Program Coordinator, Main Program

About The Organization

MATS Research aims to find and train talented individuals for what we see as the world's most urgent and talent-constrained problem: reducing risks from advanced artificial intelligence. Our mission is to solve the talent bottleneck in AI safety and security through training, credentials, and community. We believe that ambitious researchers from a variety of backgrounds have the potential to contribute to the fields of AI alignment, interpretability, governance, and security research. Through our research fellowship, we aim to provide the mentorship, financial support, and community necessary to aid this transition. Please see our website for more details.

The Role

Every MATS cohort runs through the three-month Main Program, involving hundreds of fellows and mentors, a calendar of seminars and workshops, and a stream of information from many teams. As Program Coordinator for the Main Program, you will be the product owner for that whole experience, coordinating across vertical functions like admissions, research management, curriculum, and operations. Your job is to make the program feel coherent and high-quality to fellows and mentors, and internally legible to the team delivering it.

Concretely, you'll own program communications — mapping everything fellows and mentors need to know, consolidating it into clear and well-timed updates, and acting as the single person who catches conflicting messages. You'll be the interface with the teams that deliver program events — seminars and workshops owned by the research management team, community events owned by the community team, logistics owned by the operations team — keeping their schedules visible, ensuring their events are well-communicated to fellows and mentors, and surfacing feedback and conflicts back to them. You'll work with our dashboard and systems team to improve how fellows and mentors access information. And at the end of each cohort you'll help coordinate extension selection — the pipeline of applications, mentor evaluations, and committee inputs that determines which fellows receive extended support (senior staff make the evaluation decisions; you help make the process run flawlessly).

This is a coordination role, not a people-management role: you won't have direct reports, and the individual program elements stay owned by their teams. Your leverage comes from lateral coordination — being the person who knows everything that's going on, communicates it well, and keeps the pieces fitting together. We expect the role to be heavily AI-augmented — using tools like Claude to draft communications and timelines, organizing documentation so AI tools can work from it, and automating the execution side of the work so your time goes to judgment, taste, and relationships. You'll be measured on the experience of fellows and mentors, and on whether the team always knows what's going on.

Who We're Looking For

We welcome applications from strong project managers and communicators with a product mindset. You might be:

• A program or project coordinator from a fellowship, accelerator, university program, or fast-moving nonprofit who has kept a complex, multi-team program on the rails
• An operations or communications generalist from a startup who is fluent with AI tools and enjoys building systems that replace manual work
• An early-career product or chief-of-staff-type who excels at distilling messy information into clear priorities and coordinating work across teams they don't manage

If you don't match one of these profiles but can otherwise demonstrate that you'll excel in this role, we still encourage you to apply!

Key Responsibilities

• Own fellow- and mentor-facing communications for the main program: map what needs communicating across the cohort lifecycle, consolidate it into a predictable and well-prioritized cadence, set reminders for what matters, and catch conflicts before they reach fellows
• Serve as the interface with the teams that own seminars, workshops, and community events (research management, community, and operations): keep the program calendar coherent, ensure events are well-communicated, and relay fellow and mentor feedback to the owning teams
• Coordinate the extension selection process each cohort: communicate policies, ensure applications and mentor evaluations come in on time, coordinate research managers and the selection committee, and ensure every fellow is evaluated
• Work with the MATS dashboard and systems team to improve how fellows and mentors access program information
• Own program documentation and handbooks
• Gather and act on fellow, mentor, and team feedback about the program experience
• Build AI-augmented workflows for drafting, documentation, and scheduling, and continually automate the execution side of the role
• Report to the Program Director (Juan Gil).

Essential Qualifications and Skills

• Strong project management ability across many threads, deadlines, and stakeholders
• Excellent written communication, especially distillation — leading with what matters and keeping detail accessible without overwhelming readers
• Strong lateral coordination: keeping work on track across teams you don't manage — easy to work with, proactive, and clear about who needs what by when
• Fluency with AI tools (e.g. Claude) for writing and workflow automation, or clear aptitude and enthusiasm to build it fast
• Highly conscientious and detail-oriented
• Alignment with our mission of reducing risk from the development of advanced AI

Desirable Qualifications and Skills

We expect especially strong applicants to have deep experience in at least one of the following areas:

• Running event or curriculum calendars (seminars, workshops, speaker series) with multiple owners
• Coordinating selection, admissions, or evaluation processes with hard deadlines
• Product ownership of an internal tool or user-facing experience
• Building automations or AI-assisted workflows for communications or operations
• The AI safety ecosystem and MATS-adjacent programs

What We Offer

• High-leverage opportunity to shape the experience of hundreds of AI safety & security fellows and mentors each year
• Professional development and skill enhancement opportunities — including becoming excellent at AI-augmented program operations
• Collaborative and intellectually stimulating work environment
• Competitive salary (see below)
• Access to our office spaces in Berkeley, London, and other partnered office spaces
• Medical insurance, including dental, vision, and life insurance
• Traditional and Roth 401(k) options
• Visa support for excellent candidates
• Meals provided Monday-Friday

Compensation

We expect to pay between $110,00 and $130,000 for this role. The exact figure depends on your experience and where you're based.

Working hours and location

40 hours per week. Successful candidates can expect to spend most of their time working in-person from our main office in Berkeley, California. We are open to alternative working arrangements for exceptional candidates.

How to Apply

Please fill out the form here. If you use an LLM chatbot or other AI tools in this application, please follow these norms. Parts of our process ask you not to use AI so we can assess baseline strength; later stages actively encourage AI tools.

Applications will be open from approximately September 4 through September 21. The anticipated start date for this role is no later than December 1, 2026, though preference will be given to candidates who can start sooner. We can make exceptions for great candidates.

Join us in shaping the future of AI safety & security research!