---
title: 'Clinical Operations Lead at Convergent Research'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/clinical-operations-lead-convergent-research-san-francisco-hjm69j52dc61'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Clinical Operations Lead at Convergent Research

- **Company:** Convergent Research
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $138k–$183k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch/b8a799bc-b6f6-4355-aea7-78b31617a5ac

## Job description

## About Arbor Neuroscience

(formerly Forest Neurotech) Arbor is a nonprofit research organization working on one of the hardest open problems in clinical neuroscience: how to change brain circuits by design. Millions of people with depression, chronic pain, and other brain disorders have no treatment that works. Modulating activity in the brain circuits underlying their symptoms – with electrical stimulation, focused ultrasound, or magnetic stimulation – can work spectacularly well. But it doesn't work reliably, and we can't predict who it will help. That's what Arbor aims to fix. The starting point is a new class of experiment: intervene, measure how the circuit responds, track the symptom, and repeat in the same individual over months. We’re building the necessary experimental platform. It currently includes the Forest 1 ultrasound system, which works like a wearable functional MRI, but with higher resolution. The system images activity across large brain volumes, including deep brain structures, and will soon stimulate as well. We are also adding electrode-based interfaces in animal studies. From these data, we'll build models to make neuromodulation predictable. Arbor is a Focused Research Organization within the Convergent Research family, and the new name for Forest Neurotech. We're a mission-focused nonprofit, doing multidisciplinary translational work that doesn't fit in a lab or on a company roadmap. We have the funding to run the first phase, and we're a small team – the people we hire now will shape what Arbor becomes.

## The Role

This is the person who makes sure we can actually run studies with human participants.

Arbor's human studies use functional ultrasound imaging, and soon focused ultrasound neuromodulation. Participants are people with a sonolucent cranial implant, usually placed after surgery for traumatic brain injury, stroke, or a tumor. The studies are longitudinal: the same participant returns over months, first in the lab or clinic and eventually at home. We work in partnership with hospitals and academic centers, here and in the UK.

The program needs to grow, and much of the infrastructure for that doesn't exist yet.

Part of the job is conventional clinical operations: IRB submissions and amendments, protocol preparation, site readiness, participant scheduling and support, safety monitoring, documentation, and training systems. You'd own all of it. We're small, so for now that means doing the work as much as overseeing it.

The second part is harder to specify and a bigger challenge. Our program will depend on the quality and scale of our relationships with clinicians and hospital departments. Building and maintaining those partnerships requires a real understanding of where our interests align. This would be yours to own.

You'd also help grow our studies beyond the clinic. At-home longitudinal neuromodulation is where this program is headed, and we don’t yet know what that requires. Some of the answers are technical, and some will come from spending time with participants and seeing what their lives are like at home.

## What You’ll Do

Build the clinical program:

- Partner with scientific leadership on clinical strategy: which sites and partnerships and where our incentives align

- Develop and own a recruitment program from a small and geographically scattered participant pool

- Qualify and onboard clinical partners

- Help design what at-home studies will require, from participant experience through logistics and safety

Run the studies:

- Lead start-up for internal and external studies

- Own our IRB submissions and ongoing interactions

- Manage participant scheduling, visits, follow-up, payments, and travel

- Coordinate device deployment, equipment readiness, and study-specific technical support; you don't need to run experiments, but you should be able to troubleshoot them

- Establish and maintain TMF, document control, clinical SOPs, and the personnel training program

- Own adverse event tracking and reporting

Where you start will depend on your strengths and on what the program needs most. This won't stay one person's job as Arbor grows.

Who We’re Looking For

The successful candidate will have:

- Substantial experience in human clinical research operations

- Enough scientific training to engage substantively with clinicians and researchers and to step in and help run a study when we need it. Advanced training, ideally a PhD in a relevant field, is the most common route, but not the only one

- The written and spoken communication skills to explain the research to participants and collaborators and to produce final drafts of key documents

- The organizational and interpersonal skills to keep everyone moving in the same direction, often with no established process to follow

- The ambition to build clinical infrastructure, not just run it

- Directness without friction – you say what you think, ask when you don't know, and aren't looking to compete with your colleagues

Nice to have: background in neuroscience, neuroimaging, neuromodulation; work with hospitals, academic medical centers, or external clinical research partners; early-stage medical device or biotech experience; familiarity with ICH-GCP, ISO 14155, and FDA medical device requirements; experience with QMS, CTMS, or eTMF systems; AE/SAE reporting, monitoring, CAPAs, and audit readiness.

