Associate Program Officer, Transformative AI Fund

About this role

CEA is seeking an Associate Program Officer for the Transformative AI Fund https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dYuNi5Rh68o9YKstg/ea-funds-is-launching-the-transformative-ai-fund, the new fund within EA Funds supporting early-stage work on transformative AI. This includes work that prevents global catastrophic risks (GCRs) and supporting fields, such as field-building and forecasting. You'll report to and work directly alongside the Head of the Transformative AI Fund to ensure the success of the fund, primarily through identifying the grant applications that will most advance the goals of the fund. Because we're building the fund from the ground up, you’ll have substantial autonomy in your work and will help shape the systems that will run for years. We're also open to a more junior hire with deep knowledge of the field and high agency.

ABOUT CEA

The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) stewards the movement of people putting effective altruism principles into practice to solve the world's most pressing problems. We’re working to build a flourishing future by applying evidence, reason, and compassion to challenges like global poverty, animal suffering, and existential risks.

Our work centers on growing and supporting a global community of people who rigorously analyze where they can do the most good—and take action on those insights. Current strategic priorities include increasing understanding of effective altruism and its principles, growing the number of people who are motivated by EA principles to take significant action to address pressing problems, and diversifying funding sources for high-impact work.

We had significant success in 2025, building momentum within CEA. Our headcount grew from 42 to 66 core staff. Program participation (e.g., events, courses, groups) grew by 20-25% year over year. We merged https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BLvTcMMEQGFYsh6Jw/ea-funds-and-cea-are-merging with EA Funds https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/ and are rapidly scaling up our capacity for grantmaking and associated fundraising.

In 2026, we’re maintaining ambitious momentum https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Dy4iGHbAkKAQ4t2Dw/building-sustainable-momentum-progress-report-on-cea-s-2025 while building the foundations for a step-change in the wider EA ecosystem’s growth trajectory from 2027 onwards.

ABOUT EA FUNDS’ TRANSFORMATIVE AI FUND (TAIF)

Effective Altruism Funds (EA Funds) is the grantmaking arm of CEA and aims to increase the amount of funding that is dedicated to particularly cost-effective and altruistically impactful projects across global health & development, animal welfare, Transformative AI and EA infrastructure.

The Transformative AI Fund is EA Funds' new fund. Our primary focus is reducing global catastrophic risks through grants within Technical AI Safety, AI Governance (including post-AGI governance), and contributing fields such as field-building and forecasting. We're also open to relevant areas like Flourishing Futures and Digital Sentience, though these will be a small minority of grants. Our vision is for the Transformative AI Fund to be a go-to fund for any individual or organization starting something new within the transformative AI space to get their project off the ground.

We're addressing a funding gap at the earliest stages, in the $10k-$150k range: we can be the first backer of small projects that otherwise wouldn't happen, at a size most other funders struggle to serve. At this scale, funding is often all-or-nothing: does the pilot run? Does the event happen? This is hits-based giving https://coefficientgiving.org/research/hits-based-giving/: many grants will have no or modest outcomes, with the occasional home run paying for the entire portfolio. With a funding influx anticipated over the coming years https://nanransohoff.substack.com/p/the-third-wave-of-american-philanthropy, we believe that supporting promising early-stage projects helps grow the field and its absorptive capacity.

The Fund's principles:

- Early-stage funding: funding grants that are too small for other funders, usually in the $10k-$150k range.

- Transparent by default: quarterly public grant reports on what we choose to fund and why, building trust and dialogue with donors and grantees.

- Always open, with quick and reliable responses: opportunities rarely arrive on a given schedule, and we want to be able to pounce when they arise.

This is a particularly exciting time to join the Transformative AI Fund. We're committing significant resources to the fund, with a new full-time team: Lowe Lundin https://www.linkedin.com/in/lowe-lundin/ as Head of the TAIF and Loïc Watine https://www.linkedin.com/in/loic-watine-406b911a/ as Director of EA Funds, with Caleb Parikh advising. We're also in the final stages of hiring a dedicated operations person for all of EA Funds, and hope to make more hires on the grantmaking team in the not-too-distant future if we're happy with the trajectory of the fund. We've been very impressed by the recent trajectory of EA Funds' Animal Welfare Fund, which set an ambitious strategy and raised significant funds to execute it under full-time leadership, and we believe the Transformative AI Fund has similar potential.

You can read more about the fund in this EA forum post here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dYuNi5Rh68o9YKstg/ea-funds-is-launching-the-transformative-ai-fund.

ABOUT THE ROLE

AI development is accelerating, and the next few years may be unusually important for shaping how advanced AI systems are built and governed. Early-stage grantmaking puts you at the frontier of the field: you'll see new research agendas, founders, and organizations before almost anyone else, e.g. a researcher with an unconventional agenda, a first-time founder with a governance idea, a small team that needs six months of runway. These land on your desk, and the grants you make are often the first decisive input that helps a promising

Similar jobs

• Eloquent AI Fellowship Program — Eloquentai · San Francisco
• Strategy & Ops Associate, Applied AI — Clipboard · Remote
• Senior Director, AI Transformation — Nice · Remote
• Cogent AI Fellowship — Cogent-security · San Francisco, CA
• Senior Technical Program Manager, AI Transformation — Lyft · New York, NY
• Senior Technical Program Manager, AI Transformation — Lyft · San Francisco, CA
• Associate Director, AI Operations & Enablement — Flagshippioneeringinc · Cambridge, MA USA
• Senior Director, AI Engineering Transformation — Sharkninjaoperatingllc · Needham, MA, United States