(Senior) Program Manager, Mentor Selection

MATS Research, Inc.; Berkeley (CA); Hybrid; USD 146,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Lunches and dinners in office

Staff trips and conferences

Professional development funding

PTO 17 days for Berkeley employees

Hybrid work arrangement

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) retirement plans (Roth & Trad)

Job summary

MATS Research, Inc. in Berkeley, California, invites applications for a Senior Program Manager for Mentor Selection to own the end-to-end mentor assignment process across cohorts, coordinating sourcing, evaluations, and allocations with leadership.

You will build a strong network with major AI safety organizations, manage cross-functional committees, and guide research agendas while advancing a deliberate talent allocation strategy.

Qualifications

• High familiarity with the AI safety landscape, its organizations, and researchers.
• Excellent judgment about research quality and researcher potential ("research taste").
• Strong network in AI safety, or demonstrated ability to quickly build one.
• Clear, warm, proactive communication with senior stakeholders.
• Ability to weigh many qualitative and quantitative inputs into a defensible decision.
• Strong understanding of and alignment with our mission of reducing risk from the development of advanced AI.

Responsibilities

• Own the MATS mentor selection process, run once per cohort (3–4 times per year): sourcing, evaluation, allocation, and offers.
• Headhunt and conduct outreach to prospective mentors, drawing on your network and knowledge of the field.
• Design and run information collection from the Mentor Selection Committee and advisors, working with our systems team on the supporting interfaces.
• Evaluate returning mentors using data from past cohorts (fellow ratings, research and career outcomes, mentor engagement).
• Propose fellow allocations across mentors and research agendas, balancing mentor strength, agenda importance, portfolio strategy, and value of information; iterate with and secure approval from MATS leadership.
• Help manage mentor relationships through the cycle, including fellow capacity reallocation as mentors' plans change and our resource constraints evolve.
• Between cycles: engage with AI safety research directions, represent MATS at conferences, and contribute to impact analysis and talent-allocation strategy.
• Report to the Program Director (Juan Gil).
• We expect especially strong applicants to have deep experience in at least one of the following areas:
• - Grantmaking, program-officer, or research-funding prioritization experience
• - A PhD or comparable research experience in a field relevant to AI safety
• - Talent identification: headhunting, scouting, or selection for competitive technical programs
• - Project management of multi-stakeholder processes on fixed timelines

Skills

AI safety awareness

Judgment about research quality

Strong network in AI safety

Clear communication

Qualitative & quantitative decisioning

Mission alignment

Education

PhD or equivalent experience

Job description

(Senior) Program Manager, Mentor Selection

MATS Research, Inc. BERKELEY, California, United States

About this position

About the organization

MATS finds and trains talented individuals for what we see as the world's most urgent and talent‑constrained problem: reducing risks from unaligned artificial intelligence. We believe ambitious researchers from a variety of backgrounds have the potential to meaningfully contribute to alignment, control, security, and governance research. Through our research fellowship, we provide mentorship, training, professional network, and financial support to accelerate their careers and increase their impact.

Since 2021, we have trained over 630 researchers. 75% of pre-2026 fellows continue to work in AI alignment. 10% have co‑founded organizations. Our fellows have produced 215+ research papers with 17,000+ citations. And we are just getting started: in the coming year we will expand our program to support even more researchers.

About the role

MATS is one of the largest talent pipelines in AI safety & security (~300 fellows per year and growing), and determining which mentors we support is one of the most consequential decisions we make. As the Program Manager for Mentor Selection, you will own that decision process end-to-end: sourcing and headhunting promising mentors, gathering evaluations from our Mentor Selection Committee, advisors, and team members, weighing evidence from past cohorts, and allocating our support across mentors and research agendas — subject to approval from MATS leadership.

This is a role for someone with genuine taste about AI safety research and the people doing it. You will be the key point of contact with mentors at organizations like Anthropic, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Apollo, METR, and Redwood; you will engage deeply with the research landscape (e.g. should we support more AI control or agent foundations work on the margin? How should we allocate between empirical work on existing models, governance work, and more theoretical work?); and you will work alongside our impact analysis and admissions functions on one of the field's most deliberate approaches to talent allocation. This role has similarities to grantmaking roles at nonprofit foundations, in that you will need to form impact-based opinions about our relative support of different research agendas.

Who we're looking for

We welcome applications from people with deep AI safety context and strong judgment about research and researchers. You might be:

• A grantmaker or program officer who has prioritized between funding opportunities in AI safety or an adjacent field
• A researcher (e.g., PhD or equivalent experience) with broad familiarity with AI safety agendas and a strong network across the ecosystem
• A field‑builder or talent‑program lead who has sourced and evaluated senior technical or policy talent

If you don't match one of these profiles but can otherwise demonstrate that you'll excel in this role, we still encourage you to apply!

Key responsibilities

• Own the MATS mentor selection process, run once per cohort (3–4 times per year): sourcing, evaluation, allocation, and offers
• Headhunt and conduct outreach to prospective mentors, drawing on your network and knowledge of the field
• Design and run our information collection from the Mentor Selection Committee and advisors, working with our systems team on the supporting interfaces
• Evaluate returning mentors using data from past cohorts (fellow ratings, research and career outcomes, mentor engagement)
• Propose fellow allocations across mentors and research agendas, balancing mentor strength, agenda importance, portfolio strategy, and value of information; iterate with and secure approval from MATS leadership
• Help manage mentor relationships through the cycle, including fellow capacity reallocation as mentors' plans change and our resource constraints (funding, office, housing, research management capacity) evolve
• Between cycles: engage deeply with AI safety research directions, represent MATS at conferences, and contribute to impact analysis and talent‑allocation strategy
• Report to the Program Director (Juan Gil).

Essential qualifications and skills

• High familiarity with the AI safety & security research landscape, its organizations, and its researchers
• Excellent judgment about research quality and researcher potential ("research taste")
• Strong network in AI safety, or a demonstrated ability to quickly build one
• Clear, warm, and proactive communication with senior stakeholders
• Ability to weigh many qualitative and quantitative inputs into a defensible decision
• Strong understanding of and alignment with our mission of reducing risk from the development of advanced AI

Desirable qualifications and skills

We expect especially strong applicants to have deep experience in at least one of the following areas:

• Grantmaking, program‑officer, or research‑funding prioritization experience
• A PhD or comparable research experience in a field relevant to AI safety
• Talent identification: headhunting, scouting, or selection for competitive technical programs
• Project management of multi‑stakeholder processes on fixed timelines

About the compensation

• The essential skills listed above contain the basic requirements, and align with the lower end of this range.
• MATS provides in‑office, catered lunches and dinners to employees on workdays.
• Paid work trips, including staff retreats, business trips, and relevant conferences.
• Funding and support for professional development.
• 17 days of annual paid time off for Berkeley‑based employees.
• Flexibility for hybrid work (but not for fully remote work).
• Collaborative and intellectually stimulating work environment.
• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance.
• Both Roth 401(k) and Traditional 401(k) for US‑based employees.

Working hours and location

40 hours per week. Successful candidates can expect to spend most of their time working in person from our main office in Berkeley, California. We are open to hybrid working arrangements for exceptional candidates.

Note while applying

If you use an LLM chatbot or other AI tools in this application, please follow the norms here . Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. MATS uses LLMs to help draft job descriptions, identify candidates to source, and transcribe interviews.

MATS is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment at the forefront of our field. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds and experiences.

Join us in shaping the future of AI safety & security research!

The pay range for this role is:
146,000 - 220,000 USD per year(BMO)