Recruiting Associate/Specialist

About 80,000 Hours

80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. After more than 10 years of research into dozens of problem areas, we’re putting most of our focus on helping people work on positively shaping the trajectory of AI, because we think it presents the most serious and urgent challenge that the world is facing right now.

We’ve had over 10 million readers on our website, have ~600,000 subscribers to our newsletter, and have given one-on-one advice to over 6,000 people. We’ve also been one of the largest drivers of growth in the effective altruism community.

The operations team oversees 80,000 Hours’ HR, recruiting, finances, governance operations, org-wide metrics, and office management, as well as much of our fundraising, tech systems, and team coordination.

Currently, the operations team has ten full-time staff and some part-time staff. We’re planning to significantly grow the size of our operations team this year to stay on track with our ambitious goals and support a growing team.

The role

This role would be great for building career capital in operations, especially if you could one day see yourself in a more senior operations role (e.g. specialising in a particular area, taking on management, or eventually being a Head of Operations or COO).

We plan to hire people at both the associate and specialist levels during this round. The associate role is a more junior position, and we expect to match candidates to the appropriate level as part of the application process so you don’t need to decide which one to apply for. To give an idea of how the roles might differ:

• Associates are more likely to focus on owning and implementing our processes, identifying improvements and optimisations, and will take on more complex projects over time.
• Specialists are more likely to manage larger areas of responsibility, oversee complex projects, and design new policies and systems.

Over time, there’s significant room to grow into a more ambitious version of the role, owning larger parts of our recruiting programme, developing new ideas, and building systems you can eventually hand off to others.

We’ll work with the chosen candidates to create a responsibility set which works well for each of them — so please still apply if you think only one or two things from the list sound like a good fit.

Your responsibilities will likely include:

• Project managing and/or providing operational support for hiring rounds, ensuring a smooth and efficient recruitment process. For example, overseeing the candidate pipeline and logistics of hiring rounds, making decisions on initial applications, and managing candidate communications.
• Sourcing potential candidates. This might include generating leads for specific roles, publicising new positions, reaching out to potential candidates, and answering any questions they have about working at 80,000 Hours.
• Helping us design and build org-wide recruiting infrastructure to improve how our recruitment processes run. For example, you might help to build an excellent applicant tracking system, test ways to improve our ability to generate leads, or introduce strategies to make our hiring rounds more efficient.
• Taking ownership of a particular area of our recruiting process, e.g. proactive outreach to potential candidates, our applicant tracking system, or metrics for the recruiting team’s success.
• Conducting screening interviews where needed, to assess applicants’ fit for particular roles at 80,000 Hours.

Who we’re looking for

We’re looking for people who are:

• Organised: you’re able to keep track of a large number of tasks at once, rarely drop balls, and follow through on your commitments. Experience managing projects is a bonus, but not essential.
• Detail-oriented: you’re excited about getting into the weeds of our policies and processes, identifying discrepancies, and making sure we don’t miss important details.
• Clear communicators: your communication is straightforward, you demonstrate a high level of reasoning transparency, and you enable others to easily identify the most important aspects of your communications.
• People‑aware: you’re naturally skilled at reading and anticipating emotional signals or responses, and handling them appropriately, including through written communication.
• Good at making decisions under uncertainty: you’re able to weigh up tradeoffs between different options and make real-world decisions under uncertainty.
• Flexible: you’re excited about working on a variety of projects and are motivated to do what’s most valuable to push 80,000 Hours’ mission forward.
• Excited about supporting our mission: you’re enthusiastic about getting talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems.

Previous experience

At the associate level, previous experience is not required.

At the specialist level, candidates would ideally have at least two years of previous experience. This doesn’t have to be directly relevant to operations — it might be in another generalist role such as consulting, communications, project management, or community building.

Logistics

This is a full-time role, see above for details on location and time zone requirements. We can sponsor visas for roles based in the UK, and sponsored staff are generally expected to work from the London office. Visa sponsorship may be possible through our Employer of Record for US-based ones, though we can’t guarantee this.

The start date for this role is flexible. Ideally, our chosen candidate would start as soon as possible.

The recruiting associate/specialist role will be managed by the Head of Recruiting or Head of People Operations.

Salary and benefits

The salary will vary based on skills and experience, but to give a rough sense, we expect starting salaries to be between £41,000–75,000.

Our benefits include:

• 25 days of paid holiday, plus public holidays
• Private medical insurance
• Long-term disability insurance
• Pension scheme / retirement plan with employer contributions
• Up to 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave and childcare allowance for children under five
• £5,000 annual mental health support allowance
• £5,000 annual self-development budget
• The option to use 10% of your time for self-development
• Gym, shower facilities, and unlimited free food provided at our London office

How to apply

To apply, please complete this application form by 11PM GMT on Monday, September 1 2025. We expect the application to take approximately one hour to complete.

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, and would especially like to encourage people from under-represented backgrounds to apply, even if you don’t meet all the suggested criteria.

The application process will vary depending on the candidate and role, but is likely to include 1–3 written work tests, an interview, and a multi-day in-person trial. We offer payment for work tests and trials, conditional on your location and right to work in the UK.