Staff Accountant

is a non-profit AI research institute working to ensure advanced AI is safe and beneficial for everyone. Our mission is to facilitate breakthrough AI safety research advance global understanding of AI risks and solutions and foster a coordinated global response.

Were structured to support that work from early research through real-world adoption:

Independent by design. We can pursue whats most impactful based on our theory of change and share what we find publicly.

A portfolio approach. Rather than focus on one single direction we run diverse bets across the safety stack. We take promising ideas from initial experiments to deployment informed by red-team partnerships with frontier labs and governments.

Serious infrastructure for ambitious research. A dedicated engineering team runs our compute cluster and experiment-scaling stack so researchers spend their time on research instead of on infra.

Setting the standard. Our events convene key decision makers; our red-team works with frontier developers and governments; and our communications inform the public. Together this drives adoption and sets the new standard in safety.

Since our founding in July 2022 weve grown to 50 staff published 40 academic papers and convened leading AI safety events. Our work is recognized globally with publications at premier venues such as NeurIPS ICML including a Best Paper Honorable Mention in 2026 and ICLR and features in the Financial Times Nature News Wired Magazine and MIT Technology Review. We conduct pre-deployment testing on behalf of frontier developers such as OpenAI and independent evaluations for governments including the EU AI Office and publish the AI Security Leaderboard based on our red-teaming expertise. We help steer and grow the AI safety field through developing research roadmaps with renowned researchers such as Yoshua Bengio; running an AI safety-focused co-working space in Berkeley housing 40 members; and supporting the community through targeted grants to technical researchers.

We are hiring our first in-house accountant to build our internal capacity as we scale the organization. Over the next 1218 months this role will be critical in helping grow to roughly triple its current size while expanding to new geographies and entities.

Reporting to the Head of Finance this is a hands-on full-cycle role suited for an experienced accountant who is comfortable operating independently managing multiple concurrent bodies of work and has worked in dynamic work environments covering many roles across accounting and financial operations.

Why This Role / Why Now

is entering a pivotal phase of growth backed by over $100M in funding and expanding opportunities to shape how advanced AI systems are developed and governed. Our work spans technical research policy and operations including partnerships such as red-teaming frontier models with leading AI companies and governments. As the scope and impact of our work accelerate we are building operations capacity to better support and enable the organization.

As first in-house accountant you will lay the financial foundation that enables everything we do from funding AI safety research and events to expanding into new geographies. You will own the day-to-day accounting operations while improving the systems controls and processes that will scale with us. This means you wont just be keeping the books youll be shaping how a mission-critical organization manages its finances during a pivotal period of growth.

For accountants who enjoy autonomy building solving problems and care about long-term societal impact this is a rare and meaningful opportunity.

If this sounds like you then we would love to hear from you!

Key Responsibilities

• Own the full accounting cycle

• Lead month-end and year-end close processes preparing and reviewing journal entries accruals and account reconciliations

• Maintain accurate general ledger records for a U.S. non-profit with international staff & operations including an entity in Singapore

• Support grant and fund accounting including tracking restricted and unrestricted funding preparing grant financial reports and ensuring compliance with donor requirements

• Assist in the preparation of monthly quarterly and annual financial statements and management reports for leadership and the board

• Coordinate with external accountants auditors and tax preparers

• Partner with the Head of Finance and the Finance Manager to develop and document accounting policies internal controls and financial processes suited to a scaling organization

• Support financial operations of the organization as needed

• Respond to ad hoc financial analysis and reporting requests from program teams leadership and external stakeholders

Must-Have Qualifications

• 5 years of hands-on accounting experience with demonstrated ownership of full-cycle accounting responsibilities

• CPA license or active progress toward CPA

• Excellent at working across spreadsheets and financial systems including Google Sheets Quickbooks Online Ramp Mercury and Airtable (among others)

• Track record of working independently with minimal oversight

• Managing competing priorities and deadlines in a fast-moving environment

• High attention to detail and accuracy with a systematic approach to reconciliation and documentation

• Strong communication skills including being able to explain financial information clearly to non-finance colleagues

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Experience with nonprofit accounting including fund accounting grant reporting and 990 preparation

• Familiarity with multi-entity or multi-currency accounting

• Experience supporting or coordinating external audits

• Passion for working in an impact-driven organization

• Experience developing or improving financial controls

• Experience implementing or improving systems

• Has worked in a startup-like environment

You will be a full-time employee of a 501(c)(3) research non-profit.

• Location: Berkeley CA (onsite/hybrid) or Remote based in the US.

• Hours: Full-time (40 hours/week).

• Compensation: $125000-$145000/year depending on experience. We will also pay for work-related travel and equipment expenses and offer catered lunch and dinner at our office in Berkeley.

• Hiring process: A screen a task test and in-depth interviews with the team followed by reference checks.

If you have any questions about the role feel free to contact us at . Otherwise if you dont have questions the best way to ensure a proper review of your skills and qualifications is by applying directly via the application form. Please dont email us to share your resume (it wont have any impact on our decision). Thank you!

Required Experience:

IC