Technical Program Manager, Research

About the role

FAR.AI is seeking a Technical Program Manager to spearhead initiatives within our research division. You will play a crucial role in defining and executing programs that advance our foundational AI safety research and the infrastructure supporting it. This position involves identifying critical challenges and driving them from conception to completion, establishing the necessary processes, systems, and tools to empower our research and engineering teams. You will own the end to end lifecycle of technically demanding programs, ensuring that ambitious research goals are met with disciplined execution and clear accountability. The role requires you to synthesize complex technical information and translate it into actionable plans that keep multidisciplinary teams aligned and focused on high leverage outcomes. You will be responsible for establishing the scaffolding that allows researchers to operate at the frontier of AI safety by removing operational friction and clarifying dependencies. Ultimately, your work will determine whether novel research ideas successfully transition into implemented systems that validate our safety and alignment priorities.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Guide complex technical projects from initial concept through to successful delivery, including planning milestones and ensuring efficient, transparent execution.
• Collaborate with research teams to align efforts with the highest-impact work by managing competing priorities and resolving resource conflicts.
• Develop and maintain compute and resource roadmaps, identifying bottlenecks and trade-offs to accelerate progress, and fostering relationships with external partners.
• Facilitate the effective dissemination of research findings, methods, and tools to leading AI organizations and other relevant parties.
• Bridge communication between research, engineering, and internal operational teams, providing necessary timelines, results, and context for planning and communication.
• Own the definition of program level milestones, success criteria, and documentation so that progress is measurable and auditable.
• Coordinate cross functional dependencies, surfacing risks early and driving mitigation strategies that keep critical paths on schedule.
• Implement tracking mechanisms for deliverables, decisions, and assumptions to ensure continuity as programs scale in complexity.
• Evaluate the feasibility of proposed initiatives by analyzing technical constraints, timelines, and capacity before committing resources.
• Support the design of experiments and evaluation frameworks that enable rigorous assessment of research hypotheses.
• Maintain awareness of the broader AI ecosystem to identify opportunities for collaboration, benchmarking, and tooling improvements.
• Drive the creation of reusable templates and playbooks that standardize how technical programs are planned and executed.
• Partner with finance and operations to ensure that budget forecasts, headcount plans, and infrastructure needs are realistic and well justified.
• Act as the primary point of contact for internal and external stakeholders seeking clarity on research program status and direction.

Requirements

• Possess a strong technical foundation, demonstrated through 4+ years of experience building technical programs from the ground up, ideally in ML, software engineering, or a related scientific field.
• Have practical experience in AI/ML, such as managing model releases, data procurement, or supporting evaluations.
• Proven ability to deliver complex technical programs while balancing trade-offs and strategic objectives.
• Experience successfully transferring foundational and applied research into practical applications.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management capabilities.
• Comfortable operating in an environment with high ambiguity and rapidly evolving research questions.
• Demonstrated skill in breaking down large problems into manageable work streams with clear ownership.
• Willingness to engage deeply with technical material without needing to be the domain expert on every subproblem.

Nice to have

• Experience working within a frontier AI lab or AI safety institute.
• Familiarity with managing scientific computing clusters.
• Experience in public outreach through interactive demonstrations or blog posts.
• Involvement in supporting technical staff recruitment.

Practical notes

• US visa sponsorship is available.
• 10% travel may be required.
• Candidates are encouraged to apply even if their background isn't a perfect match, provided they are enthusiastic about the mission and challenges.