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Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Onsite
U.S. AI Policy is a new team at Coefficient Giving built under Caleb Watney, our managing director of Public Policy. Our goal is to lay the groundwork for thoughtful U.S. governance of AI by building institutional capacity, supporting durable cross-partisan coalitions, and strengthening the organizations best positioned to shape how this technology develops. We’re hiring for a founding team to significantly expand our ambition and meet the moment.
We expect that new AI policy grantmakers at CG will allocate tens of millions of dollars per year—and sometimes substantially more—to high-impact organizations. Grantmakers in this space can have significant counterfactual impact by helping to seed organizations and sub-fields that wouldn't otherwise exist, driving special projects that wouldn't otherwise happen, and helping organizations scale ambitiously. In addition to growing our team, we're streamlining our internal processes so that each team member can move with even more speed and ambition than before.
Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy) is a philanthropic funder and advisor. Since 2014, we’ve directed over $5 billion in grants as part of our mission to help others as much as we can with the resources available to us. We work with a range of donors who share our commitment to cost-effective, high-impact giving. Our current funds include Science and Global Health R&D, Navigating Transformative AI, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness, Abundance & Growth, Farm Animal Welfare, and more. In 2025, we recommended more than $1 billion to high-impact causes.
We’re proud of our track record:
We jump-started the field of AI safety and security and have played a vital role in addressing other existential threats, such as mirror bacteria.
Our grants to evidence-backed global health programs have saved over 100,000 lives, and our farm animal welfare grants have improved the lives of over 3 billion animals.
We supported late-stage clinical trials for the R21 malaria vaccine, now being scaled to protect millions of kids globally.
We were the earliest major funder of the YIMBY movement to build more housing. Our grantees have led the charge on major wins like City of Yes in New York, and SB 79 in California, which will enable hundreds of thousands of new housing units.
We're hiring for multiple roles on our U.S. AI Policy team and one Chief of Staff on the Public Policy team. Exact titles may be adjusted depending on the seniority and portfolio of the candidate.
Multiple active grantmakers. We are looking for people who collectively cover a few core aptitudes across technical substance and policy knowledge. Strong candidates will bring real depth in at least one of the following:
Technical fluency. You follow frontier AI capabilities and risks closely enough to have independent judgment about them, and can translate that understanding into terms that are understandable to policymakers.
Policy entrepreneurship. You can identify the organizations and ideas that need to exist, and find or develop the founders to build them.
Coalition-building and political economy. You understand how civil society coalitions form and shift, and can help build durable cross-partisan support for AI governance that survives changes in power.
Chief of Staff to Caleb Watney: We are also looking for a Chief of Staff to act as a force multiplier for Caleb by helping him focus on the team’s top priorities, advising on important decisions, and owning initial drafts or full segments of his portfolio.
The role descriptions above are intentionally broad and cover various levels of scope and seniority. This reflects our willingness to shape the role around the backgrounds and skills of specific candidates. Above all, we are looking for people who are motivated and equipped with the right skills to drive positive change in U.S. AI policy.
If you are interested in working on our U.S. AI Policy team and have a vision for how you can contribute that doesn't map cleanly onto the roles above, please apply and tell us what role you want to play.
Across all our teams, grantmakers might:
Identify the most important projects and organizations that need to exist, and make them happen. Our grantmaking work is increasingly proactive — scoping out priority projects, finding or developing the right founders, and actively building new initiatives rather than waiting for proposals to come in.
Investigate grant opportunities. Essentially, a grant investigation is a focused, practical research project aimed at answering the question, “Should this project be funded, and at what level?”
Own special projects that go beyond grantmaking. Some examples include incubating impactful projects, headhunting founders, and working with for-profit entities to achieve a specific outcome in the world.
Design, implement, and advertise new grantmaking initiatives. One recent example is launching an incubator to develop new leaders in critical and neglected fields.
Conduct research to inform program strategy, such as helping Coefficient Giving investigate a new grantmaking area within the AI policy ecosystem or evaluating the historical cost-effectiveness of a certain kind of grant.
Build and maintain relationships in the field, ensuring that feedback flows between us, our grantees, and other stakeholders.
Depending on experience and performance, successful grantmaker applicants will be hired at one of these three levels:
Senior Program Associates investigate funding opportunities and proactively develop new ideas that lead to grants. On occasion, they also carry out research and evaluation work, or other highly impactful non-grantmaking projects.
Associate Program Officers lead projects with increased autonomy, manage particularly complex projects, own sub-areas of their team’s strategy, and manage program associates.
Program Officers own a significant fraction of their team’s strategy, design and implement new grantmaking initiatives, and/or manage several direct reports.
