Impact Analyst

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

MATS directs tens of millions of dollars toward AI safety & security research each year, and hundreds of people pass through our programs — but our understanding of our own impact is still more qualitative than it should be. As the Impact Analyst, you will own the system that fixes that: a reliable pipeline of data on fellow career and research outcomes, and the analyses built on top of it that help us answer questions like "What is the impact of the marginal fellow/mentor?", "Which of our past research bets are strong and which are weak?", and "How fast should MATS scale and in which directions?"

In the short term, you will stand up and harden our outcomes-data pipeline: deciding what we collect and on what schedule, cleaning and verifying automatically collected data (supplemented by asking fellows, mentors, and research managers), and consolidating historical data. In the long term, you'll run the analyses that feed our biggest decisions — mentor selection, fellow admissions, and program scaling — and present findings to MATS leadership. Your work will directly shape decisions worth millions of dollars per year. We expect heavy, thoughtful use of AI tools throughout, and you'll collaborate closely with our Program Systems Associate on the backend systems where the data lives.

Who We're Looking For

We welcome applications from analytical generalists who combine data skills with strong judgment. You might be:

• A data analyst or data scientist who has built and maintained real-world data pipelines and cares about decision quality, not just dashboards
• An analytical project manager or operations/strategy analyst who has owned a recurring, multi-stakeholder measurement process end-to-end
• A researcher or grantmaking/impact-evaluation analyst with experience turning messy real-world outcomes into defensible conclusions

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 the MATS outcomes-data pipeline: define what we collect about fellow career and research outcomes, set the collection schedule, and maintain the process so it runs like clockwork
• Design cleaning and verification workflows for automatically collected and self-reported data, including review by random samples of informed evaluators
• Find, clean, and consolidate historical data across our fellow-selection and mentor-selection systems, in collaboration with our Program Systems Associate
• Analyze outcomes to answer decision-relevant questions — headline among them the marginal value of fellows and mentors, and which factors predict the best outcomes
• Apply careful causal reasoning: our standard is counterfactual, marginal impact — not raw outcome counts
• Communicate findings to the teams that act on them: executive leadership (scaling and direction), mentor selection, and admissions
• Coordinate contributors to the pipeline (team members, contractors, interns) — you own the process without doing every piece yourself
• Report to the Program Director (Juan Gil).

Essential Qualifications and Skills

• Strong data analysis ability, including the judgment to avoid classic pitfalls (correlation vs. causation, selection effects, absolute vs. counterfactual impact)
• Skill at using LLMs and AI tools to accelerate data collection, cleaning, and analysis
• Strong project management ability: you can own a recurring process and keep it reliable
• Sufficient hands-on technical ability (e.g. scripting, SQL, or Airtable-level tooling) to pair with our systems team
• Clear written and verbal communication, including presenting analyses to leadership
• Familiarity with the AI safety & security ecosystem, and strong 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:

• Building automated data-collection or enrichment pipelines
• Impact evaluation, grantmaking analysis, or talent-program measurement
• Statistics or causal inference applied to small, messy, real-world datasets
• The AI safety ecosystem: its organizations, career paths, and research landscape

What We Offer

• High-leverage opportunity: your analyses will directly inform how one of AI safety's largest talent programs scales and where it places its bets
• Professional development and skill enhancement opportunities
• 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 $140,000 and $185,000 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!