Program Manager, Global Challenges Project

Kairos Project; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary range

Remote role

Benefits

Team retreats

Travel coverage

Job summary

Kairos Project is expanding its Global Challenges Project and seeks a GCP Program Manager to build and lead multiple workshop strands with broad program ownership.

You will shape strategy, design sessions, recruit guests, run in-person delivery, and evaluate impact, while growing a small, dedicated team across roles.

This remote, high-autonomy role includes travel to major hubs and the chance to influence AI safety and biosecurity education globally.

Qualifications

• Experienced at running events.
• Mission-aligned with AI safety and biosecurity.
• Strong people skills and event hospitality.
• Ability to manage multiple programs simultaneously.
• High-agency with proactive problem solving.

Responsibilities

• Own two or more GCP programs from strategy to delivery.
• Experiment with program formats and decide on continuations.
• Lead outreach, participant selection, and guest recruitment.
• Design and deliver high-quality workshops and in-person delivery.
• Lead program teams and oversee interns/volunteers.
• Measure impact, gather feedback, and iterate.
• Scale GCP through operational structures and internship design.

Skills

Event management

Stakeholder engagement

Team leadership

Project management

AI safety ecosystem familiarity

Excellent communication

Job description

Note: This role description is a first draft. Scope, salary, and responsibilities may evolve, and we’ll keep you in the loop about any changes if you apply.

About Kairos

Kairos is a nonprofit accelerating talent into AI safety and policy. In just over two years, we’ve trained 1,200+ people through our flagship programs:

• SPAR: The largest AI safety research fellowship, with 800+ mentees per round mentored by researchers from Anthropic, Redwood Research, RAND, MIT, the UK AI Security Institute, and others.

• Generator Residency: In partnership with Constellation, a platform for generalist talent to pitch, build, and ship projects that build capacity and infrastructure across the AI safety ecosystem, with advisors from OpenAI, AI Futures Project, METR, and more.

• Global Challenges Project: A workshop series introducing promising students to careers in AI safety and biosecurity, run several times a year across Oxford, Boston, and Berkeley.

• Pathfinder Fellowship: Helping grow the global network of AI safety university groups from a few dozen to nearly 100, with $9.5M in funding over the next two years to support their work.

We see ourselves as a portfolio of highly impactful projects in a fast-evolving field. Over the next six months, we expect to double in size and launch several new initiatives addressing critical gaps in the ecosystem.

The Role

The Global Challenges Project (GCP) runs three-day residential workshops that help talented individuals explore careers in AI safety and biosecurity. Over the past few years, GCP has run dozens of workshops for 400+ students, mostly in Oxford, Boston, and Berkeley. GCP has a long and successful track record and became part of Kairos in early 2026.

We’re now expanding GCP into a full portfolio of workshops serving different audiences and career stages, with the ambition of becoming the leading fieldbuilding workshop organizer in AI safety and biosecurity. This means building new programs, new formats, and the systems to deliver reliably at scale.

We’re looking for a GCP Program Manager to build and lead at least two strands of our expanding workshop portfolio, reporting to Sam Glendenning, who leads the Global Challenges Project.

You’ll have broad ownership of your programs, from deciding what they should achieve and who they should serve through to delivering the workshops themselves. This includes outreach and marketing strategy, participant selection, guest recruitment, workshop design, team leadership, in-person delivery, and impact evaluation.

This is an unusually hands‑on role. You’ll shape the strategy behind your programs, build the systems needed to run them effectively, and then lead them in person. Because we run our portfolio experimentally, individual programs may change or be discontinued, but this role is not tied to any single program. You’ll own a portfolio that evolves as we learn what works.

What You’ll Do

• Own two or more GCP programs. You’ll take responsibility for their strategy, design, delivery, and evaluation. Programs you may own include:

  • Workshops for students newer to AI safety, for professionals considering a pivot into AI safety, or for accelerating people into politics or policy

  • Workshop support for other organizations, from advice and coordination to running workshops on their behalf

  • A high-impact format you propose (we’re open to strong cases for new programs)

• Run programs experimentally. We’re testing which of these programs offer the most value to the ecosystem. You’ll experiment with both the format and purpose of your workshops, and be willing to discontinue programs that aren’t working, even after investing significant time in them.

• Own outreach and participant selection. You’ll develop marketing and outreach strategies, build strong applicant pools, and decide who will benefit most from attending each program.

• Build relationships and recruit guests. High-quality guests are central to the impact of our workshops. You’ll proactively build relationships across the field and invite researchers, policymakers, funders, operators, and other experts to participate.