We are open to a wide range of experience levels, from early-career to very senior, and the role will be tailored to the successful candidate. Strong candidates will combine sharp strategic judgment, a clear track record of ownership and execution, and the ability to push teams to aim higher and move faster.
You might be a good fit for these roles if most of the following applies to you:
Familiarity with the D.C. AI policy ecosystem. You have spent time engaging with the technology policy scene in D.C. and are motivated by the goal of moving the needle on AI policy.
Ownership and agency. You take full responsibility and ownership over loosely scoped projects. You will push to make the right thing happen and move things forward, even if it requires rolling up your sleeves to do something unusual, difficult, and/or time-consuming.
Ambition and speed. You generate creative, bold ideas to capture more impact, and you’re comfortable moving quickly to execute on ambitious plans that could make a significant difference in the world.
Social awareness and flexibility. You can effectively communicate and build relationships with people across a wide range of professional contexts. You feel excited by the idea of developing a broad professional network and deep understanding of relevant stakeholders, and collaborating with them to deliver on your strategic priorities.
Good judgment. You can identify and focus on the most important considerations, have good instincts about due diligence and efficiency, and can form reasonable, holistic perspectives on people and organizations.
We are also hiring a Chief of Staff to support Caleb Watney’s work across the Public Policy team, which includes the U.S. AI Policy, Abundance & Growth, and Government Relations subteams. The desired traits for this role will be similar to the grantmaker positions, but responsibilities will differ and likely include:
Project managing large initiatives across Public Policy sub-teams, such as strategy refreshes, public communications, and process updates that require significant stakeholder coordination.
Working closely with Caleb to shape the strategy and structure of the Public Policy team, including by identifying new priority areas and deciding who should own them.
Reviewing internal processes to accelerate the team’s grantmaking and raise the ambition and impact of our grantees.
Designing and leading hiring rounds, from crafting the JD to recommending the final decision.
Potentially managing grantmakers and other staff at various levels of seniority.
Because the grantmaking roles and the Chief of Staff role covered in this JD share many of the same underlying skills, we encourage candidates to indicate interest in every role that could be a plausible fit. We will evaluate candidates for all of their preferred roles through a single streamlined process, with specific placement determined in the final stages. Candidates can update their preferences at any point during the round.
Location: These are full-time, in-person roles at our office in Washington, D.C. If you don’t live in D.C., you’d need to relocate (we’d assist with relocation costs).
We’ll consider sponsoring U.S. work authorization for international candidates (though we don’t control who is and isn’t eligible for a visa and can’t guarantee visa approval).
Compensation: The compensation for grantmaking and the Chief of Staff roles at various levels is:
The total compensation for a Senior Program Associate is $189,000, consisting of $164,500 in salary plus an unconditional 401(k) contribution of $24,500.
The total compensation for an Associate Program Officer is $254,000, consisting of $229,500 in salary plus an unconditional 401(k) contribution of $24,500.
The total compensation for a Program Officer is $280,000, consisting of $255,500 in salary plus an unconditional 401(k) contribution of $24,500.
The total compensation range for the Chief of Staff role is $167,325–$247,500, depending on seniority, which includes an unconditional 401(k) grant of 15% of salary (capped at the IRS annual limit of $24,500).
Benefits: Our benefits package includes:
Excellent health insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the U.S. for you and any eligible dependents) and an employer-funded Health Reimbursement Arrangement for certain other personal health expenses
Dental, vision, and life insurance for you and your family
Four weeks of PTO recommended per year
Four months of fully paid family leave
A generous and flexible expense policy — we encourage staff to expense the ergonomic equipment, software, and other services that they need to stay healthy and productive
A continual learning policy that encourages staff to spend time on professional development with related expenses covered
We can’t always provide every benefit we offer U.S. staff to international hires, but we’re working on it (and will usually provide cash equivalents of any benefits we can’t offer in your country)
We aim to employ people with diverse experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds who share our passion for accomplishing as much good as we can.
We are committed to creating an environment where all employees have the opportunity to succeed, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status.
If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability — or have any other questions about applying — please contact jobs@coefficientgiving.org.
Whether or not you apply to an open position, please consider referring other people! We offer a $5,000 reward to anyone who refers a candidate we end up hiring. See our External Referral Reward Guide for more details.
Please apply by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on August 2nd, 2026, to be considered.
U.S.-based staff are typically employed by Coefficient Giving LLC, which is not a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. As such, this role is unlikely to be eligible for public service loan forgiveness programs.
We may use AI to assist in the initial screening of applications, including to detect whether candidates have used AI models in drafting their application. Decisions are always made by a human on our team.
If you have any questions about our use of AI tools, you can email jobs@coefficientgiving.org.