Senior Programs & Strategy Manager

About this role

About FAR.AI

FAR.AI http://FAR.AI is a non-profit AI research institute dedicated to ensuring advanced AI is safe and beneficial for everyone. We work at the intersection of machine learning, safety research, and policy, supporting a global community of researchers and practitioners. At FAR.AI, we believe in thoughtful, inclusive, and rigorous work that empowers our team and partners to do their best work.

Since our founding in July 2022, we've grown quickly to 40+ staff, producing 30+ influential academic papers, and established the leading AI Safety events for research and international cooperation. Our work is recognized globally, with publications at premier venues and features in the Financial Times, Nature News, Forbes, and MIT Technology Review.

We drive practical change through red-teaming with frontier model developers and government institutions. Most recently, we discovered major issues with Anthropic’s latest model the same day it was released https://x.com/ARGleave/status/1926138376509440433, and worked with OpenAI https://x.com/ARGleave/status/1946366030844141716 to safeguard their latest model. Additionally, we help steer and grow the AI safety field through developing research roadmaps with renowned researchers such as Yoshua Bengio. We also operate FAR.Labs, an AI safety-focused co-working space in Berkeley, housing 40 members, as well as support the community through targeted grants to technical researchers.

About the Role

FAR.AI http://FAR.AI is one of the best places in the world to shape the AI safety field through events. We have a large and growing budget dedicated to convening the field, and we are known for running some of the strongest technical AI safety events globally. Our events don’t just showcase the field; they create new subfields, seed research collaborations, and directly shape the global research agenda.

As a Senior Programs & Strategy Manager, you will be the person who ensures that every event we run has a clear intellectual purpose and a program to match. You will own pre-event curation, shaping agendas, proposing speakers, and deciding who needs to be in the room. You will steward what happens after events end, ensuring that the conversations we convene have a life beyond the room. And you will act as content ownership liaison across our programme portfolio, bringing coherence and ambition to a growing and varied slate of events.

Our events portfolio includes more than a dozen workshops, conferences, and partner convenings each year. Every event has its own goals, stakeholders, and timeline. Some run simultaneously. Most evolve quickly. You'll be the person who leads hands-on content design, speaker coordination, and participant targeting across this portfolio

You will work closely with the Head of Programs, our in-house research team, and external partners to design programming that is intellectually rigorous, strategically considered, and occasionally takes a bold swing. You will also partner closely with our Senior Programs Manager and Infrastructure Specialist to ensure event visions translate thoughtfully to participant-facing platforms and communications. You will report to Lindsay Murachver, Head of Programs.

Responsibilities

Agenda design & curation

- Design agendas for FAR.AI’s events portfolio (estimated 12+ events per year), from theory of change through to session structure, speaker selection, and attendee composition.

- Propose speakers and attendees with genuine judgment about who will move a conversation forward; not just who is prominent in the field.

- Read a draft speaker list and immediately see who is missing; read a draft agenda and immediately see what is not quite right.

- Ensure programming reflects the current state of the field and anticipates where it is heading, working with FAR.AI’s in-house research team to pressure-test content decisions.

- Take considered bets on emerging topics and innovative formats, and make the intellectual case for them.

Pre-event content ownership

- Own the content framing for each event developing event theory of change documents, briefing notes, and framing materials that give the programme a clear intellectual spine.

- Lead the speaker invitation and engagement process, including drafting outreach, managing speaker preparation, and ensuring speakers are well-positioned to contribute to the event's goals.

- Produce written content that extends the reach of FAR.AI’s events: framing documents, research summaries, speaker briefings, and post-event reports.

- Act as content ownership liaison across programme tracks, working closely with program leads to ensure coherence and quality across different event types.

Attendee targeting and communications

- Develop participant strategies for each event, identifying the stakeholders, expertise, and perspectives required to achieve the event's objectives and ensure the right mix of attendees in the room.

- Lead attendee sourcing and invitation processes, working with team members to build target participant lists, manage initial invitations and other pre- and post-event outreach, and cultivate relationships with priority stakeholders.

Post-event continuity & impact

- Design and steward the conditions for participant groups to keep generating value after the event ends; including virtual continuation formats, working groups, and follow-on convenings.

- Track which relationships need tending, which conversations should continue, and which outputs are worth pursuing after each event.

- Connect event outputs to FAR.AI’;s broader field-building work in grantmaking, communications, and research.

Stakeholder & field relationships

- Build and maintain relationships with senior researchers, lab representatives, policymakers, and field-builders across the AI safety ecosystem.

- Leverage an existing network to bring the right people into FAR.AI’s orbit and ensure our events attract participants who will make them…