Key information

Apply here until Sunday, 11 October 2026.

Role: Full time, permanent.

Reports to: Chief of Staff (Jonathan)

Location: Remote (UK or USA), or in-person at London, UK. We can sponsor UK work visa for exceptional candidates.

Compensation:

1. For UK: £172,623 - £247,889 + 10% unconditional pension contribution
2. For US: $258,634 - $353,716 + 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

To succeed in this role, you'll see yourself as a strategic partner first and a lawyer second: someone who understands our mission and its risk universe, and helps leadership navigate decisions, balancing legal considerations with operational realities and mission priorities. We're inviting you to have a seat at the table, pushing for good outcomes for the organisation as a whole, not just the lawyer.

We work in an unusually sensitive field: international cooperation on AI safety, centered on US–China engagement, with growing attention on it. SAIF itself is growing quickly and expanding our programmes; there is very little "business as usual." We operate through two entities: a US 501(c)(3) and a UK company, and may add further entities in other jurisdictions as our work grows. 

You will be SAIF's first and sole in-house lawyer, owning the legal function end-to-end: designing policies and safeguards, setting templates and processes, and managing outside counsel across jurisdictions. You'll give calibrated, practical advice — not just technically correct, but grounded in understanding when a risk is worth taking and when it isn't — and communicate it clearly to non-lawyers: specific risk pathways, their likelihood and severity, ending in a recommendation.

What you'll do

Strategic thought partner

• Serve as thought partner to leadership on cross-functional decisions involving legal, operational, governance, and reputational considerations — helping scope what's possible, not just what's permitted.

Legal risk management and reduction

• Identify, assess, and mitigate legal risks across SAIF and its programmes; track regulatory developments in the US, UK, and China and keep us on the right side of applicable rules and regulations; contribute to annual risk assessments from a legal perspective.
• Own SAIF's trade control obligations: risk analysis, developing policies and safeguards, screening, and internal education.
• Own FARA and lobbying exposure across our programmes.
• Design and run the safeguards our work requires (e.g. researcher vetting, background checks).

Legal operations

• Be the first stop for the legal questions a growing organisation generates: review of new projects, employment matters when they arise, occasional contract and grant review, redrafting internal policies, and fielding legal and governance questions from staff.
• Manage outside counsel in the US, UK, and China — deploying external resources strategically and translating complex legal advice into actionable guidance for decision-makers.

Governance

• Own the legal side of our US and UK entity structure: maintaining our 501(c)(3) status and its reporting obligations. Support the Operations team as counsel on statutory and regulatory filings in both jurisdictions, financial audits and on tax and transfer pricing between entities.
• Own the legal work of standing up new entities in the US or in new jurisdictions if our work were to necessitate it.

How the role grows

SAIF will grow significantly in size over the next 18 months, and the legal function will grow with it. How far and how fast depends on organisational needs and on your performance, interests, and the seniority you bring. Depending on those, the role could grow to include:

• Building SAIF's legal team: hiring, onboarding, and managing legal and paralegal support as the matter load grows.
• Owning organisation-wide risk management: extending beyond legal risk into a broader risk function spanning our comms, programmes, crisis response, political risks, etc.

Reporting

You'll report to Jonathan (Chief of Staff). The role is cross-cutting by nature: you'd work across the whole leadership team — Fynn (Executive Director), Sophie (Deputy Director), Harsimran (Head of Operations), the heads of the project teams — and with the boards of both entities.

About you

You'll need to be a qualified lawyer — but beyond that, no single career path predicts success in this role. We care most about judgment, calibrated advice, and commitment to the mission. We expect strong candidates will resonate with most of the following:

Essential

• Experience: At least five years of legal practice, with in-house experience. Exceptional law-firm candidates with relevant practice areas will be considered.
• Qualification: Legally qualified in the US. Dual US–UK qualification — or willingness to obtain UK qualification — is a plus but not required; we will fund and support pursuing it.
• Mission alignment: You're genuinely motivated by reducing extreme AI risks and supporting international coordination. 
• Excellent judgment and calibrated advice: You understand degrees of risk, are at home communicating in probabilities, and help decision-makers navigate complex trade-offs.
• Outstanding communication with non-lawyers: Excellent written and verbal communication with non-lawyers; very high standards of reasoning transparency.
• Comfort with ambiguity: You can hold competing priorities in tension and make sound decisions in uncertain environments. 
• Ability to deal with crisis and high-stakes situations: You work collaboratively through intense, stressful situations while maintaining morale, focus, and a calm, steady presence.
• Attention to detail: Meticulous attention to accuracy in legal documents, contracts, and risk management.
• On-the-job learning: Comfortable quickly getting up to speed in unfamiliar areas of law; excited to learn on the job.

Strong preferences

• Ecosystem familiarity: You know the AI safety / effective altruism / global catastrophic risk ecosystem and its actors.
• Nonprofit experience: 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) experience.

Nice-to-have 

• Subject matter experience in any of the following: 
  • Export controls (with a focus on BIS)
  • FARA 
  • Cross-border entities and structures
  • China-facing experience

If you're excited about this work but unsure whether you're fully qualified, please err on the side of applying.

Why you might be excited about this role

• You want to meaningfully reduce catastrophic AI risks, and to shape what a small, fast-growing organisation in a very sensitive field can safely do.
• You'll build a legal function from scratch — the templates, the safeguards, the outside-counsel relationships — rather than inheriting someone else's.
• You'll have a genuine seat at the table: a thought partner to leadership on the most consequential decisions SAIF makes.
• You enjoy unusual variety: nonprofit governance, trade controls, cross-border structures, and novel questions.

Why this role might not be for you

• You prefer deep specialisation in one practice area; this role is a generalist mandate by design.
• You'd rather direct legal work than do it — the core of this role is hands-on individual contribution.
• You want a predictable week in a well-defined role, with established processes rather than ones you build as you go.

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:
  • Remote (UK or USA), or in-person at London, UK. We can sponsor UK work visa for exceptional candidates.
  • 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 Sunday, Oct 11, 2026.

• Early applications are encouraged as we will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis and aim to move quickly.
• 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