About the Role

The Operations Manager at Alignment Research Center (ARC) manages all of the day-to-day operations for ARC, a 501(c)3 nonprofit with 4-6 research staff. Their scope of responsibilities include HR, recruitment management, finance, governance operations, and other administrative support as needed.

The Operations Manager will be directly responsible for keeping operations running smoothly, ensuring the organization has low-overhead and bureaucracy for researchers, and manages its risk appropriately. They will also work to improve the operations as needed, keeping an eye out for opportunities to improve systems and make the organization run more efficiently. They will report to Jacob Hilton.

Note this role is scoped as 2-3 days a week, but if you think you are an excellent fit and can only do full-time, talk to us about options.

Key Details

Location: Preferred in-person in Berkeley, CA in our beautiful shared workspace, but also accepting remote applicants in the US, with up to 4 weeks of travel required annually to the Bay Area.

Hours & Salary: 2-3 days per week, prorated from $100k-$150k FTE (e.g. $40,000-$60,000 annually for 2-3 days per week).

About Alignment Research Center

TheAlignment Research Center is a non-profit research organization whose mission is to align future machine learning systems with human interests. Our current focus is developing an alignment strategy that could be adopted in industry today while scaling gracefully to future ML systems. We previously incubated an evaluations team, which has independently spun out intoMETR.

The Operations Manager will oversee all aspects of ops at ARC, making sure everything is running smoothly, and staying on top of compliance and legal matters. They’ll be directly responsible for the following areas:

Responsibilities

The Operations Manager will oversee all aspects of ops at ARC, making sure everything is running smoothly, and staying on top of compliance and legal matters. They’ll be directly responsible for the following areas:

HR
Payroll and benefits administration (we work with Gusto & Deel)
HRIS administration
Onboarding & offboarding new staff
Intern & contractor logistics

Recruitment
Recruitment is currently a major drain on team resources — the Operations Manager will manage hiring round logistics and communications to help with this.
Provide reliable and proactive ATS management
Ensure that candidates have a high-quality experience
Explore new solutions to reduce the burden of recruitment on researchers, like identifying and working with outside evaluators of candidates, etc.

Finance and Compliance
Manage accounts payable.
Manage ARC’s unusually high number of work trial honoraria
Oversee external accountants during audit and 990
Develop financial policies & handbook
Supervise external accountants Develop and maintain budgets for management & fundraising
Manage staff cards and expense reimbursements

Governance
Potentially serve in board roles (e.g. Treasurer or Secretary)
Prep & host board meetings (all non-strategic discussion)
Ensure board compliance with bylaws, conflict of interest, and other legal responsibilities

People ops
Ensuring new staff & interns have what they need to succeed
Plan and host team retreats 1-2 times a year
Conduct periodic engagement surveys and performance reviews
Provide immigration support for staff, in coordination with outside counsel (our immigration needs tend to be fairly high)

Miscellaneous
Conduct minor IT admin tasks, including managing Google Workspace and the website
Manage state and federal compliance filings
Work with external legal counsel as needed
Manage organization insurance
Liaise with the shared workspace manager (Constellation) on office management, including desk reservation and allocation

Skills and Experience

Skills and attributes
Excellent attention to detail
A high degree of conscientiousness and carefulness in your work
Strong written and verbal communication skills
Excellent autonomy, you are comfortable and effective at setting your own goals and managing your time, you proactively get what you need to complete a given project and flag when things are off-track. You deliver high quality results with little feedback or oversight.
Excellent judgement about and quantification of risk, knowing when things need to be discussed with counsel or other experts and synthesizing clear and quantified takeaways from those consultations.
A high degree of comfort with a direct feedback culture

Knowledge and experience
Knowledge of nonprofit bookkeeping and accounting procedures
Knowledge of nonprofit compliance procedures, especially related to employment and 501(c)3 compliance
Experience with HR, especially at small nonprofits or startups

The most relevant types of experience include:
Experience serving as an internal operations generalist at a startup or nonprofit, where you wore many hats.
Experience founding and directly doing the setup and initial operations for a startup or nonprofit.
Experience in any of HR, finance, or compliance for US corporations
Experience with the US immigration system, especially cap-exempt H-1Bs.

$100,000 - $150,000 a year

2-3 days per week, prorated from $100k-$150k FTE (e.g. $40,000-$60,000 annually for 2-3 days per week).

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Operations Manager