BART (metro) and bus stop. On‑site parking is also available.

The ideal candidate for this role will have some combination of the skills and experiences described above. If you are not sure if you are qualified, we strongly encourage you to apply anyway. Beyond the qualifications outlined, our priority is building a team that will help humanity safely navigate the development of transformative AI. If you would be excited to do this work, we’d love to consider you.

We value diversity in all respects and base our hiring decisions on the needs of the organization and individual qualifications. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age or disability.