---
title: 'Founder in Residence at Convergent Research'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founder-in-residence-convergent-research-various-vet4n85q6a0n'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-07'
---

# Founder in Residence at Convergent Research

- **Company:** Convergent Research
- **Location:** Various
- **Compensation:** $150k–$300k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-06-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch/85612542-4f4a-4310-b3a8-2bddb7b4662c

## Job description

Location: Remote, with plans for local hubs in SF, DC, London, and Tel Aviv Ask us about relocation support if you're intersted in moving to a hub. Travel: likely 5-20% travel, largely consisting of team offsites meeting in the hubs and conferences

Advancements in AI bring both opportunities and serious risks.  Atlas Ignota takes on society-scale AI risks that no existing institution is built to address — we design the intervention, validate it with domain experts and funders, then recruit and empower the career professional who will own it. You can think of us as: A tiger team that identifies, scopes, and launches interventions that aren't a good fit for existing organizations A design studio developing and staffing product requirements docs for coordination and market failures A think tank combined with whatever their analog of "tech transfer" would be. Atlas  is looking to incubate a cohort of Founders to each scope a different potential intervention and exit Atlas (with support) to lead it. That’s why Atlas is launching a selective incubator for career professionals who have spent the last decade or more executing on relevant security topics, and now want to direct their skills to the most important risks facing society from growing AI capabilities. Our job is to lower the barriers to entry — both the cost of leaving your current career path and the risk that a good idea never gets off the ground — and to meaningfully raise the odds that the effort you launch succeeds. As an Incubated Founder, we’ll work with you to take one risk from a rough problem statement to a fundable plan: sharpening a concrete intervention, pressure-testing it against the field, and building the relationships and founding team to execute on it. Founders will have between six months and two years to research a problem and develop a pitch, but we hold that timeline loosely — a founder is done when their effort is ready to stand on its own, not when a calendar says so. The goal is for founders to develop an ambitious plan as quickly as possible (early graduations welcome), complete with conditionally committed users/stakeholders, an excellent founding team, expert advisors, and organizational plans like milestones — completion consists of pitching funders like Coefficient Giving on an ambitious grant, having assembled an excellent founding team, and launching with a clear path to scaling up your project substantially, such as $10 million or more.

Cohort 1: Securing AI Infrastructure

While Atlas is interested in many aspects of AI Resilience, our first cohort of founders will focus on securing AI infrastructure.

We expect transformative AI will need to be secured against threat actors like nation-states, terrorists, insider threats, and even misaligned AIs themselves — actors who may have enormous resources, intentions to harm large numbers of people, or significant legitimate access. These may soon be the highest-stakes security problems in the world, and you'll be one of a very small pool of people qualified to work on them.

Examples of problems we're looking for owners on include:

- Securing AI from exfiltration: Protecting model weights and algorithms from theft.
- Securing AI integrity: Protecting models from tampering via data poisoning or other attacks.
- Disconnected model safety: Preventing models that are not being served by AI labs from being used for catastrophic purposes
- Secure compute verification: Verifying that large-scale compute workloads are compliant with law or international agreements.
- Protocols for using compromised AI: Also called AI control – how to use untrusted AI to do useful work.
- Detecting and responding to rogue deployments: What to do if we fail to contain transformative AI and it gets deployed (or deploys itself) without oversight.

You can read a series of one-pagers about these problems [here](https://multipliercg.substack.com/p/key-problems-in-ai-infrastructure).

What success looks like:

By the end of the program, a successful founder has:

- Sharpened a rough direction into a concrete intervention, with attestations from domain experts that it's plausible and from decision-makers that it would change their behavior;
- Built the relationships and founding team needed to execute it; and
- Produced a grant proposal in partnership with an interested donor we’ll introduce. Joining the incubator does not guarantee follow-on funding for your project, but the goal of the program is to develop plans in contact with funders that they’re excited to scale. If there's not a mutually satisfactory project to scale up, we'll support you in finding your next role.

Outcomes we'd be excited about:

- You become the founder and/or directly responsible individual (DRI) of an object-level intervention.
- You become a grantmaker or “[general manager](https://nanransohoff.substack.com/p/there-should-be-general-managers)” of grantmakers directing serious capital across this field
- You become the advisor, mentor, and recruiter for the next wave of GCR founders in this field.

We're not looking to maximize follow-on funding — we're looking for people the field builds around.

Incubated Founders and Field Strategists Atlas is also hiring [Field Strategists](https://jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch/aa2d1b42-e929-4c61-b582-d094c7b515f7), and we're running both searches at once, with separate applications. The two roles are complementary.

