Impress employers and recruiters.
Choose from hundreds of resume examples.

Target Resume Now

Tailor your resume to this Director of Operations, Youth AI Safety Institute role.

Rezi rewrites your resume against COMMON SENSE MEDIA's job description. Free.

Resume score gauge reading 58 out of 100

Don't guess if your resume is good enough.

See how it scores against the Director of Operations, Youth AI Safety Institute posting at COMMON SENSE MEDIA — free, in seconds.

About the Role

The Director of Operations is the Executive Director's closest operational partner, ensuring the Youth AI Safety Institute functions with integrity, efficiency, and strategic foresight. This role oversees fiduciary oversight, governance compliance, standards execution, partnership strategy, and contract negotiations, acting as the connective tissue for internal, cross-organizational, and external relationships.

Responsibilities

Serve as the operational anchor for the Institute's leadership team, ensuring research, standards, evaluations, and public engagement functions have necessary resources.
Identify and resolve operational risks (legal, ethical, logistical, reputational) and develop escalation protocols.
Build and improve the Institute's operating model, including processes, workflows, decision-making frameworks, and accountability systems.
Oversee the Operations team in setting direction, removing blockers, and ensuring cross-organizational coordination.
Hold responsibility for the Institute's governance infrastructure, ensuring policies, procedures, and safeguards are in place and enforced.
Oversee funder compliance across philanthropic and industry relationships, ensuring grant obligations and reporting requirements are met.
Oversee the Institute's approach to formal complaints, methodological challenges, and legal inquiries.
Cultivate senior-level strategic partnerships with academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, standards bodies, and international agencies.
Identify future partnership needs for the next two to three years and begin building those relationships.
Represent the Institute in high-stakes partnership conversations and negotiations.
Support the Executive Director in cultivating relationships with key philanthropic and industry funders and coalition partners.
Oversee all significant contract negotiations, ensuring fair terms, protected independence, and anticipation of future contingencies.
Apply strategic foresight to contract design to accommodate industry evolution, model updates, and regulatory shifts.
Set the Institute's contracting standards, approval frameworks, and spending authority policies.
Proactively identify legal and contractual risks and work with legal counsel to address them.
Serve as the primary operational liaison between the Institute and Common Sense Media's shared services (finance, legal, HR, communications, development, product, engineering, marketing).
Ensure the Institute's work is visible and understood across Common Sense Media, fostering internal collaboration.
Represent the Institute's operational interests in Common Sense Media leadership forums and planning processes.
Build internal culture and communication rhythms to keep the team coordinated and aligned.

Requirements

7+ years of professional experience in senior operations, strategy, legal affairs, or institutional leadership, including overseeing teams and cross-organizational relationships.
Demonstrated experience operating at the intersection of strategy and execution in a mission-driven, research, or standards-setting context.
Track record of building and managing complex, multi-stakeholder partnerships, including negotiating and structuring significant contracts and agreements.
Experience overseeing governance and compliance functions, including conflict-of-interest management, grant compliance, or regulatory adherence in a nonprofit or research institution.
Passion for online safety and thoughtful about the role that AI plays in our society.
Exceptional judgment: able to identify risk early, make sound decisions under uncertainty, and know when to escalate.
Senior-level written and verbal communication skills; able to represent the Institute credibly in high-stakes conversations with funders, government officials, international partners, and industry leaders.
Experience in AI policy, technology safety, digital rights, or adjacent fields, with sufficient technical fluency to engage credibly with frontier AI companies and standards experts.
Background in international organizations, global multi-stakeholder initiatives, or cross-jurisdictional policy work.
Experience supporting a founding executive director or CEO of a startup, institute, or new program at scale.
Familiarity with standards-setting bodies, benchmarking organizations, or independent research institutes.
Must pass a criminal background check.

Skills

Operations Management
Strategic Planning
Fiduciary Oversight
Governance Compliance
Partnership Management
Contract Negotiation
Risk Management
Cross-functional Collaboration
Communication Skills
AI Policy
Technology Safety
Digital Rights

Location

San Francisco, CA

Work Type

Full Time
In office

Experience Level

Senior-level

Salary/Compensations

$125,000–$155,000

Benefits

Competitive nonprofit compensation
Comprehensive benefits
Collaborative, flexible work environment
Meaningful access to the Institute's leadership and the broader Common Sense Media organization

About the Company

Common Sense Media is the leading independent nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing research-backed information, education, and a trusted voice to thrive in the age of AI.
Through its Youth AI Safety Institute, media ratings, advocacy campaigns, and Digital Literacy & Well-Being Curriculum, it protects and prepares kids, reaching 150 million families and more than 90K schools worldwide.
Learn more: https://about.commonsensemedia.org/

Equal Opportunity

Common Sense Media provides equal employment opportunities to all qualified individuals and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other protected classification or characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.
Common Sense Media will also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.