Key information

Apply here by 11:59 PM local time on September 27, 2026.

Role: Full time, permanent.

Reports to: Chief of Staff (Jonathan), supporting the Executive Director (Fynn) day-to-day.

Location: In-person in London, UK or in SF, US; We are able to sponsor work visas.
Daily overlap with SF working hours required (at least roughly 3–4 hours). 

Compensation: 

• For London, UK: £89,710 - £110,531 + 10% unconditional pension contribution
• For San Francisco, US: $128,008 - $157,718 + up to 3.5% 401(k) match

If our posted range would meaningfully affect your decision to apply, we'd encourage you to apply anyway and flag it in your application. We’re happy to discuss compensation in more detail before an offer if it would affect your decision.

Ideal start date: As soon as possible.

About SAIF

The Safe AI Forum (SAIF) is a US 501(c)(3) and we advance international cooperation to reduce extreme AI risks. We focus on fostering coordination, cooperation, and communication across the most important AI jurisdictions. Our flagship programme, the International Dialogue on AI Safety, brings together senior computer scientists and AI governance experts from multiple jurisdictions, and we also run workshops, working groups, and a variety of other programmes.

We're a team of 16 based across the UK and North America. Over the next 12-18 months, the SAIF team will grow a lot, expand and launch new programmes, and move into a new phase of our organisational history. We're impact-focused and move quickly, balancing rigour with speed and taking genuine ownership of outcomes. Our culture is warm and collaborative. People make time for each other and assume good intentions, even while working at pace on high-stakes problems.

About the role

Become the nerve centre of SAIF's executive team

SAIF is establishing an Office of the Executive Director to run the organisation at higher capacity as we grow. The effectiveness of the Executive Office will be one of the key multipliers on SAIF’s growth and impact over the coming years. You will work alongside the Deputy Director and Chief of Staff to support the ED. 

Your mandate is to be the nerve centre of the executive team. You will build and maintain the most complete picture at SAIF of the leadership team's time, commitments, and follow-through, and manage across it. You will begin with Fynn: running his inbox, calendar, meeting preparation, travel, and commitments end-to-end. Over the following months, you will extend this support to Jonathan (Chief of Staff) and Sophie (Deputy Director), using systems you design and own. As the organisation grows, this coordination function will be crucial for SAIFs success.

What you'll do

Core responsibilities

• Nerve centre for the executive team: Design, build, and run the systems that make the Executive office function, and extend calendar, inbox, and logistics support to the Chief of Staff and Deputy Director over your first months.
• Office of the ED coordination: Draft agendas, keep decision logs, and chase follow-ups. Write internal communications like all-hands updates and announcements. As the leadership team grows, run the coordination between the ED, Deputy Director, Chief of Staff, Head of Operations, and team leads.
• Executive operations for the ED: Own Fynn's calendar, triage and track his inbox, draft replies, and manage his travel.
• Meeting preparation and follow-through: Prepare briefings and background for Fynn's engagements with funders, labs, scientists, government stakeholders, and the wider ecosystem; capture actions, chase follow-ups, and hold him accountable for his commitments.

How the role grows

SAIF will double in size over the next 18 months. We expect responsibilities across the executive team to shift and develop significantly over that period, and there is significant scope for this role to expand beyond its core. How far and how fast it does depends on organisational needs and on your performance, interests, and the seniority you bring. Depending on those, the role could grow to include:

• Special projects across the organisation: high-priority, under-scoped, high-stakes projects that fall between existing areas of responsibility.
• Managing SAIF's executive support function: we expect to add EBPs and ExAs for other senior staff and teams across the org. You could hire, onboard, and manage that group becoming the person who runs executive support at SAIF.
• Driving adoption of org-wide processes and tools: leveraging your context and connections to design new systems and drive their adoption as we grow.
• Retreat programming or team culture: we run three to four retreats per year; you could lead on their programming and, more broadly, help maintain and improve team culture.

Reporting

You'll report to Jonathan (Chief of Staff) while supporting Fynn day-to-day, and over time the wider office. 

