Fellowship Operations Associate

The Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative (CBAI) is a nonprofit research organization working to advance research and education directed towards ensuring that society navigates a safe and beneficial transition to advanced AI systems. Our work takes the form of producing original research efforts and accelerating AI safety research through fellowship programs.

Our inaugural summer fellowship cohort has already published a spotlight paper at the Mechanistic Interpretability Workshop at NeurIPS, accepted papers at ICLR, and some of our fellows have joined Goodfire and Redwood Research. After a successful 2025 launch, we're rapidly scaling in 2026. We will host multiple fellowship cycles (Fall, Spring, and Summer), double the fellowship cohort, and quadruple our team.

Refer us candidates, and receive $5,000 if we hire them.

You'll own the operational backbone of CBAI's fellowship programs, everything that makes it possible for fellows, mentors, and staff to do their best work without friction. This ranges from daily logistics like meals and A/V for the speaker event series, to planning the social and community events that make CBAI a place people want to be. You'll manage vendor relationships, coordinate space and resources across fellowship cycles, and ensure that every event, from an informal reading group to a full-cohort poster day, runs smoothly. This is a high-ownership, high-visibility role. When operations work well, everyone notices; when they don't, you're the one who fixes it.

• Own daily operational logistics during active fellowship cycles, including weekday meal coordination, A/V setup for the speaker events, and working with the Operations Site Manager at our Harvard Square office

• Source, book, and manage venues for fellowship events, including workshops, speaker series, poster days, and other program milestones

• Coordinate travel and accommodation for visiting speakers and mentors

• Manage vendor and contractor relationships, including sourcing new vendors, negotiating terms, and maintaining quality and reliability over time

• Procure and manage supplies, equipment, and other resources needed to support fellows and staff

• Anticipate operational needs across the fellowship calendar and prepare proactively rather than reactively

• Coordinate with the Director of Operations to ensure accurate bookkeeping, sound budget management, and that program operations run effectively and efficiently

• Plan and execute social events that build cohort community, such as cohort dinners, celebrations of small wins & important days, informal gatherings, and other touch points that make the fellowship experience more than just research

• Coordinate with the Director of Programs to align social programming with fellowship milestones and cohort needs

• Identify creative, low-friction ways to strengthen the fellowship's social fabric across a diverse cohort

We expect you to be characterized by most of the qualities listed below.

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  5% 403(b) match contribution

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  Comprehensive health insurance

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  Generous PTO policy

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  Meals provided during weekdays

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  Employer-paid commuter benefits

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  Reimbursement for work-related technology and/or home office expenses

Location: This position is primarily based in Cambridge, MA. While we expect you to spend most of your time working in-person from our Harvard Square office (particularly during active fellowship cycles), we can offer some hybrid flexibility between fellowship cohorts for candidates with specific circumstances. In those cases, we can give you access to AI safety co-working spaces in Berkeley and NYC.

Start date: May 2026

We use a multi-stage process to find the right fit:

1. Application Review: We review applications on a rolling basis and invite strong candidates to phone screens. Your application will be reviewed in detail by a CBAI employee.

2. Initial Phone Screen (15 minutes): A conversation with the team manager to discuss your background, understand your interest in the role, and answer your initial questions.

3. Paid Test Task: Strong candidates will receive a paid test task that mirrors actual responsibilities, such as planning a fellowship event, drafting a vendor outreach strategy, or designing a social programming calendar for a fellowship cycle. You'll have a fixed amount of time to complete this.

4. Interview: Top candidates will be invited for an interview, including a discussion of your test task, an operational scenario case study, and a conversation with CBAI team members.

5. Reference Checks: For our top finalists, we'll conduct reference checks and a final conversation to ensure mutual fit.

6. Offer: Selected candidates will receive an offer and detailed onboarding information.

CBAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law.

In acknowledgement of the research that suggests that women, gender minorities, and other marginalized groups may be less likely to apply for roles where they don’t meet every criterion, we especially encourage people in these categories to apply.

We may use AI to assist in the initial screening of applications, including to detect whether candidates have used AI models in drafting their application. Decisions are always made by a human on our team.