Community & Operations Coordinator / Manager

We're looking for someone to run Meridian's workspace and coordinate logistics across our programmes — a hands-on ops role with ownership at the centre of Cambridge's AI safety research community.

Meridian is a small, ambitious organisation working on AI safety, governance, and biosecurity. We manage £5M in research grants, work with around 200 researchers, and hold contracts with ARIA and the UK AI Safety Institute. The environment is intellectual and fairly startupy — one day you'll overhear a conversation about transformer architectures; the next, someone's explaining the economics of the green belt.

What you’ll do

Help our research programmes
You’ll help manage the operations of MARS (Mentorship for Alignment Research Students) and our Visiting Researchers Programme. We host visiting researchers from around the world and run regular events — talks, lunches, retreats. You'll make sure the logistics and community aspects actually work: catering, rooms, travel, accommodation.

Run the space
You'll manage our workspace — supplies, facilities, vendors, day-to-day operations. You'll also have budget and latitude to improve things: layout, furniture, art, how things work.

Host events
Help organise and run workshops, journal clubs, and other community events for AI safety and biosecurity researchers in Cambridge.

Build relationships
Stay in close contact with members, researchers, and collaborators, strengthening our local and global research networks.

Be the first face people see
New researchers and visitors come through regularly. You'll welcome them, run orientations, help them get settled.

What a week might look like

Monday: Meet with a programme lead about a visiting researcher cohort arriving next month. Order coffee and snacks (sneak a few of your favourite sparkling waters into the order). Realise the common area layout isn't working and start planning a redesign.

Tuesday: Welcome a researcher visiting from DeepMind, run their orientation. Spend the afternoon sourcing furniture for a reading room you've been wanting to set up. Make lanyards for an upcoming conference on cybersecurity.

Wednesday: Run logistics for a workshop on interpretability — catering, AV, room setup. Stick around for some of the talks if you're curious. Host the pub quiz you started running monthly.

Thursday: Coffee with a biosecurity fellow who wants advice on running weekly pub socials. Book travel for a speaker flying in from Berkeley. Chase the landlord about the heating.

Friday: Host fika (traditional Swedish break for coffee and biscuits!). A bunch of people join the rock climbing trip you organised that evening.

The core of the job is making things work — ordering supplies, coordinating logistics, solving problems. Beyond that, there's a lot of freedom to shape things. Want to host a reading group on digital minds? Start a weekly punting trip? Repaint the walls? Run a vegan potluck? Bring in a speaker you find interesting? All possible. We want someone who'll make the space their own.

What we’re looking for

You don’t need to tick every box, but we’re especially excited to hear from you if you:

• Are organised and reliable — you can juggle many things without losing threads

• Have a sense for space and design — you notice when a room isn't working

• Are warm and socially aware — you're good with people

• Have good judgment about when to act vs. when to ask

• Want autonomy, not close management

• Have interest in or knowledge of AI safety, biosecurity, or related fields (curiosity matters more than expertise)

Experience in ops, events, or hospitality is useful but not essential. We care more about judgment, capability, and taste than specific CV lines. This could be your first ops role if you're the right kind of person.

Additional Details

• This is an in-person role in Cambridge, UK. Occasional early evenings and rare weekends for events (time off in lieu).

• We can sponsor UK work visas for exceptional candidates.

• Contract Type: Full time (40 hours/week)

• Salary: £40,000-55,000 depending on experience

• 4% Pension contribution

• Lunches and snacks provided

• Access to all Meridian events and the wider research community

• Earliest Start: January 2026 (flexible)

• Contract Duration: Grant-funded, confirmed through January 2027 (likely to be renewed)