Head of Operations

About CEA

The Centre for Effective Altruism’s mission is to build and nurture a global community of people who are thinking carefully about the world’s biggest problems and taking impactful action to solve them.
To foster this community, we run conferences, support hundreds of local groups, and provide online resources and forums for discussion.

About this role

We have closed applications early after having an offer accepted. You can still submit a general expression of interest in other roles at CEA, including on the Ops team, via our EOI application form.
We are hiring a Head of Operations to set a newly-independent CEA up for success by establishing our new legal entities, managing our spin-out process, and building a world class operations team.
CEA is entering a new era having recently appointed a new CEO and begun the process of spinning out from Effective Ventures (EV) to become an independent organisation. With around 40 staff (and growing), a budget of over $25 million, and an established track record of delivering highly impactful programs, we’re uniquely well-positioned to steward the effective altruism community, increase its potential for impact, and its capacity to fulfil that potential.
This role is an unusual leadership opportunity to build a team from the ground up within an established organisation. We expect the team to grow quickly, reaching between 5 and 15 people by the time we become independent in 2025. Most or all of these staff will be new to CEA, and our Head of Operations will play a vital role in ensuring the success of a critical team that will be among the largest at CEA and will provide the infrastructure required for us to implement ambitious and complex projects.
Exceptional candidates will have the potential to grow into an externally-facing community leadership role with the goal of increasing the impact of value-aligned organisations by helping others implement best practices and creating operational infrastructure that can be used throughout the community.
You are well-suited to this senior role if you have experience in operations or systems management and a track record of managing a successful team. You would report to the CEO, and have a significant degree of autonomy in terms of figuring out the best way to achieve our goals and executing plans that deliver them. Given the scale and complexity of our financial, legal and logistical operations, and the potential for growth, we expect this to be an opportunity for top candidates to have a substantial counterfactual impact.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

What would you do?

This role would involve two main and related responsibilities:
  1. Overseeing the creation of the new legal entities, systems and processes necessary for CEA to exist completely independent of Effective Ventures.
  2. Leading an Operations team that delivers excellence across the range of its responsibilities and is a strategic thought partner for other teams’ and organisations’ operational needs.
We expect the spin-out process to take between 12–24 months: faster is better, but we’re prioritising making spinning out go well, not necessarily quickly. This process is likely to be complicated and multi-faceted—requiring back and forth with lawyers, external stakeholders, and the relevant regulatory agencies.
As part of Effective Ventures, our operational systems and processes are currently provided to us by the EV Ops team. An independent CEA will likely need to be self-sufficient in the following areas (and potentially others):1
  • Finance: we have a budget of over $25m, a demanding set of reporting requirements, and many of our projects depend on fast, accurate, and well-documented payments to locations and vendors worldwide.
  • Grantmaking: we support a wide network of community building organisations and individuals with grants that fund their impactful work.
  • Systems: we use and manage a multitude of systems and services, including Salesforce, to enable the execution of our projects, and to facilitate customization, analysis, and reporting.
  • HR: the productivity and wellbeing of our staff depends on smooth and robust processes including recruitment, onboarding and offboarding, payroll, and administration of our internal systems.
  • Legal: we depend on a strong legal team to pursue creative problem solving and design well-calibrated policies while following regulations in the multiple jurisdictions we do work in.
As Head of Operations, you’d be responsible for ensuring these functions are efficient and reliable, and we expect that bringing them in-house will create an opportunity with substantial scope to strategically optimize for our specific needs. You’ll need to ensure that we design and implement effective systems, processes and policies, hire and retain talented people, and create and maintain a high-performing team culture.
Our ambitious vision for this role and this team, which we expect depends on finding an exceptional candidate, includes developing externally-facing functions that contribute to our stewardship of the community directly:
  • Community implementation of best practices: making the ecosystem more resilient by sharing and helping implement robust structures, systems and processes throughout the community and its organisations.
  • Community infrastructure: developing and deploying products to facilitate the efficient flow of information and resources throughout the ecosystem, with community members and other organisations as their users.
Specifics will depend on our successful candidate’s strengths and the evolving operational needs of CEA and the community, but ideas could include e.g. open-sourcing best practices for operations and governance, conducting risk assessments and creating a community-wide risk register, and leveraging our existing projects and CRM infrastructure to help other organisations source outstanding hires.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for someone with significant operational and management experience (likely 5+ years) and a track record of:
  • Operational excellence: your team will be responsible for getting details right, managing multiple complex projects in parallel, and inevitably dealing with financial, legal and logistical complications.
  • Leadership and management: you will be responsible for building a large team and creating a team culture, and your ability to hire, fire, and coach will drive the team’s success.
  • Proactivity: you will be in a newly created role and will need to take the initiative in terms of figuring out the best way to achieve our goals and executing on plans that deliver them. This includes proactive idea generation and raising productive disagreements with others, including the CEO.
  • Sound judgement and strong reasoning: you will need to make your decision-making legible to others, transparently communicate the downsides of your decisions, and be able to say no to staff and stakeholders.
  • Holistic approach to risk and cost-benefit analysis: you will face challenges without obvious solutions, and will need to make difficult high-stakes decisions (e.g. legal and financial) while acting under uncertainty.
  • Designing and implementing systems: you will be setting up new systems in multiple domains, and you will need to make them robust, efficient, and intuitive.
  • User focus: you will be building legal entities, a team, and a set of systems that empower our staff and their projects, and will need to instil a user-focused attitude to deeply understand the organisation’s specific needs.
  • Strong relationships: you will be building and managing a team, as well as being relied upon by CEA’s leadership team and staff, so you will need to earn and retain the trust of your colleagues.
We prefer candidates who also have:
  • An understanding of effective altruism and associated ideas: we expect the strongest candidates to be motivated by increasing their impact and helping others increase their impact.

Other information

  • This is a full-time, remote position. If candidates would prefer to work from the UK, we welcome applicants from overseas and we’ll sponsor visas where possible. We may be able to sponsor visas to work in the US for some candidates. We strongly prefer applicants who are able to be available for meetings 5-7 PM British Time.
  • We’d ideally like you to start early Q4 2024, and while we prefer sooner start dates we’re happy to negotiate on later start dates for exceptional candidates.
  • Our application process may include: one or more trial tasks, interviews, a reference check, and a multi-day paid work trial for the top candidates.
  • The base compensation for this position in the UK is £107,470, made up of £97,700 in salary with an unconditional 10% pension contribution. The base compensation range for candidates located in the US is $179,900, also comprising a base salary and a 10% 401k contribution. We may be willing to consider a COO title and commensurate compensation increase for exceptional candidates with extensive experience.2 Candidates are welcome to inquire directly for more details about the potential for candidacy for the COO position.
  • In the UK, benefits include private insurance, flexible work hours, a £5,000 annual professional development allowance, a £5,000 mental health support allowance, extended parental leave, ergonomic equipment, 10% pension contribution, and more. US staff benefits are similar.
  • We are committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply. We especially encourage applications from self-identified women and people of colour who are excited about contributing to our mission. The Centre for Effective Altruism is an equal opportunity employer. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact jobs@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.
  • We are committed to protecting your data. See our privacy policy for more information.
  1. Note that we already have an in-house People Operations team and it’s an open question where this will fit in the new org structure.↩
  2. CEA currently only has one C-level title — the CEO, and we expect even extremely qualified and impactful applicants to be offered the Head of Operations title.↩
This position is now closed.
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