- Field Strategists map a field’s incentives and bottlenecks, identify points of leverage, and de-risk high-impact interventions across an ecosystem. Their goal is to scope promising solutions clearly enough to pitch them, identify and recruit the right founders to own them, and support the handoff from strategy to execution.  The field strategist holds an ongoing position at Atlas, building the skills and praxis for this approach for multiple efforts simultaneously and in series.
- Incubated Founders take a single object-level project and iterate a rough idea into a fundable, executable plan. Founders will learn and practice field strategy for one specific problem, which will become a project they will remain responsible for and transition out of Atlas.

Upon joining Atlas, you're not locked in: a founder who realizes their strength is ecosystem strategy can switch tracks, and vice versa.

You may be a fit for this role if you have…

- One of the following backgrounds, or similar:
- Experience working on cybersecurity in a national security context (especially building SL5 facilities, intelligence, or offensive security).
- Experience in ML security research (tamper resistance, backdoors, password locking).
- Experience in a relevant industry context — e.g., at a frontier AI lab, or in security at a hyperscaler, hardware company, or government contractor.
- Exceptional capability in a relevant area — e.g., academic security research, security entrepreneurship, developing security standards, or AI hardware or firmware.
- The practice of breaking down ambiguous problems into clear next steps, and you don't get overwhelmed when you lack guidance.
- The ability to clearly articulate your plans, verbally and in writing, to coordinate and motivate others.
- A practice of reviewing the state-of-the-art after having an idea, coupled with an urge to prototype, test, and iterate.
- Experience coordinating and aligning external stakeholders to work toward a common goal.
- A strong compulsion to do something about AI risk — you understand what it would mean to be responsible for mitigating a particular risk from AI, and you want it anyway (because no one else is).
- The ability and inclination to do this work (to some extent) without Atlas, but you believe the program’s network, expertise, and institutional support would substantially decrease the difficulty, increase your odds of success, and/or scale your enjoyment while doing it.

(we expect most hires will have most but perhaps not all of these)

Bonus points if you have...

- A habit of doing non-technical coordination work despite a technical background.
- Led or started an organization, or managed people.
- Already worked on related AI security problems, and have ideas you're ready to pursue.
- Deep networks in cybersecurity or the AI safety community.
- An uncanny ability to get people to tell you things they wouldn't write down, get conversations with incredibly busy people, or come up with creative ideas to align incentives.
- The ability to hold a US security clearance.

(we expect most hires will have 1-3 of these)

We're probably not the right fit if you…

- Already have the answer to the problem you want to solve, and want funding more than a thought partner.
- Want a stable, well-scoped role with a clear roadmap handed to you.
- Are drawn to AI risk in the abstract but don't want to own a single specific, concrete problem.
- (If you'd be happy owning a multiple problems (or multiple dimensions of the same problem) until you’re ready to hand them off, [Field Strategist](https://jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch/aa2d1b42-e929-4c61-b582-d094c7b515f7) might be right for you...)

## 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)

## Other roles at Convergent Research

- [Research Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/research-software-engineer-convergent-research-boulder-zhz54pt4hden) — Boulder, CO
- [E11 Bio - Scientist I/II, Expansion Microscopy](https://feeny.ai/job/e11-bio-scientist-i-ii-expansion-microscopy-convergent-research-alameda-wkkvjzj7xfz7) — Alameda, CA
- [Controller](https://feeny.ai/job/controller-convergent-research-united-states-pjxnzrnd9bpp) — United States
- [E11 Bio - Scientist I/II - Advanced Imaging](https://feeny.ai/job/e11-bio-scientist-i-ii-advanced-imaging-convergent-research-alameda-m2trw2tnjc4m) — Alameda, CA
- [Meridial – Scientist – In Vivo Neurophysiology](https://feeny.ai/job/meridial-scientist-in-vivo-neurophysiology-convergent-research-london-4g82xf63snmr) — London, United Kingdom
- [Meridial – Associate Scientist – In Vivo Neuroscience](https://feeny.ai/job/meridial-associate-scientist-in-vivo-neuroscience-convergent-research-london-k3cxeg29tvby) — London, United Kingdom
- [Meridial – Scientist – In Vivo Neuroscience](https://feeny.ai/job/meridial-scientist-in-vivo-neuroscience-convergent-research-london-f6ykfj0hap8q) — London, United Kingdom
- [Senior People Ops Manager - Payroll & Systems](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-people-ops-manager-payroll-systems-convergent-research-philadelphia-d80j2xe1pe5d) — Philadelphia, PA
- [Oath Technologies  - Chief of Staff](https://feeny.ai/job/oath-technologies-chief-of-staff-convergent-research-berkeley-eabs3bz827zj) — Berkeley, CA
- [Staff Scientist, Modeling Applications](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-scientist-modeling-applications-convergent-research-boulder-behn77mdyyhs) — Boulder, CO