Our benefits include: Medical, dental, and vision – most plans fully covered for you and your dependents 401(k) with up to 6% match Company-paid life and AD&D, with voluntary supplemental options 15 holidays plus a floating day for your birthday 3 weeks PTO increasing with tenure, and separate sick leave Arbor will consider sponsorship for U.S. work authorization case by case. Sponsorship isn't guaranteed, and immigration timelines can affect start dates. Where we sponsor, we cover the legal and government fees. Arbor is an equal opportunity employer. We hire based on talent and experience and don't discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

## About Convergent Research

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Convergent Research is a nonprofit organization that launches and supports Focused Research Organizations (FROs) to build foundational technologies that unblock scientific progress.
- **Entity Type**: Private Nonprofit (501(c)(3))
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Adam Marblestone, Anastasia Gamick

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Scientific Research and Development Services (NAICS 5417)
- **Target customers**: B2B — scientific researchers, universities, government agencies, and philanthropic funders; operates as a "mission control" launching public-good R&D projects.
- **Mission statement**: “Spectacularly good futures are within reach, but only if we mind the gaps. Scientists need essential technologies to do the groundbreaking research all of us depend on.”

## Products & Services
Convergent Research does not sell commercial products. Instead, it incubates **Focused Research Organizations (FROs)** – time-bound, technically ambitious nonprofit efforts designed to produce high-impact public goods. Current and past FROs/projects include:

- **Cultivarium**: Developing tools for studying novel (previously unculturable) microorganisms.
- **E11 Bio (EVE Bio)**: Brain circuit mapping technologies.
- **Forest Neurotech**: Neural technology and biosensing platforms.
- **Ocean CDR Atlas**: Open-access tool for ocean-based carbon dioxide removal measurement.
- **Fundamental Development Gap Map (v1.0)**: A public web portal identifying bottlenecks holding back science.

Convergent Research provides shared operational support (legal, finance, HR, communications) across all FROs.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (nonprofit).
- **Annual Revenue (FY2024)**: **$72.4 million** (ProPublica IRS filing). Total revenue for FY2024 was $100.1 million.
- **Total Grant Funding Received**: At least $25.1 million from Vanguard Charitable, $9.5 million from Probabilistic Computing Foundation, $8 million from The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation (latest filings).
- **Total Funding Raised**: ~$2 million in disclosed grants (led by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2023); the vast majority comes from additional major philanthropic gifts not categorized as single-investor rounds.
- **Notable Partners/Funders**: Advanced Research and Intervention Agency (ARIA, UK), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, Vanguard Charitable, Probabilistic Computing Foundation.
- **Growth Signals**: 164 employees (as of latest CauseIQ data, up from ~23 on LinkedIn); headquarter presence in Palo Alto, Cambridge (MA), and Boulder (CO); expanded into the UK via a collaboration with ARIA (“FROST UK”); 15 active job postings with 25% month-over-month posting growth.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Novel institutional model**: Focused Research Organizations (FROs) fill a gap between traditional academia and for-profit startups — targeted, time-boxed, public-good missions.
- **Lean central infrastructure**: Shared operational support lets FRO scientists focus purely on technical breakthroughs, avoiding administrative overhead.
- **High-caliber scientific network**: Leaders include senior scientists from MIT, Caltech, King’s College London, and CMU as grantees/collaborators.
- **Access to major philanthropic capital**: Partners with some of the largest climate and science foundations globally.

## Strategic Focus
- **Geographic expansion**: Formal partnership with ARIA in the UK to launch FROs abroad (“FROST UK”).
- **Gap mapping**: Releasing and refining the Fundamental Development Gap Map to systematically identify the biggest bottlenecks in science.
- **Scaling the FRO model**: Adding new FROs in ocean CDR, neuroscience, and molecular engineering; hiring Founders in Residence to spin up new efforts.
- **Public data as product**: Committed to releasing open datasets and protocols (e.g., drug–target assay data, Lean proof library) as public goods.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven**: Direct, hands-on impact on solving foundational scientific bottlenecks rather than incremental product improvements.
- **Culture**: Described as “mission control” — fast-paced, collaborative, technical. Leadership emphasizes pushing high-risk, high-reward projects.
- **Locations**: On-site positions in Palo Alto (CA), Cambridge/Boston (MA), and Boulder (CO). Some roles are US- or UK-based.
- **Team composition**: Small, senior-heavy centralized team (~20 core staff in Palo Alto) plus larger distributed FRO project teams (~164 total organization-wide). Significant cross-functional work across legal, finance, operations, and science.
- **Typical roles**: Postdoctoral Research Scientists, Research Associates, Biosensing Engineers, Finance/Operations Managers, General Counsel.
- **Compensation transparency (IRS filing)**: CEO Adam Marblestone — $431,025; President Anastasia Gamick — $360,495; competitive nonprofit scientific salaries.
- **Notable perks**: Working with world-class scientists and funders; contributions to genuinely public-good science; tax-deductible donation eligible organization.
- **Remote/hybrid**: Mostly on-site (Boulder, Palo Alto, Cambridge); limited remote possibilities depending on role.

## Sources
1. [convergentresearch.org](https://www.convergentresearch.org/)
2. [jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch](https://jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch)
3. [linkedin.com/company/convergent-research](https://linkedin.com/company/convergent-research)
4. [causeiq.com – Convergent Research](https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/convergent-research,883013217/)
5. [projects.propublica.org – Convergent Research Inc](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/883013217)

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