Principal, Project Development (2 Openings)

Note: We have made two hires for this role but are still hiring for up to two more.

Own initiative areas end-to-end — from recruiting founders and designing organizations to commissioning products and running fellowships — in service of steering transformative technology toward benefiting humanity.

This would be a good fit for you if you:

• Are good at orienting to new spaces, and performing research to understand the status quo, unaddressed needs, and opportunities to engage with existing initiatives

• Can take a defined, ambitious goal and drive it to completion — scoping the work, lining up resources, and delivering outcomes — resourcefully navigating challenges along the way

• Would equally enjoy executing on others’ plans to achieve these goals as well as figuring out yourself what should happen next with an initiative

• Enjoy working on both “moonshots” and concrete MVPs

• Are comfortable sourcing and managing contractors and leveraging tools (including AI) to increase productivity

• Communicate clearly and work collaboratively within a small team with some defined roles, and some “everyone contributes to everything” spirit

• Have an entrepreneurial streak — you’re comfortable building something from scratch with limited guidance, finding creative paths when the obvious one is blocked

• Are adept at project management — you can break complex, ambiguous goals into milestones, track dependencies, and keep work on schedule

Questions you would ask in this role:

• What products/tools/technologies might be feasible to build and deploy? Given the relative difficulty of product/tool/tech adoption and the trade-offs regarding the impact we imagined when prioritizing this space, which should we prioritize?

• How can we get those built?

• Do we have a clear enough idea of what to build to scope it out and commission the work? Or do we need to explore further first?

• Which parts of this will the market likely handle regardless of what FLF does?

Actions you would often be taking:

• Deeply internalize the theory of change for your initiative area and use that understanding to inform design choices, trade-offs, and prioritization within your area of focus

• Sync with other FLF team members to understand our vision, theory of change, goals, and any initial strategy set for your assigned project area — and regularly share and refine your thinking with the team

• Research and evaluate ideas for orgs, technologies, products, or tools that could deliver on those goals

• Analyze the market, the feasibility of ideas, and the scope of work required to implement

• Depending on what products/tools/technologies seem most promising (if any), and how well-scoped the work is, make a plan to build in-house / recruit a team / post an RFP / run a fellowship, etc.

• Manage contractors, external collaborators, and vendor relationships

• Write clear briefs and status updates to keep the team informed with reasoning transparency

• Identify and evaluate potential founders, leaders, or teams to execute on incubated initiatives

Outcomes you would be responsible for:

Exact outcomes are dependent on what we discover as we explore these areas, but could include:

• A conclusion that the area is not currently feasible to make progress on, along with an explanation as to why

• A fleshed-out spec for a product to address an area you’re working on

• A sketch of the kind of organization we want to create to tackle one of these areas, along with a plan for recruiting and funding the team

• A founder or team identified, recruited, and supported to lead a new initiative — and execution of the plan for funding, supporting, and advising them