Head of Operations, Youth AI Safety Institute

Job DetailsJob Location: San Francisco - SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103Position Type: Full TimeSalary Range: $176,000.00 - $209,000.00 Salary/yearHead of Operations
Youth AI Safety Institute 










Organization


Common Sense Media




Program


Youth AI Safety Institute




Reports To


Executive Director (once hired) and Co-CEO until ED is in place




Location


San Francisco, CA (in office)




Classification
 

Salary Range


Full-time, Exempt
 

$176,000–$209,000






 


POSITION OVERVIEW

The Head of Operations is the Executive Director's closest operational partner—the person who ensures that every dimension of Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute functions with integrity, efficiency, and strategic foresight. This is a senior leadership role that spans the full breadth of how the Institute operates: from fiduciary oversight and governance compliance to the smooth execution of our standards, evaluations, and public engagement work; from domestic and global partnership strategy to contract negotiations that anticipate the future shape of the AI industry.

This role ensures our governance is airtight, our partnerships are strategically sound, our work is free of legal or ethical vulnerabilities, and our organization moves with the coherence and coordination that a global safety lab demands. The Head of Operations is the connective tissue of the Institute: internally across the working team, cross-organizationally with Common Sense Media's shared functions, and externally with the academic, nonprofit, industry, and philanthropic partners who make our mission possible.

This is a role for a senior leader who has operated at the intersection of strategy and execution—someone who can hold both the long view and the immediate operational reality, who anticipates problems before they surface, and who builds the systems and relationships that allow the Executive Director to lead the Institute without being consumed by its mechanics.

The Head of Operations will oversee the Operations team, and will serve as the primary representative of the Institute with Common Sense Media's executive leadership, legal, finance, development, and product and engineering teams.

 


KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Institute Operations Leadership


Serve as the operational anchor for the Institute's leadership team, ensuring that the research, standards, evaluations, and public engagement functions have what they need to move with speed, quality, and integrity.
Identify and resolve operational risks—legal, ethical, logistical, or reputational—before they become problems, and develop clear escalation protocols for those that require Executive Director or Board attention.
Build and continually improve the Institute's operating model: organizational processes, cross-functional workflows, decision-making frameworks, and accountability systems.
Oversee the Operations team in setting direction, removing blockers, and ensuring coordination across the cross-org functions.


Fiduciary Oversight, Governance & Compliance


Hold ultimate responsibility for the Institute's governance infrastructure, ensuring that charters, policies, conflict-of-interest procedures, independence safeguards, and decision-making firewalls are in place, enforced, and publicly defensible.
Oversee funder compliance across philanthropic and industry relationships, ensuring that grant obligations, reporting requirements, and restricted-use conditions are met with rigor and documentation for the development team.
Oversee the Institute's approach to formal complaints, methodological challenges, and legal inquiries, working with Common Sense Media's legal counsel to ensure that responses are principled, documented, and consistent.


Strategic Partnerships—Domestic & Global


Cultivate the Institute's strategic partnerships at a senior level: identifying and supporting the relationships with academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, standards bodies, international agencies, and related partners, while ensuring that they're integrated with the appropriate research, standards, and evaluations and public engagement functions to further the Institute's credibility and global reach.
Operate with a forward-looking lens: identify the organizations and relationships the Institute will need in two- to three-year windows—as standards expand, evaluations scale globally, and the AI landscape shifts—and begin building those relationships now.
Represent the Institute in high-stakes partnership conversations and negotiations, including with frontier AI companies, global standards bodies, and international youth safety organizations.
Support the Executive Director in cultivating relationships with key philanthropic and industry fund