• Design excellent workshops. You’ll develop the structure, sessions, content, and participant experience for each program, holding everything to a very high standard.

• Lead workshops in person. You’ll give talks, introduce guests, advise participants, manage the team on the ground, and take responsibility for how well each workshop runs.

• Lead your program teams. We organize delivery program by program. You’ll direct the work of the GCP team, interns, and volunteers on your programs (typically three to four people per workshop). Once the team grows, you’ll likely line-manage one GCP team member and our interns.

• Measure impact and iterate. You’ll collect structured feedback at every workshop, track participant outcomes over the following months, and use the evidence to improve, scale, or discontinue programs.

• Help GCP scale. You’ll contribute to team-wide strategy, build operational structures and automation that let us expand without compromising quality, and help design and launch our internship program.

Who You Are

• Experienced at running events. You’ve organized and delivered events such as workshops, conferences, or retreats, and you’re comfortable making game-time decisions. Strong project delivery experience in complex in-person settings can substitute.

• Mission-aligned. You care deeply about how the development of advanced AI and biotechnology plays out, and you believe workshops can be a highly effective way to help talented people enter these fields.

• Good with people, and energized by workshops. Leading three-day residential events is central to this role. You’ll need the energy to engage with participants and guests throughout while keeping the event running smoothly.

• Comfortable managing a small team. Within a year, you’ll likely begin managing 2 or more people. Prior experience managing operational or programmatic teams is a strong plus.

• High-agency. You’ll have significant ownership over your programs, and we expect you to spot problems early, adapt when plans change, and fix things without waiting to be asked.

• Highly organized. You’ll oversee several programs simultaneously, each with different workstreams, teams, and deadlines. You’ll need strong systems for keeping everything on track.

• Familiar with the AI safety ecosystem. You know the major organizations and people in the field and understand how its parts fit together. You use that context to make good strategic decisions and to point participants toward the right opportunities. Familiarity with biosecurity or US policy is a plus, and matters more for some programs than others.

Why Work With Us

• You’ll work toward reducing risks from advanced AI and biotechnology, two of the most important challenges of our time. Both fields need far more talented people than they have, and our workshops move promising people into careers working on them.

• You’ll build and develop your own programs, lead the teams delivering them, and see the results firsthand.

• GCP already has a strong brand, an excellent reputation, and a long track record. You’ll build on one of the ecosystem’s most successful workshop programs while joining a team with the ambition to become the leading workshop organizer in the space.

• You’ll work closely with high-profile guests across AI safety and biorisk, developing a strong professional network.

• We’re building a world-class team, so you’ll be in good company. Work alongside people who’ve come to Kairos from METR, Coefficient Giving, Rethink Priorities, the UK AI Security Institute, and CEA who share your commitment to impact.

What We Offer

• Salary: $140,000–$195,000 (baseline), $175,000–$245,000 (supported hubs, like London, DC, Boston, and NYC), or $195,000–$270,000 (San Francisco Bay Area), depending on experience, with potential for additional compensation for exceptional candidates

• Location: This is a remote role. We provide access to office space in San Francisco, Berkeley, London, or Boston, with optional coworking elsewhere. If you work from an AI safety office in one of these cities, we cover food, lunches, and office expenses. If you work from home, we cover home office expenses.

• Benefits: Flexible working hours, highly competitive health insurance, dental and vision coverage, generous vacation policy, and professional development budget

• Team retreats: We host all-team retreats three times a year to connect in person, collaborate, and build team culture.

• Travel: Work-related travel and expenses covered.

Logistics

• Start date: Ideally by October or early November 2026, with flexibility for the right candidate

• This is a remote role, with travel roughly 8 to 12 times a year (typically 3 to 6 days at a time) for workshops, conferences, and events, predominantly in the UK and US.

• We’re a remote-first organization, but because of how the GCP team works, we have a preference for candidates within five hours of UK time. Our current team spans GMT-8 to GMT+1, and we’ll gladly consider exceptional candidates elsewhere, including in the US.

• We may be able to sponsor visas for the UK or US, depending on individual circumstances, including but not limited to O-1A visas. We can’t make guarantees regarding visa approval.

Our Culture

We’re a small, high-trust team motivated by the urgent challenge of making advanced AI go well. We try hard to figure out where we’re wrong, which means we say uncomfortable things to each other and change our minds fairly often. We value collaborative truth-seeking, a scout mindset, agility, and an alliance mindset with the broader ecosystem.

We also believe meaningful work should be enjoyable. We support each other’s well-being, celebrate wins, and maintain a healthy sense of humor even when the work is hard.