Manager, Operations

The posting, as Constellation Institute wrote it

About Constellation

Constellation is an independent research center that brings together people throughout the AI safety ecosystem to accelerate insight, research, and talent through better cooperation. Unlike a conference or summit, Constellation operates continuously, in the form of a physical workspace as well as conference-style talks, workshops, and training bootcamps. Continuous operation allows for relationships and conversations to develop over time, meaningfully fostering trust, collaboration, and shared insight. It also makes Constellation a natural field-building hub by rapidly inspiring, orienting, and connecting people who are newer to the field.

Based in Berkeley, CA, our shared workspace hosts over 300 people per week across dozens of AI safety organizations in nonprofits, academia, industry, and government. Hundreds of other researchers spend time at Constellation for shorter visits each year. We believe this is the strongest and highest-output network of AI safety researchers in the world; dozens of participants in past Constellation programs have gone on to safety-focused roles at companies such as METR, Redwood Research, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and the US and UK Safety Institutes.

About the role

The Manager, Operations leads Constellation's Operations Coordinator (OC) team, which provides day-to-day support to our researchers and programs. In this role, you’ll be responsible for the people, the development path, and the capacity of the team that keeps our research center running.

This is a people management role, and a people development role where your primary responsibility is to manage and develop the careers of a team of 5-10 junior Operations Coordinators to be both excellent in their current roles while preparing for long careers in AI safety.

The OC role is an entry-level operations role. They handle arrivals and tours, requests, onboarding and offboarding, and event support for dozens of organizations and hundreds of researchers. Coordinators learn the core work, take on projects, and move into roles across the AI safety ecosystem.

The Manager, Operations is accountable for both sides of that: ensuring the team delivers excellent service every day, and that every coordinator develops their skills to prepare them for taking on more responsibilities.

You will be responsible for prioritizing larger requests for OC time from Constellation teams and partner orgs. Since OC time is finite, you’ll weigh those tradeoffs and make clear, well-communicated decisions. As our organization grows, you’ll also work closely with other managers to develop and improve processes for efficiently handing off work between teams.

This is a full-time, in-person role. You must be able to work on-site in Berkeley from 9am to 5pm on weekdays. There is occasional evening work for events and urgent issues.

Key responsibilities

People management and development

• People manage a team of 5-10 Operations Coordinators. Set go

[…]
erations, Convening, People Ops, and BizOps team leads to keep OC work aligned with the organization’s priorities.

• Contribute to long-term org design for the OC program as it evolves.

Skills & experience

• Experience and confidence managing and developing a team of 5-10 early-career staff, ideally in operations or a service-oriented team
• Experience designing or running onboarding and training programs
• Skill at prioritizing among competing requests from many stakeholders, and at saying no with grace
• Direct, kind, specific feedback, and comfort delivering difficult news
• Hiring experience: screening, interviewing, and making decisions
• Enough hands-on operations knowledge (office, events, customer support) to set standards and QA the work credibly
• Systems thinking: you notice what breaks at scale and fix the process
• Clear, concise written communication
• Comfort with:
• Asana, Slack Google Workspace, and Claude
• Ambiguity and change during an interim structure
• Thinking on your feet in a fast-paced environment

You might be a good fit if you

• Get energy from helping early-career people grow, and are proud when they move on to great roles
• Like fitting finite capacity to a large volume of demand
• Have a service mindset and care about the experience of researchers and visitors
• Take ownership and enjoy building a program, not just running one
• Are excited to support the AI safety ecosystem and learn more about it
• Care about making transformative AI go well

Compensation & Benefits

The base pay range for this role is $148,000 – $192,000 per year.

Our benefits are hard to beat! They include

• Healthy lunches and dinners catered by our amazing kitchen team
• Unlimited snacks & drinks
• Generous vacation policy
• 401(k) with employer match
• Employer-paid commuter benefits
• High-quality health, dental, and vision insurance
• Friendly and supportive team
• Regular interaction with AI safety researchers and thought leaders