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Portfolio Manager, BERI
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Overview
Title: Portfolio Manager
Reports to: Deputy Director
Status: Full-time
Location: Fully remote
Work authorization: Open to candidates anywhere, although American and European time zones are generally preferred. You need the right to work in the country where you live. We employ US-based staff directly and hire internationally through an employer of record.
Salary range: Annual salary equivalent of $90,000-$150,000 US dollars (USD), based on experience and local market rates. We are committed to pay equity and encourage applicants from all countries to apply.
Introduction
About BERI: The Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative is a small, fully remote 501(c)(3) that provides operational support and fiscal sponsorship to dozens of university research groups and other projects working to safeguard humanity's long-term future. We are a growing team of operations professionals supporting some of the most important research happening in AI safety and governance, biosecurity, and related fields.
Portfolio Management: We are looking to hire 3-5 Portfolio Managers. Hires will own a slice of BERI’s portfolio of projects that we support, acting as the first point of contact for each project. You can think of this role as being a fractional COO for each project. This role is hands-on and varied: you will support programs end-to-end, float between multiple programs and tasks each day, and puzzle through novel situations each week. The most important qualities for you to have are the judgment to make decisions, organizational skills to balance many priorities without dropping balls, strength in administrative work, and a positive attitude to bring to collaborations.
Growth: Increasing interest in AI Safety and Biosecurity work means that demand for BERI’s sponsorship is growing, and we’re growing the team to meet it. As part of this scaling phase, exceptional hires may see their role evolve and grow in response to operational needs. This is an exciting time to join BERI and help us determine what a larger version of our organization will look like and what your role in it may become.
Impact: You will develop strong working connections with many individuals, programs, and organizations in AI Safety and existential risk reduction. This role will allow you to leverage strong administrative and management skills to have an outsized impact on x-risk through supporting multiple teams and institutions. You’ll be working alongside pioneering researchers, institutions, and donors, who are grateful for the role BERI plays in enabling their work.
About the role
These are generalist positions. Rather than splitting work across functions (finance, HR, etc.), each Portfolio Manager will be expected to own programs end-to-end, overseeing onboarding, project management, budgeting, personnel, and more. You will be the first point of contact for the projects you support, and you will be the person with the “full picture” of each one. You’ll have teammates with more specialized expertise in risk, legal, finance, and compliance to whom you can escalate. At BERI, we normalize checking each other’s work and asking for thought partnership when we’re unsure; this is crucial when our work is so varied.
This role is primarily hands-on, and the variety is real. You will manage funds and budgets, payments, risk management, support recruitment rounds, and provide other operational support as needed. You will move across multiple projects and several kinds of problems in a single day; you can expect a new challenge to land in your inbox every week, and you will pick up new skills constantly. Some of it is unglamorous administrative work, and consequential judgment calls tend to arrive embedded within the operations. Decision making is foundational: you’ll regularly encounter situations with no precedent, and will develop the judgment to handle them while balancing project objectives and compliance.
What you’ll own:
Project onboarding: Run exploratory and kick-off calls, establish initial budgets and project priorities.
Working relationships: Build confidence and rapport with each project, so they bring you questions and problems early.
Recruitment support: Draft job descriptions, create work tests, and conduct first–round interviews, onboarding employees and contractors.
Manage compliance: Help projects understand legal and limitations. You will sometimes have to tell a project “no,” but help them figure out compliant solutions to achieve their objectives.
Budgets and expenditure review: Approve transactions and invoices, ensure that spending fits BERI’s charitable purpose and grant terms.
Events and travel: create custom travel policies, support visa documentation requests, handle group travel bookings and expenses.
Regular check-ins with each project in your role as outsourced operations support.
Maintain detailed records of decisions, judgment calls, and unique context around each project.
In addition to direct portfolio support, you’ll help BERI grow and run better. We continuously improve our processes by creating templates, checklists, automations, and turning lessons learned into improvements for the rest of the team. You may also take on special projects that align with your interests, such as writing, reporting, new initiatives, or something we haven’t thought of yet.
About you
This role has two distinct categories of requirements.
Foundational qualities are what we need you to bring from day one. These are central to success in this role and difficult to develop on the job.:
At least three years of experience in operations, program, or project management is required.
Strong context-switching. You can expect to move through many of the above responsibilities all in a single day across a number of projects.
Interpersonal skills. Be someone who inspires confidence and who projects are excited to work with. Ability to have tough conversations: tell a project that what they’re wanting to do isn’t legal or surpasses a risk threshold, and explain other available options.
Resourcefulness and creativity when no precedent exists. You will regularly receive surprising or novel requests, and you can figure out how to get started without a playbook.
Writing skills: You can communicate clearly, thoroughly, and quickly in writing.
Discretion and trustworthiness with money and personnel.
Key skills that you’ll need to either bring into the role or be quick to upskill on in your first weeks to months on the job. We realize that very few candidates will bring this entire set of skills on day one, but if you are starting with even some of these, we strongly encourage you to apply.
Budget management: experience managing a program or grant budget
Understanding of what fiscal sponsorship is, how it works, and the nuances of it
Understanding of key non-profit concerns such as private benefit and inurement, variance power, and conflicts of interest
Accounting knowledge: know when something needs to be coded as a prepaid expense or added to a fixed asset register rather than being expensed
Organizational development and management experience: advising new programs on topics such as strategic planning, project management, HR concerns, etc.
Contract writing: Ability to draft, edit, and review employment agreements, and identify when something needs to be escalated to counsel
Fundraising and grant proposal writing. BERI primarily supports fundraising for projects rather than leading it, but some familiarity is helpful.
HR basics: understand employee vs. contractor classification differences, equal opportunity employment, reducing biases in recruitment, and salary benchmarking
Benefits
Time off (paid vacation, holidays, sick, bereavement, and parental leave)
Platinum health, dental, and vision insurance (98% of premiums covered by BERI, and 50% for dependents)
Professional development stipend ($4k/year/employee)
Life and short-term/long-term disability insurances (100% of premiums covered by BERI)
Very flexible work schedule (including hours, location, and unpaid vacation policies)
Application Process
Application form
Work test (2-3 hours, paid)
Interview (45 min)
Reference checks
Possibly a second round interview or work test
Offers
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, but we will begin first round review and next stage invitations by September 6, so we encourage you to submit your application as soon as possible. We aim to finalize offers by mid-October, ideally for an early November start date.
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