Business Operations Manager

Salary: £50k - £55k 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 a Business Operations Manager to support our training and research programmes in AI safety and governance. The role will help build and maintain the financial, legal, and internal systems that keep Arcadia Impact running smoothly.

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 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 role in our operations team focuses on the business operations that enable each of our programmes to run smoothly and efficiently. Specific areas you’ll work on include:

Finance and accounting

• Manage and track budgets by producing summaries and reports.
• Work with our accountants and bookkeeper to keep our accounts up to date.
• Monitor and pay invoices and reimbursements.
• Set up and improve financial systems and guidance, including for receiving and sending invoices, reimbursement policies, and decision-making processes.

Legal and compliance

• Create, review and manage contracts, grant agreements, and other legal documents.
• Research and advise our leadership on legal questions, ensuring compliance with charity law.
• Ensuring compliance with visa sponsorship requirements and applications.

Internal systems

• Building and maintaining internal CRM’s and data management systems.
• Developing information security practices to improve internal security.

General operations tasks

• Supporting leadership with organisational improvements, including monitoring and evaluating organisational goals.
• Supporting our Operations Associate on people operations tasks, including reviewing staff contracts, creating and updating organisation policies, and improving hiring processes.
• Create and improve organisation policies and procedures.
• Supporting staff with general issues and challenges.

Who we’re looking for:

We are looking for someone who is excited by our mission and has a background in business operations, including finance, law, HR, or a related field.

If you don’t fit all the experiences here, we still highly recommend applying.

We are looking for someone with:

• 2-3 years of experience in finance and accounting, such as using accounting software or bookkeeping. You’re comfortable navigating financial processes and spreadsheets.
• An optimisation mindset: you actively think about how to make things run smoothly and efficiently.
• The ability to manage your time and balance multiple tasks at once while prioritising between them.
• High attention to detail.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• 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 £50k and £55k 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 business operations systems and processes enabling all of the organisation 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 an Operations Associate. 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 £50k and £55k 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.