Job Description
The Coefficient Giving AI Governance and Policy team is hiring a Program Officer or Senior Program Officer to build the strategic communications capacity of the AI governance field by finding and scoping high-impact opportunities, recruiting the right people to run them, evaluating potential grants, and helping grantees succeed.
About Coefficient Giving
Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy) is a philanthropic funder and advisor. Since 2014, we’ve directed over $4 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 Artificial Intelligence, Abundance & Growth, Farm Animal Welfare, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness, and more. In 2025, we recommended over $900 million to high-impact causes.
About the AI Governance and Policy team
The AI Governance and Policy (AIGP) team funds work aimed at reducing catastrophic risks from advanced AI, and is housed under our broader work on navigating transformative AI, the largest fund at Coefficient Giving. This fund aims to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in grants annually over the coming years across a wide range of priorities, several of which you can read about here.
Decision-makers and the general public will need a much better understanding of the challenges posed by transformative AI if societies are to successfully navigate its development. We want to support strategic communications projects and organizations that will help build understanding of these challenges and support for addressing them.
About the role
This is a grantmaking role where you'll be identifying, funding, and supporting the people and organizations best positioned to do strategic communications related to AI governance. Your job will be to build the strategic communications capacity of the AI governance field by finding high-impact opportunities, scoping new projects, recruiting the right people to run them, evaluating potential grants, and helping grantees succeed.
The deadline to apply for the role is January 19, 2026.
Grantmaking experience is not required for this role. We expect many of our strongest candidates to be new to philanthropy, and to come from backgrounds like communications, advocacy, or campaigns. What matters most is your strategic communications expertise and your interest in applying it to help build this field.
We’re hiring at either the Program Officer (PO) or Senior Program Officer (SPO) level.
- A Program Officer would be experienced in strategic communications (5–10 years of relevant experience) and excel in the traits described below. You would drive forward our strategic communications grantmaking with significant autonomy over priorities and execution.
- A Senior Program Officer would be an expert in strategic communications (10+ years) and would fully own our strategic communications grantmaking, taking leadership of the vision, strategy, and tactics we pursue in that portfolio.
Both roles will have the opportunity to substantially influence AIGP's overall strategy, manage other team members, and (especially for the SPO role) build a team focused on AI strategic communications. For candidates with exceptional experience, we’re open to hiring at a more senior level.
What you’ll do
- Develop strategy — Build and refine our approach to funding strategic communications measures that might help actors — particularly governments and relevant organizations — address risks from transformative AI systems. This includes identifying which audiences matter most, understanding what messages resonate with them, mapping the landscape of relevant actors, and adapting as the policy and technical environment evolves.
- Source and evaluate opportunities — Most of this work is proactive: scoping new projects, identifying the right organizations or individuals to execute them, and convincing talented people to take on new work. Projects might span polling and audience research; media tracking and engagement; coalition building; spokesperson recruitment and training; convenings; and media, social media, and ad campaigns. You would also evaluate inbound proposals and make grants for rapid-response work as opportunities arise.
- Support grantees — Help the organizations and individuals we fund succeed. This includes providing strategic feedback, connecting grantees to each other and to relevant experts, hosting convenings to share learnings across the field, and troubleshooting when projects hit obstacles or need to adapt.
- Advise internally — Help other Coefficient Giving teams think through the communications and PR implications of their work. This might include flagging how a grant or public statement could land, pressure-testing messaging on sensitive topics, or coordinating across teams to avoid conflicting signals.
Who might be a good fit
You might be a good fit for this work if you have:
- Strategic communications experience:
- You have at least 5 years (for PO) or at least 10 years (for SPO) of experience leading strategic communications, public affairs, advocacy, electoral campaigns, corporate communications, or agency work.
- You have made a demonstrable impact across multiple target types (corporate, policy, and/or public opinion) using a wide range of tactics.
- Familiarity with the potential issues posed by transformative AI:
- Interest in and familiarity with issues related to transformative AI. (This is preferred but not required. Strong candidates might instead have experience in related fields and/or a track record of quickly getting up to speed on new policy domains.)
- Other potentially helpful characteristics:
- Experience in the tech sector (particularly at frontier AI companies), in politics, or in grantmaking
- Familiarity with the AI ecosystem
- Relationships with relevant actors in policy, media, or advocacy
- Good judgment: You are able to:
- Anticipate how communications efforts might backfire
- Navigate sensitive situations with care
- Understand, evaluate, and synthesize competing perspectives
- Prioritize effectively between opportunities, weighing feasibility and real-world constraints — not just absolute importance
- High ownership and entrepreneurialism
- You’re focused on getting to the right outcomes
- You excel at owning ambitious, poorly-scoped projects and making things happen; you find the right people, convince them to start new work, and support their success
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills
- You can build and maintain relationships with grantees, funders, and other stakeholders
- In writing and conversation, you avoid buzzwords and abstractions; you give concise, clear arguments with transparent reasoning
- You can make complex technical or policy concepts accessible to mainstream audiences while maintaining credibility with experts
We also expect all staff to model our operating values of ownership, openness, calibration, and inclusiveness.
The ideal candidate for this position will possess many of the skills and experiences described above. However, there is no such thing as a “perfect” candidate. If you are on the fence about applying because you are unsure whether you are qualified, we strongly encourage you to apply.
Role details & benefits
- Compensation: The baseline compensation for the Program Officer role is $193,998.71, which would be distributed as a base salary of $169,498.71 and an unconditional 401(k) grant of $24,500 for U.S. hires. The baseline compensation for the Senior Program Officer role is $214,947.45, which would be distributed as a base salary of $190,447.45 and an unconditional 401(k) grant of $24,500 for U.S. hires.
- These compensation figures assume a remote location; there would be geographic adjustments upwards for candidates based in the San Francisco Bay Area or Washington, D.C.
- Time zones and location: We offer remote work in many countries. While we are not able to sponsor visas for this role, we are open to hires outside the U.S. willing to consistently overlap ~5 hours per day with ET business hours. A willingness to travel to Washington, D.C. and San Francisco would also be important for success in this role.
- 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. This policy also includes a productivity benefit, which provides a set amount for staff to expense items that enhance their productivity.
- A continual learning policy that encourages staff to spend time on professional development with related expenses covered.
- Support for remote work — we’ll cover a remote workspace outside your home if you need one, or connect you with a Coefficient Giving coworking hub in your city. We currently have offices in San Francisco and Washington D.C., as well as coworking hubs in New York City and London.
- 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).
- Start date: We would ideally like a candidate to begin as soon as possible after receiving an offer, but we are willing to wait if the strongest candidates can only start later.