The role is cross-cutting by nature. You'd work across the whole leadership team: Fynn, Sophie (Deputy Director), Jonathan (Chief of Staff), Harsimran (Head of Operations), a future General Counsel, and the heads of the project teams.

About you

There is no single background that predicts success in this role. We care most about judgment, reliability, discretion, and commitment to the mission. We expect strong candidates will resonate with most of the following:

Essential

• Mission alignment and ecosystem familiarity: You're genuinely motivated by reducing extreme AI risks and supporting international coordination. You know the AI safety / effective altruism / global catastrophic risk ecosystem and its actors.
• Exceptional organisation: You track many threads without dropping any, and you build systems that prevent things falling through the cracks.
• Judgment and discretion: You'll see everything the ED sees. You handle sensitive information impeccably and exercise good judgment about priorities, access, and escalation.
• Clear communication: You write crisply and communicate with clarity and context at every level, including externally on the ED's behalf.
• Force-multiplier mindset: You take pride in making a leader—and the whole team around them—dramatically more effective, and in building the systems that make that durable. This is the craft you want to grow in.
• Working hours: You can reliably overlap 3–4 hours a day with San Francisco working hours.
• Attention to detail: You catch small errors and build systems to prevent them. 

Strong preferences

• Relevant experience: You've supported a senior executive (ED, MD, founder, or similar) in an executive operations capacity for 1-3 years. 
• Proactive ownership: You anticipate needs rather than waiting for tasks, and you own outcomes, not just to-do lists.
• Comfort building from scratch: You can take an unclear problem, work out what's needed, and put a practical process in place. Much of what this role runs doesn't exist yet.

Nice-to-have

• Fluency with AI tools: You use AI heavily in your own work and keep looking for ways to get more leverage from it.
• China experience: You've lived, worked, or studied in China, or worked with Chinese partners, and you can navigate the norms of Chinese professional communication. You speak or read Mandarin.

Why you might be excited about this role

• You want to meaningfully reduce catastrophic AI risks, working at the centre of a fast-growing organisation.
• You'll have unusual context and access with visibility into the leadership team's inboxes, calendars, and commitments, and a seat close to how decisions get made.
• You enjoy building systems from scratch and making a visible difference to a leader's effectiveness every single day.
• You’re excited about significant scope to add to your core responsibilities over time as you build more context.

Why this role might not be for you

• You see executive support primarily as a stepping stone to a programme or research role. The role will grow—but its core is and remains enabling the executive team, and we're looking for someone who takes pride in exactly that.
• You cannot overlap with San Francisco hours.
• You want a predictable week in a well-defined role, with established processes rather than ones you build as you go.
• You find context-switching frustrating rather than energising.

Other details 

• Start date: We expect to make an offer as soon as we find the right match, with a preferred start date as soon as possible. We understand that some candidates may need longer to exit existing commitments. If this timeline doesn’t work for you, please err on the side of applying anyway and let us know in your application in case we can make alternate arrangements.

• Benefits:

• • Unlimited PTO (no less than statutory entitlement in your jurisdiction, and minimum 20 days annually encouraged)
  • Comprehensive health insurance
  • Annual wellness budget of $6500
  • Annual childcare budget of $6500
  • Annual professional development support of $6500
  • Home-office setup and equipment budget of $1200
  • In-person team-building events

• Working arrangements:

• • • In-person in London, UK or in-person in SF, US
    • Some meaningful overlap with San Francisco time zone for collaboration
    • International travel required for team events and convenings (~4-6 times per year)

• Diversity:

• We aim to employ people with many different experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds who share our mission. We are committed to creating an environment where all employees have the opportunity to succeed, regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, pregnancy or maternity, marital or civil partnership status, or any other protected characteristic.

• Requests for accommodation:

• If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact careers@saif.org.

Application process

To apply, please fill in this application form by 11:59 PM local time on September 27, 2026.

1. Early applications are encouraged as we will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis and aim to move quickly.
2. The application process will vary depending on the candidate profile, but is likely to include written work and interview components, and potentially a work trial. We offer payment for work samples and trials, conditional on your location.

If you have questions about this role, please contact careers@saif.org. 

Apply Here