Office Manager - Boston Biosecurity Hub

The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) is seeking an Office Manager for a newly established Biosecurity and X-Risk Hub in Boston, who is passionate about helping others make a positive difference by ensuring their working environment is optimised.

The Biosecurity and X-Risk Hub is located close to MIT and will accommodate the Sculpting Evolution Group and other professionals working on Biosecurity and X-risk-reduction. In the long run, this office will act as a hub for biorisk mitigation efforts run out of Boston. Our ambition is to provide an excellent working environment for professionals in the biosecurity space, who will likely work on separate but related initiatives spanning a range of biorisk reduction efforts.

You will support a community which will grow to about 30 - 40 professionals in the medium term. Your task will be ensuring the office is a place that boosts productivity, enables new ideas and collaborations to arise, and supports people’s long-term wellbeing.

The role is initially a 2-year development posting, with the potential for an extension depending on performance and circumstances.

About the role

You will work closely with the Operations team of MIT’s Sculpting Evolution Group and the Head of Property at CEA (which is a inedpendent team to CEA the orgainsation focused on Community Building managed by Max Dalton). The role will grow as you develop, but you will start out by focusing on the following key responsibilities:

Office Culture, Policies and Community

• Work on office guidelines, access rules, and office norms as the office is newly founded
• Ensure the office has a thriving community spirit with positive social norms that facilitate information exchange and collaboration
• Work with others to ensure social events at the office meet the desired aims and are well executed
• Coordinate with the wider X-Risk community and other relevant professional groups in Boston and further afield for events

Office Management

You will ensure that the hub is a thriving and productive work environment.

• Manage the allocation of office space to different organisations
• Manage a large number of different contractors (e.g caterers, facility management, etc)
• Organise office events
• Help organise external events and conferences
• Make sure the office is well equipped and stocked
• Respond to any requests staff have about the office space
• Tech/IT support (no experience needed, but we value willingness to jump in and try things)
• Evaluate and make purchasing decisions where necessary
• Proactively find ways to optimise systems and identify new services we can offer to make the office an even more productive space for our users

Who is suited for this role?

You might be a good fit if you:

• Are extremely organised: You will be managing lots of small tasks and relationships. You will need to be organised to stay on top of them.
• Excited about providing excellent service: You’ll treat staff across the organisations as “valued customers,” who we are supporting by providing an excellent office experience.
• Are a proactive problem solver: You will need to notice when things need to be fixed, and then fix them.
• Have great interpersonal and communication skills: You will need to be confident while communicating with a variety of stakeholders, both verbally and in writing.
• Enjoy work that demands speed, accuracy, and attention to detail: Operations work is often fast-paced. Mistakes can be costly, so it's really important for you to pay close attention to details.

Preferred, but not required:

• Enjoy organising events: The office should be a social space in which people connect. Ideally, you enjoy organising events that facilitate that.

Salaries, benefits, and advantages

This is a full-time role, reporting to Jonathan Michel, Head of Property and is based full time from the Boston office.

Your starting salary range is $85,000 - 100,000$, depending on prior experience. There may be flexibility in salary for exceptional candidates with significant experience. You can find out more about our approach to compensation here.

Benefits include health, dental, and vision insurance, flexible work hours, a $6,270 annual professional development allowance, a $6,270 mental health support allowance, extended parental leave, ergonomic equipment, 25 days of paid vacation, and more.

Application

We’ll consider applications as we receive them. We are looking for someone to start as soon as possible.

After considering your written application, we may invite you to complete a short trial task followed by further interviews. We will invite finalists to provide references and participate in a multi-day paid work trial.

We are happy to consider applicants from overseas and may consider sponsorship if needed. CEA serves a global community, and our team works with people and organizations all over the world. We are committed to fostering a culture of inclusion, and we encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply. We especially encourage applications from women, gender minorities, and people of color who are enthusiastic about contributing to our mission. We are an equal opportunity employer.

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact callum@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.