Project Manager

We are no longer hiring for this position.

Start date: As soon as possible
Status: Full-time non-exempt employee, salaried (note: at this time, we are unable to sponsor visas for this role)
Compensation: Based on experience
Typical hours: 40 per week, primarily during standard business hours.
Work Location: Berkeley, CA
Reports to: Josh Jacobson
Application: at the bottom of this page

    Overview
    Specific Qualifications
    Responsibilities
    General Qualifications of BERI Candidates
    Benefits Include

Overview

BERI is seeking Project Managers to join its core staff. Project Managers are the main role at BERI; they’re competent generalists ready and eager to work on the entirety of BERI’s existing and upcoming portfolio of projects. We are only interested in candidates who, if successful, intend to take this role for 2+ years.

For organizations that BERI is highly aligned with, BERI is willing to invest significant time and funding into providing direct support. BERI currently offers this type of direct support to three organizations: CHAI, FHI, and CSER.

We expect that most project managers will focus on these or future collaborations, or on expanding BERI’s ability to deliver on collaborations by working on new collaboration-associated programs or services.

That said, there are a number of other potential workstreams at BERI that Project Managers may end up involved in. We appreciate candidates with an interest in these additional areas, although note that opportunities within them may not often be available:

  1. Projects supporting BERI’s efforts toward organizational maturity
  1. Internal operations, such as financial management and HR
  1. New program delivery

We want people who have high initiative and a tendency to get things done, who feel dissatisfied and want to take action when they see x-risk mitigation projects getting stalled in ways that they can personally unblock.

Specific Qualifications

A Project Manager should aim to be able to:

(a) maintain strong professional interpersonal relationships while clearly and responsibly holding to BERI’s ethos,

(b) be highly resourceful—as often as we can, we want to say ‘yes’ to to our partners’ requests,

(c) be efficient in execution,

(d) never let any “balls drop”— high-impact organizations are depending on BERI to execute projects for them, so it is important that candidates for this role are highly organized.

Responsibilities

Typical responsibilities may include the following:

  • Managing BERI’s relationships with our collaborators, including timely communication with partners to discover their needs.

  • Developing robust procedures for processing and tracking incoming requests.

  • Fielding a wide variety of one-off requests by:

    • Research into available methods for BERI to support its partners. This could involve, e.g., fully diving into and understanding the nuances of various legal issues, or assisting with investigations into university policy.

    • Clearly explaining BERI’s reasons for pursuing, adjusting, or refusing a particular route of action.

    • Sourcing a method of available execution for each task, whether that involves fulfilling it yourself, hiring a contractor, or other approaches.

    • Managing the execution through delivery of the various projects.

  • Solving coordination problems between people and organizations through strategic thinking, drafting and reviewing proposals, agreements, etc. for new projects and policies.

  • Long-term planning and process creation for collaboration growth

We are looking to build a culture of excellence for our collaborations, such that our partners want to work with BERI, find it to be a reliable and resourceful organization, and clearly understand the capabilities and limits of what we can provide.

There is significant room for growth in this role to help develop the long-term frameworks, procedures, and types of direct support that we provide to the organizations with which we work. We find it likely that BERI will eventually increase the scale and scope of existing collaborations, as well as engage in new ones with high impact organizations.

General Qualifications of BERI Candidates

Across all staff positions, we seek candidates who are able to:

  • Complete a wide variety of tasks quickly (competent generalists) while maintaining attention to detail.

  • Stay organized and maintain prioritization despite high volumes of information.

  • Build clear mental models about why BERI chooses certain courses of action.

  • Notice and flag uncertainty, work to resolve confusion, and generally maintain epistemic humility.

  • Comfortably use quantitative reasoning and spreadsheets in their workflow.

  • Communicate clearly.

  • Answer the telephone during most business hours.

The ideal candidate would also be familiar with effective altruism or the AI x-risk “ecosystem.”

Benefits Include

  • Time-off (paid vacation, holidays, sick, bereavement, & parental leave)

  • Generous professional development policy

  • Platinum health, dental, and vision insurance (93-96% of premium covered by BERI)

  • Life and long-term disability insurances (100% of premiums covered by BERI), and health, dependent care, and transportation FSAs

  • Office meals & snacks

  • Semi-flexible work schedule including hours, location, and unpaid vacation policies

BERI is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Our mission to improve human civilization’s long-term prospects for survival and flourishing is in service of all of humanity, and is incompatible with unfair discrimination practices that would pit factions of humanity against one another. We do not discriminate against qualified employees or applicants based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, sexual preference, marital status, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law or local ordinance. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

Click here to apply.