---
title: 'Head of People at METR'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-metr-berkeley-w6nads6qcqmt'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-16'
---

# Head of People at METR

- **Company:** METR
- **Location:** Berkeley
- **Compensation:** $224k–$261k
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/metr/b13ea10e-b4f7-4429-b7fe-71970597d1cd

## Job description

## About METR

We are a nonprofit research organization that develops scientific methods to assess AI capabilities, risks, and mitigations, with a specific focus on threats related to AI R&D automation and misalignment. We believe it is robustly good for policymakers and civil society to have a clear understanding of risks from AI systems, and we are extremely excited to build a team of ambitious, excellent people to tackle one of the most important challenges of our time.

## About the role

METR is looking to hire its first Head of People to help with METR’s next phase of growth. As Head of People, you’ll own compensation, benefits, performance, HR compliance, and staff experience at METR. We’re looking for a strong operator who can be a trusted voice to both the leadership team and staff members.

Work you'll own:

- Leading strategy that connects METR’s organizational goals with how we build culture and retain talent.
- Organize team retreats to build the organization’s culture and align the team around shared goals.
- Own how METR's culture and core values carry through organizational growth.
- Set up management coaching for managers to ensure consistent and strong management across the organization.
- Run or organize management trainings and new manager orientation.
- Create processes to facilitate professional development.
- Building processes and systems to support our next phase of growth.
- Own responsibility for keeping our HRIS, as our accurate source of truth on employee data (e.g., new hires, manager changes, wage rate and variable compensation changes).
- Manage compliance, including employee files, I-9s, E-Verify, regulatory filings, and trainings required by state law.
- Process payroll to ensure timely payments to all employees and contractors and compliance with the law.
- Manage benefits, including healthcare enrollment and educating staff about the benefits; serve as the main point of contact for employee questions regarding benefits.
- Owning our compensation philosophy, promotion framework, and performance review process to ensure they are fair, transparent and clear to the team.
- Designing and executing a streamlined employee onboarding process that gets new hires the tools, information and support they need to ramp up quickly, and that scales as we grow.
- Handling employee relations as a trusted advisor to both employees and managers, resolving conflicts, performance concerns and workplace issues fairly and with discretion.

Type of candidate we are looking for:

- You’re an adaptable, highly organized systems builder who thrives in fast-paced, ambiguous environments (e.g. tech companies/startups).
- You’re a strong communicator, who builds trust with staff through honesty and transparency.
- You have sound judgement when handling sensitive HR-related matters.
- You have strong attention to detail and hold a high bar for quality in everything you deliver.

## Minimum Requirements

- At least 8 years of experience in HR and People Operations roles, including experience scaling People Ops function and managing a team.
- Experience navigating California and federal employment laws, such as benefits compliance (including ACA, COBRA, ERISA/401(k), HIPAA, FMLA, and qualifying life events), worker classification, and employee leaves.
- Start-up experience / experience in a fast-paced, dynamic environment in an organization with under 500 employees.

## Preferred Qualifications

- Experience working with frontier labs or experience working in the AI safety ecosystem.
- Experience scaling an organization from ~30 to 200+ employees.

Our culture

METR is a mission-driven organization. We believe our work can meaningfully shape humanity's future for the better, and we want to be the best people in the world doing this work. We have a tight-knit, collaborative research culture rooted in truth-seeking and integrity. We're fiercely committed to producing high-quality, trustworthy science. We're honest and transparent about our results, especially when they may go against the grain. We've earned trust as reliable partners who handle confidential information with care. We maintain a low-ego, drama-free environment focused on what matters.

In-person Requirements: Our operations team members are in our office in Berkeley ~4-5 days/week. Please let us know in your application if this is a constraint. If you lack US work authorization and would like to work in-person (strongly preferred), we can likely sponsor a cap-exempt H-1B visa for this role.

We encourage you to apply even if your background may not seem like the perfect fit! We would rather review a larger pool of applications than risk missing out on a promising candidate for the position.

