Operations Manager

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.

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 (so $60,000-$90,000 annually for 3 days per week). If you think you are an excellent fit and can only do full-time, talk to us about options. 

About Alignment Research Center

The Alignment 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 into METR.

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:

• 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 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.