Head of People

About METR

We are a nonprofit research organization that develops scientific methods to assess AI capabilities, risks, and mitigations, with a specific focus on threats related to AI R&D automation and misalignment.

We believe it is robustly good for policymakers and civil society to have a clear understanding of risks from AI systems, and we are extremely excited to build a team of ambitious, excellent people to tackle one of the most important challenges of our time.

• Leading strategy that connects METR’s organizational goals with how we build culture and retain talent.
• Organize team retreats to build the organization’s culture and align the team around shared goals.
• Own how METR's culture and core values carry through organizational growth.
• Set up management coaching for managers to ensure consistent and strong management across the organization.
• Run or organize management trainings and new manager orientation.
• Create processes to facilitate professional development.
• Building processes and systems to support our next phase of growth.
• Own responsibility for keeping our HRIS, as our accurate source of truth on employee data (e.g., new hires, manager changes, wage rate and variable compensation changes).
• Manage compliance, including employee files, I-9s, E-Verify, regulatory filings, and trainings required by state law.
• Process payroll to ensure timely payments to all employees and contractors and compliance with the law.
• Manage benefits, including healthcare enrollment and educating staff about the benefits; serve as the main point of contact for employee questions regarding benefits.
• Owning our compensation philosophy, promotion framework, and performance review process to ensure they are fair, transparent and clear to the team.
• Designing and executing a streamlined employee onboarding process that gets new hires the tools, information and support they need to ramp up quickly, and that scales as we grow.
• Handling employee relations as a trusted advisor to both employees and managers, resolving conflicts, performance concerns and workplace issues fairly and with discretion.

• You’re an adaptable, highly organized systems builder who thrives in fast-paced, ambiguous environments (e.g. tech companies/startups).
• You’re a strong communicator, who builds trust with staff through honesty and transparency.
• You have sound judgement when handling sensitive HR-related matters.
• You have strong attention to detail and hold a high bar for quality in everything you deliver.

• At least 8 years of experience in HR and People Operations roles, including experience scaling People Ops function and managing a team.
• Experience navigating California and federal employment laws, such as benefits compliance (including ACA, COBRA, ERISA/401(k), HIPAA, FMLA, and qualifying life events), worker classification, and employee leaves.
• Start-up experience / experience in a fast-paced, dynamic environment in an organization with under 500 employees.

• Experience working with frontier labs or experience working in the AI safety ecosystem.
• Experience scaling an organization from ~30 to 200+ employees.