## About METR

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: METR (pronounced "meter") is a non-profit research organization that develops scientific methods to assess catastrophic risks from advanced AI systems by evaluating their autonomous capabilities.
- **Entity Type**: Non-profit (funded by donations, not a typical private company; no equity)
- **Headquarters**: Berkeley, California, USA
- **Founded**: Not explicitly stated, but founded by Beth Barnes; likely ~2021–2022
- **Founders**: Beth Barnes (Founder, CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI safety research and evaluation
- **Target customers**: AI developers (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta, Amazon), governments, and the broader public
- **Mission or purpose**: "Develop scientific methods to assess catastrophic risks stemming from AI systems’ autonomous capabilities and enable good decision-making about their development."

## Products & Services
- **Frontier AI Capability Evaluations**: Systematic assessments of how autonomously AI systems can perform tasks (e.g., conducting research, developing apps, cyberattacks, self‑hardening). Published as open research.
- **Risk Assessments & Safety Policies**: Advises AI developers and governments on risk assessment methodologies, including the "Responsible Scaling Policies" approach adopted by nine leading AI labs.
- **Time‑Horizon Research**: Open‑source analysis showing that the length of tasks AI agents can complete doubles every ~7 months, a key input for forecasting transformative AI timelines.
- **Evaluation Platform**: An open‑source platform built on Inspect AI for running AI agent evaluations at scale.
- **Monitorability Evaluations**: Research on detecting AI agents attempting to evade monitoring or perform side tasks, including datasets of "reward hacking" and "sandbagging" behaviors.
- **Productivity RCT**: A randomized controlled trial with experienced open‑source developers measuring how much AI tools actually boost productivity (finding systematic overestimation).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (non‑profit)
- **Key Metric**: Funding – METR is supported by donations from major foundations and individuals. Notable donors include The Audacious Project (TED), Jane Street, Sijbrandij Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Schmidt Sciences, Packard Foundation, and others. Small part of income from a technical assistance contract with the European AI Office. **No funding from AI companies** (maintains independence).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Partners with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta, Amazon (pilot risk assessments); member of NIST AI Safety Institute Consortium, California Cybersecurity Task Force, UK AI Security Institute; technical assistance to European AI Office.
- **Growth Signals**: Growing team (multiple open roles), expanding into cyberforensics and embedded assessments, research cited widely in AI safety policy, and adoption of their Responsible Scaling Policies by major developers.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Independence**: No funding from AI companies, enabling unbiased, transparent research.
- **Scientific Rigor**: Publishes all research openly; uses empirical methods (RCTs, time‑horizon analysis) rather than speculation.
- **Policy Influence**: Their frameworks (e.g., Responsible Scaling Policies) are now industry standards, and they advise governments globally.
- **Deep Technical Expertise**: Team of researchers and engineers building state‑of‑the‑art evaluations for autonomous capabilities, including security‑relevant evaluations.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Developing methodologies to track AI loss‑of‑control risk, improving monitorability evaluations, expanding cyberforensics capabilities, and scaling the team to meet growing demand for independent evaluations.
- **Direction for growth**: Increasing influence on AI governance, deepening partnerships with governments and companies, and building tools for continuous risk assessment.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission‑driven**: Direct contribution to aligning AI development with public safety, working on one of the most critical problems of our time.
- **Compensation**: Highly competitive with top AI labs (salary ranges $328K–$687K for technical staff, $150–$300/hr for contractors), plus benefits like medical/dental/vision, wellness ($1,500/yr), mental health ($6,000/yr), professional development ($5,250/yr), unlimited PTO.
- **Work environment**: Small, fast‑moving, mission‑driven team based in Berkeley. On‑site preferred for technical roles (at least a few days a week), but hybrid and remote (including international) can be accommodated. Operations roles require in‑person.
- **Hiring process**: Unique focus on work tests (1–3 take‑home tasks) and a 1–2 day paid work trial (travel and lodging reimbursed). Interviews are given substantially less weight. Commitment to diversity and equal opportunity.
- **Culture**: Open, transparent, and empirical; values rigor and independence. Visa sponsorship available for technical roles.

## Sources
1. [metr.org](https://metr.org/)
2. [metr.org/about](https://metr.org/about#our-team)
3. [metr.org/careers](https://metr.org/careers)
4. [metr.org/hiring](https://metr.org/hiring)
5. [jobs.lever.co/metr](https://jobs.lever.co/metr)

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