Expression of interest: Head of Operations

80,000 Hours

80,000 Hours provides research and support to help people switch into careers that effectively tackle the world’s most pressing problems.

We’ve had over 8 million visitors to our website, and more than 3,000 people have told us that they’ve significantly changed their career plans due to our work. We’re also the largest single source of people getting involved in the effective altruism community, according to the most recent EA Survey.

The internal systems team

This role is on the internal systems team, which is here to build the organisation and systems that support 80,000 Hours to achieve its mission.

We oversee 80,000 Hours’ office, tech systems, organisation-wide metrics and impact evaluation, as well as HR, recruiting, finances, and much of our fundraising.

Currently, we have four full-time staff, some part-time staff, and receive support from the Centre for Effective Altruism (our fiscal sponsor).

The role

As 80,000 Hours’ Head of Operations, you would:

• Oversee a wide range of our internal operations, including team-wide processes, much of our fundraising, our office, finances, tech systems, data practices, and external relations.
• Manage a team of two operations specialists, including investing in their professional development and identifying opportunities for advancement where appropriate.
• Grow your team to build capacity in the areas you oversee, including identifying 80,000 Hours’ operational needs and designing roles that will address these.
• Develop our internal operations strategy — in particular, figure out what your team should focus on in order to add the most value to 80,000 Hours as we grow.
• Take on additional special projects — for example, this year, you might have run the longtermist census (which received ~3,000 responses) or scaled up our book giveaways with Impact Books (who send out over 100 books per day on our behalf).

You would be managed by Brenton Mayer, our Director of Internal Systems.

Who we’re looking for

We’d be most excited to hear from people with all of the following:

• At least two years of experience in operations/organisational management-focused roles, including roles in consulting, project management, and at early-stage startups or nonprofits.
• At least one year of experience with managing others.
• A strong understanding of effective altruism and/or longtermism.

In addition to this, we’re looking for someone who is:

• An excellent manager, who’s excited to coach and develop the skills of those on their team.
• Able to think critically about their team’s strategy, and consistently prioritise well in order to focus on the most important things.
• Able to generate ambitious plans for addressing 80,000 Hours’ needs as we scale, and execute them successfully.
• Highly conscientious, with the ability to juggle multiple priorities at once without dropping balls.
• An optimiser, who constantly seeks out ways to improve our systems and processes so that we can run more efficiently.

We’re aware that factors like gender, race, and socioeconomic background can affect people’s willingness to apply for roles for which they meet many but not all the suggested attributes. We’d especially like to encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds to express interest in this role, including if you don’t meet all the suggested criteria.

Salary and benefits

This is a full-time role, based at our London office (but you can work remotely for up to one third of the year if needed). We are able to support visa applications.

The salary will depend on your skills and experience, but to give a rough sense, the starting salary for someone with three years of highly relevant experience would be £68,814 per year.

Our benefits include:

• The option to use 10% of your time for self development.
• 25 days of paid holiday, plus bank holidays.
• Standard UK pension with 3% contribution from employer.
• £5,000 mental health support allowance.
• Private medical insurance.
• Generous paid parental leave.
• Long-term disability insurance.
• Gym, shower facilities, and free food provided at our London office.

Application process

To apply, please submit this expression of interest by 11pm GMT on Wednesday, August 17, 2022. It should only take about two minutes to complete! We’ll reach out if we think you might be a particularly strong fit for the role.