People & Program Operations Lead

What you'll own

You will own the following two portfolios:

People Operations

You’ll make sure that MBDF continues to hire, onboard, and support great people. We're a growing organization with ambitious plans, and we need someone who can make our people processes excellent.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Recruiting. You will lead our hiring rounds from start to finish. This includes defining roles with hiring managers, sourcing high-caliber technical and policy talent, and ensuring an exceptional candidate experience.

• Employee Experience. You’ll ensure that our onboarding, performance, and benefits programs make MBDF a place where top-tier people stay.

Program Operations

You’ll provide the operational support our science and policy teams need to achieve their goals. This might include helping stand up new operational processes, project managing critical initiatives, or tackling ad hoc projects that need a capable owner. 

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Events. We host a range of events from international conferences to small networking gatherings. You’ll handle the complex logistics while ensuring events meet our strategic goals.

• Project management. You’ll provide the structure and support that lets our science and policy teams complete complex projects. 

• Filling the gaps. We expect the needs of teams to change as we hire and take on more ambitious projects. We’re excited to have a get-stuff-done generalist who is excited to jump in and tackle that, whatever shape it takes. 

About You

You're deeply motivated by MBDF's mission and want to contribute to an organization tackling genuinely important, novel challenges. More about you:

• You make things happen. You have a track record of owning projects end-to-end and delivering results. You figure out what needs doing and do it.

• You thrive in ambiguity. You're energized rather than paralyzed by novel problems. MBDF is a young organization working on unprecedented challenges—you'll regularly encounter situations where you need to figure it out.

• You're a strong communicator. You write clearly and concisely. You know when to over-communicate and when to trust people to do their jobs.

• You're pragmatic about tradeoffs. You balance ambition with realism. You're the person who asks "but will this actually work?" and helps the team navigate real constraints without losing sight of the goal.

• You have sound judgment on people and stakeholders. You're good at reading situations, understanding what different parties care about, and navigating dynamics without creating unnecessary friction.

• You're mission-aligned. You care about biosecurity and global catastrophic risk reduction, or you're genuinely curious and ready to learn. You want to work on problems that matter.

Experience & Skills

This role spans multiple domains, but we don't expect deep expertise in all of them. We're looking for a capable generalist with strong fundamentals who can grow with us.

That said, we're excited about candidates who bring some combination of:

• Broad experience across people operations (recruiting, performance management, compliance, etc.).

• Experience running hiring processes in their entirety: designing hiring rounds, managing candidate pipelines and communication, and successfully closing hires.

• Experience supporting other teams on ad hoc, strategic projects. We’re especially excited about candidates who excel at figuring out needs, scoping projects clearly, and project management.

• Experience planning and executing events at meaningful scale: working with stakeholders to understand and clarify the goals of the event, running communication with attendees, and managing event production vendors.

• Comfort working with senior leadership and external stakeholders.

• Background in nonprofits, policy, science-adjacent orgs, or other mission-driven environments.
  

We don't want to miss candidates who could do great things at MBDF. Practically, that means an MBDF staff member reviews every application carefully, considering the whole picture of your background and potential. If you're on the fence about applying because you meet some but not 100% of our preferred qualifications, we encourage you to apply anyway.

Practicalities

• Compensation: $120-150k USD + full benefits; exact offer will reflect experience and fit.

• Location: Remote. MBDF is a fully remote organization.

• Working hours: Must be available during core hours (10am-2pm ET) for overlap with team members across time zones.

• Start: As soon as practical — applications reviewed on a rolling basis.

• Reports to: Deputy Director

MBDF is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.