About BlueDot Impact

We’re a startup non-profit helping people create a better future for humanity by designing and running courses on some of the world’s most pressing problems. We find people who could have enormous impact, motivate and equip them via our courses, and connect them with impactful opportunities.

Over the past 2 years, we’ve supported 2,500 people to learn about AI safety and pandemic preparedness. Our alumni have gone on to develop Anthropic’s Responsible Scaling Policies, conduct AI evaluations at the UK Government’s AI Safety Institute, work at Google DeepMind on mechanistic interpretability, and much more. In 2024, we’ll train 3,000 more people via our three main courses (AI Alignment, AI Governance, Pandemics). In 2025, we’ll expand our course portfolio by designing courses on topics like cybersecurity for AI companies, technical AI governance, biosecurity policy, and upskilling in machine learning. We’ll also expand our workshops for government policymakers. 

We’re a small and intense team. We’re very serious about having a big impact on the world, while also enjoying a fun and silly working environment. We’re always learning new things, teaching each other new skills, and improving the way we work so we’re more effective at producing great courses that scale. We have high expectations for each other’s work, and we support each other to meet those expectations. 

The team is roughly split in two: focus area specialists who design the courses, and the product/software team who build and improve the course infrastructure. You’ll work closely with Li-Lian (Product), Dewi (Director), Adam (AI Safety and some software), and our new Software Engineering hire. We’re a small team, so you’ll wear many hats. 

We’re grateful to be supported by Open Philanthropy, and we’ve raised $4M thus far. We’re now fundraising for a further $5M to support our work over the next two years. 

Learn more about other open roles and our team values on our Careers page.

What you'll do

We’re looking for a talented generalist who is obsessed with building magical experiences for the students in our courses. 

Your work will have a huge impact on the pipeline of people going into AI safety and biosecurity, by improving and scaling the most popular courses on those topics. Our AI safety courses are the main pathway by which people go from “interested in AI safety” to “working in AI safety.” If you’re excited about design, engaging with users, and building excellent products, this is a great opportunity to improve the world. 

In the first 6 months, you’ll work on:

• Make the Project Phase in our courses exceptional. The projects serve as a launchpad for our students to start doing impactful work. Students have done great work for their projects in the past, but the user experience is bad. The weekly check-ins are hit-or-miss, students describe being confused about what they’re meant to do, and only 50% of students who complete the Learning Phase submit a project. 

• Experiment with virtual hackathons. While the Project Phase is part-time over 4 weeks, we believe a more intensive full-time weekend sprint could be better at supporting students to produce great work. If your prototype hackathons deliver a lot of impact, you’ll scale them up while continuing to improve them. 
• Learn to use a range of platforms to deliver our courses, including Airtable, Bubble, Make, Customer.io, miniExtensions, Whalesync, CoAlias, Porkbun, Posthog, and more. 

After 6 months, you’ll use your understanding of our courses and infrastructure to design and deliver new products that contribute to our priorities. These include: 

• Increasing the number of exceptional people who are excited to apply to our courses,
• Improving the learning experience on our courses, so students become more capable at having a huge impact, and
• Increasing the number of alumni who land impactful roles within 1 year of course completion.

You’ll determine what products we should build based on our company priorities and user needs. A few early ideas include integrating an AI learning tutor into our Course platform, building an email-based spaced repetition system to reinforce core concepts and encourage continuous learning, and launching a newsletter for 10k people/month with the most exciting job opportunities in AI safety and biosecurity.

About you

You might be a great fit for this role if you:

• Are passionate about preventing pandemics and/or an AI catastrophe.
• Are excited to wear many hats, learn things quickly, and work on solving a variety of challenges.
• Can diagnose complex problems in ambiguous situations, generate ideas on how to solve them, and rapidly test which solutions are most effective.
• Have excellent writing and verbal communication skills. 
• Have strong design skills, and strive to create beautiful and user-friendly products.
• Can use low-code tools to build prototypes.
• Have delivered products users love.

We encourage speculative applications; we expect many strong candidates will not meet all of the criteria listed here.

We believe that a more diverse team leads to a healthier and happier workplace culture, better decision-making, and greater long-term impact. In this spirit, we especially encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply to this role, and to join us in our mission to help solve the world’s biggest problems.

Location and compensation

We’re based in the London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA) in East London, and we accept applications from all countries. We can sponsor UK visas, and we will pay for all your moving costs (flights, housing in London for 1 month, air freight). We have a strong preference for individuals who can move to London or work in the office 3+ days per week, though we will consider remote-first for exceptional candidates. This is a full-time role.

Compensation is based on your experience and relevant industry benchmarks, and will likely fall within £60-90k. Other benefits include:

• An annual £5,000 wellbeing budget and a £5,000 productivity budget
• Private health, dental, and vision insurance
• 10% employer pension contribution
• 25 days of paid vacation in addition to public holidays.

Apply for this role

The application process consists of:

• Stage 1: Initial application (<20 minutes).
• Stage 2: Work test (2 hours).
• Stage 3: Interview (45 mins).
• Stage 4: 1-2 day in-person work trial in London. We’ll pay for your flights and accommodation. If you can’t make it to London, we’ll consider a remote work trial. 

You will be compensated for all work samples at £30/hour.

The application deadline is 7 July. We evaluate candidates on a rolling basis and we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

If you have any questions about the role, email dewi [at] bluedot [dot] org.