Operations Associate

Salary: £44k - £46k depending on skills and experience

Location: London (primarily in-person from our office)

Start date: June 2026 (flexible)

Visas: We are able to sponsor visas

Summary:

Arcadia Impact is hiring an Operations Associate to build and maintain the systems and infrastructure that enable our training and research programmes in AI safety and governance.

About us:

Arcadia Impact is a charity working to reduce risks posed by advanced AI through training and research programmes. Our core training programmes include LASR Labs and the AI Governance Taskforce, which are focused on upskilling people for careers in technical AI safety and AI governance. We also currently support three sponsored projects: Orion AI Governance Initiative, Impact First, and the AI Safety Engineering Taskforce.

Additionally, we recently secured a grant from the UK AI Security Institute’s Alignment Project to launch a year-long research programme working with their alignment team.

Some highlights from 2025 include:

• Through our LASR Labs programme, we supported 39 participants to produce 9 research papers in technical AI safety. Of the 8 papers produced on our summer 2024 and spring 2025 cohorts, 7 were accepted to workshops at NeurIPS.
• We concluded our first full cohort of our AI Governance Taskforce, supporting 16 experienced professionals to produce 4 papers on AI governance.
• We recently confirmed a grant from the UK AI Security Institute’s Alignment Project to hire 7-9 researchers for a year-long research project.
• After launching the AI Safety Engineering Taskforce, we partnered with UK AISI to launch the Inspect Evals repository, a repository of community-contributed LLM evaluations for Inspect AI.
• The Orion AI Governance Initiative supported 57 participants across its programmes and placed 2 people into AI policy roles at think tanks and AI Governance organisations.
• We recently launched Impact First, a new project focused on supporting students to launch high-impact careers, and running our coworking office (previously LEAH).

We are hiring two new operations roles to work under our Co-Director, Joe Hardie, who has previously led operations.

The role:

This is a generalist role in our operations team focused on the systems and infrastructure that enable each of our programmes to run smoothly and efficiently.

Specific areas you might work on include:

• People operations
  • Create and maintain people infrastructure including employee handbooks, policies, and other documentation.
  • Organise team workshops and events to promote coordination and collaboration between staff.
  • Improving HR systems and processes including contracts, payroll, benefits, and compliance.
  • Improve staff hiring processes including creating job descriptions, reaching out to candidates, and coordinating the application process.
• Programme support
  • Support programme recruitment including application reviews, outreach, and application experience.
  • Driving process improvements across programmes.
  • Help programme participants with issues and questions.
• General operations tasks
  • Creating and maintaining operational documentation such as guides and workflows.
  • Supporting AI adoption in our day-to-day operations through testing or creating tools to increase productivity.
  • Respond to general enquiries to our contact inbox.
  • Tracking and reporting on organisational metrics and goals.
  • Supporting staff and leadership with tasks where capacity is needed.

You’ll have some flexibility to focus on work you enjoy and take ownership of projects to improve our work.

Who we’re looking for:

This is an entry-level position for someone with a strong interest in operations and motivation to contribute to our mission. If you don’t fit all the experiences here, we still highly recommend applying.

We are looking for someone with:

• Some experience in operations, such as running a student group or an independent project.
• A generalist, comfortable swapping between different types of work and moving between projects.
• An optimisation mindset, you actively think about how to make things run smoothly and efficiently.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• High attention to detail.
• The ability to manage your time and balance multiple tasks at once while prioritising between them.
• Motivation to contribute to our mission and a basic understanding of work in AI safety & governance.

What we offer:

• We expect to offer a successful candidate between £40k and £46k per year, depending on previous experience and performance during the application process. We pay 3% employer pension contributions.
• We provide a £5k per year professional development budget to help you work at your best.
• This is a crucial and high-leverage role in supporting Arcadia’s work and advancing our mission. You will play a key role in building and improving our operations systems and processes, enabling the organisation to be more effective.
• The role will be based in our London Coworking Office where we provide free snacks and basic meals.
• Our annual leave allocation is 25 days of paid leave plus UK bank holidays.
• We can sponsor UK work visas if required.

Application:

Apply here by 8th April 2026, 23:59 UK time (BST)

After completing the initial application, you will be invited to an interview, then a ~1-day work task (remotely or in person) before we make an offer.

We expect to make offers by mid-May are ideally looking for someone to start in mid-June, although we are flexible with later start dates.

We are also hiring for a Business Operations Manager. If you are interested in both roles, please indicate that in the application form.

Diversity and inclusion:

Arcadia Impact is an equal opportunity employer, if you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or you have any other questions about applying, please contact joe@arcadiaimpact.org. We are committed to a culture of inclusion and we encourage anyone from diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply.

We expect to offer a successful candidate between £40k and £46k per year, depending on previous experience and performance during the application process. We pay 3% employer pension contributions.

We provide a £5k per year professional development budget to help you work at your best.

The role will be based in our London Coworking Office where we provide free snacks and basic meals.

Our annual leave allocation is 25 days of paid leave plus UK bank holidays.

Fluency in English required, with an excellent level of spoken and written communication and strong reading comprehension.