What are the responsibilities and job description for the Chief of Staff position at goodfire?
About Goodfire
Goodfire is a research company using interpretability to understand, learn from, and design AI systems. Our mission is to build the next generation of safe and powerful AI—not by scaling alone, but by understanding the intelligence we're building.
Scaling has proven powerful, but today's approach is fundamentally limited: we can't meaningfully understand, debug, or shape what models learn. Every engineering discipline has been gated by fundamental science and AI is at that inflection point now.
We're advancing the science of how AI systems actually work. Treating models as black boxes is an unnecessary handicap—we have access to the structures inside them, and understanding those structures lets us steer what models learn, make them safer and more useful, and extract the vast knowledge they contain. Our goal is to make AI that can be understood, debugged, and shaped like software.
Goodfire is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco with a team of the world’s top interpretability researchers and engineers from organizations like OpenAI and DeepMind. We're backed by over $200M from B Capital, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, Eric Schmidt, and others.
About the role
I (Eric) am looking for a chief of staff. This role is incredibly intensive, and your main goal will be to make me and the leadership team more effective, however you possibly can. You will do ridiculously high volumes of unglamorous work (e.g., high volume follow-ups, drafting internal/external comms, recruiting coordination, logistics, and driving projects that don’t fit neatly anywhere else). You will wear many hats, including recruiting, hosting events, supporting fundraising, planning offsites, new customer outreach, and goals planning. You’ll need great leadership ability, communication skills, and be able to absorb new information very quickly. You’ll need excellent judgment and discretion, and the ability to represent me and the company internally and externally.
You should have a technical background because you will be expected to understand and gain intuition for the latest developments in AI and mechanistic interpretability. You don’t need to be a researcher, but you should be technically fluent enough to engage deeply with AI/product discussions, learn interpretability concepts quickly, and build real intuition over time.
What you’ll bring
Required experience
- Jack of all trades
- Exceptional verbal and written communication; able to produce crisp, executive-ready materials
- Strong work ethic and high output
- Strong leadership and people management experience
- Learns fast
Preferred qualifications
- Former founder or exec at high performing VC-backed startup (Series A or later)
- Experience working in a fast-paced, early-stage startup environment
- Experience with interpretability techniques and tooling for AI models
- Strong understanding of the field of AI and mechanistic interpretability
Our values
Goodfire is looking for individuals who embody our values and share our deep commitment to making interpretability accessible. We are building a team first and foremost.
Put mission and team first
All we do is in service of our mission. We trust each other, deeply care about the success of the organization, and choose to put our team above ourselves.
Improve constantly
We are constantly looking to improve every piece of the business. We proactively critique ourselves and others in a kind and thoughtful way that translates to practical improvements in the organization. We are pragmatic and consistently implement the obvious fixes that work.
Take ownership and initiative
There are no bystanders here. We proactively identify problems and take full responsibility over getting a strong result. We are self-driven, own our mistakes, and feel deep responsibility over what we’re building.
Action today
We have a small amount of time to do something incredibly hard and meaningful. The pace and intensity of the organization is high. If we can take action today or tomorrow, we will choose to do it today.
Where we work
We are hiring for this position in our San Francisco HQ. We are in person 5 days a week, with one company-wide remote week per month.
What we offer
This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.
The expected salary range for this position is $300,000 - $500,000 USD
Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to join a vital mission at an important point in its trajectory — we are developing groundbreaking technology with a world-class team on the critical path to ensuring a safe and beneficial future for humanity. If you want to do your life’s work with us, even if you believe you do not meet every single requirement, apply now.