Operations Team: Operations Associate

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

The Operations team at the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) is looking for an Operations Associate to join our growing team.
As an Operations Associate, your work will give you a broad range of experiences and you will get training in various aspects of nonprofit operations (finance, legal, HR, office administration, logistics, etc.)
The role can be entry-level but previous work experience is preferred. This role may be a good fit for you if you’re motivated, altruistic, and optimistic.
The Operations team at CEA — or “Ops” — provides world-class operational support to organisations that are expected to have an outsized positive impact. We do this by providing the financial, legal, administrative, grantmaking, logistical, and fundraising support that enables many high-impact organisations to grow, including: CEA, 80,000 Hours, the Forethought Foundation, EA Funds, Giving What We Can, the Centre for the Governance of AI, Longview Philanthropy, Asterisk, Wytham Abbey, and Non-trivial.

The project and the role

We’re looking for motivated, altruistic, and optimistic people from diverse backgrounds to join us in this impactful work. For this role, we are seeking to hire an entry- or graduate-level Operations Associate to join the team.
The role is designed to support your development and help prepare you for a career in operations. It’ll give you a broad range of experiences and training in various aspects of nonprofit operations (finance, legal, HR, office administration, logistics, etc.) The role will grow as you develop, but you will start out by focusing on the following key responsibilities:
  • Owning tasks/processes that support operations work in the team, e.g. processing data on behalf of the wider team
  • Managing short-term projects - such as planning team retreats and team evenings
  • Analysing systems for ways to improve the efficiency or user experience
  • Scoping out different products/platforms the team might consider transitioning to
  • Supporting with hiring rounds and general recruiting
  • Research and analysis as required by teams
  • Supporting with onboarding
  • Support with Salesforce admin (once training has been completed)

The ideal candidate

Some operations experience is ideal for this role, but we will also consider entry-level candidates.
The ideal candidate will be:
  • Extremely organised: You will be managing lots of small tasks and relationships. You will need to be organised to stay on top of them.
  • A proactive problem solver: You will need to notice when things need to be fixed, and then fix them.
  • Personable and great with communication: You’ll need to be clear and professional whilst communicating with various stakeholders, both verbally and in writing.
  • Excited by work that demands speed, accuracy, and attention to detail: Operations work is often fast-paced and busy. Mistakes can be costly, so it’s really important for you to pay close attention to details whilst maintaining a high level of output.

Salary and benefits

This is a full-time role. We prefer candidates who can work from an EA hub in either London, Boston or Oxford. However, we are open to remote work for the right candidate.
Your starting salary range is £48,000 to £52,000 (assuming the role is in Oxford), depending on prior experience and location. There may be flexibility in salary for exceptional candidates with significant experience.
Our benefits reflect our belief in investing in our people to build the strongest possible team. We want everyone to be able to perform at their best as we provide world-class support and maximise our positive impact.
  • Prioritised health & wellbeing: We provide private medical, vision and dental insurance, up to 3 weeks’ paid sick leave, and a mental health allowance of £5,000 each year.
  • Flexible working: You’re generally free to set your own schedule (with some overlapping hours with colleagues) and choose to work remotely or from our office at Trajan House in Oxford, UK.
  • World-class work environment: Our Oxford office, Trajan House, comes with free vegan food, high-quality vegan caterers, a gym and supplements, showers, monitors and other ergonomic equipment to boost your productivity, along with the opportunity to network with people working there.
  • Generous vacation: We provide all team members with 25 days' holiday each year, plus bank (public) holidays.
  • Professional development opportunities: We offer a £5,000 allowance each year and build in opportunities for career growth through on-the-job learning, increasing responsibility, and role progression pathways.
  • Parental leave and support: New parents have up to 14 weeks fully-paid leave and up to 52 weeks leave in total. We also provide financial support for child care to help parents balance child care needs.
  • Pension and income protection plans: We offer a 10% employer / 0% employee pension or retirement contribution, and income protection insurance.
  • Equipment to help your productivity: We will pay for high-quality and ergonomic equipment (laptop, monitors, chair, etc.), in the office or at home if you work remotely.
  • Global team retreats: As we are a remote team, we hold in-person staff retreats twice a year to work on our plans and build strong working relationships.
Equivalent benefits are offered in different locations.

Our values

Our work is shaped by our core values:
We’re focused on excellent customer service
  • We solve problems for our customers before they’re aware of them
  • We proactively seek, and take action on, feedback
  • We respond to requests politely, quickly, and helpfully
We’re protective of our attention
  • We prioritise effectively, focusing on highest expected value
  • We design systems to prevent recurring problems
  • We take on new organisations and projects deliberately, and we’re comfortable saying no
We’re ambitious with our impact
  • We adapt our systems when the expected value is high
  • We carefully consider tradeoffs such as opportunity costs, benefits, and risks
  • We take on organisations and projects that will change the world

Apply

We’ll review applications from 11th September onwards. We’re ideally looking for someone to be able to start between November 2022 - January 2023.
After considering your written application, we may invite you to complete a short trial task followed by further interviews. We’ll invite finalists to provide references and participate in a multi-day paid work trial.
We’re happy to consider applicants from overseas and may consider sponsorship if needed. CEA serves a global community, and our team works with people and organisations all over the world. We’re committed to fostering a culture of inclusion, and we encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply. We especially encourage applications from women, gender minorities, and people of colour who are excited about contributing to our mission. We’re an equal opportunity employer.
If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact callum@effectivealtruism.org.
This position is now closed.
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