---
title: 'Senior Manager, Government Partnerships at LawZero'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-government-partnerships-lawzero-montreal-k3smew08bmmb'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-15'
---

# Senior Manager, Government Partnerships at LawZero

- **Company:** LawZero
- **Location:** Montréal, Canada
- **Posted:** 2026-10-06
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-15
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/lawzero/jobs/4384914009

## Job description

Senior Manager, Government Partnerships

As we expand internationally, we are building a coalition of middle-power governments to help fund and champion LawZero's mission. This role sits at the center of that effort. You will help design and execute our middle-powers strategy: shaping the policy agenda, mapping and mobilizing the ecosystems that influence government in each target country, and building toward tangible milestones, including a potential middle-powers summit convened with partner stakeholders.

Direct engagement with senior government officials will remain largely led by the VP of Global Affairs. Still, you will join key trips and meetings, and you will own much of the strategy, research, and relationship-building that makes those engagements land. This is a role for someone who can operate independently across multiple countries while working within a shared strategic direction.

Key Responsibilities:

- Build the middle-powers strategy: Develop and refine our approach to co-financing and partnership with middle-power governments, identifying priorities, entry points, and sequencing across countries.
- Map and mobilize national ecosystems: Identify and build relationships with the right actors (eg. safety, research, and corporate communities) who can help move government in each target country.
- Carry our core messages: Advance two central arguments across every audience: (1) that the reliability of AI models is a necessary capability for their adoption, and (2) that sovereign AI models are essential to avoid being caught in the currents of power concentration.
- Lead middle-powers policy: Own policy development on middle-powers engagement, including planning toward a potential middle-powers summit co-hosted with other stakeholders.
- Shape the narrative in-country: Support communications and media efforts, including placing op-eds and cultivating influential voices in target countries.
- Support senior engagements: Prepare briefing materials, strategy, and follow-up for ministerial- and official-level meetings, and join select trips and meetings.

Skills and qualifications:

- At least 6 years of experience in government affairs, diplomacy, think tanks, or a closely related field.
- Comfort operating across different political systems and in diplomatic settings, rather than expertise in a single domestic system.
- AI knowledge sufficient to engage credibly with research and safety communities and to carry our core messages with authority.
- Strong communications instincts, including experience working with communications teams to build a strategic comms plan.
- Ability to work independently.
- Excellent judgment, relationship-building skills, and comfort operating in a fast-moving, mission-driven environment.

Nice to have:

- Regional expertise or language skills relevant to middle-power governments, with a particular emphasis on French.
- Existing networks in AI policy, safety, or research communities.
- Experience convening or supporting international summits or multi-stakeholder initiatives.

## What we offer

- The chance to contribute meaningfully to a globally critical initiative
- Comprehensive health benefits (including mental health and wellness management account)
- 20 days of vacation per year upon start
- Employer contribution of 4% to your retirement savings, with no required employee match
- Additional compensation totaling 8% of your salary to apply towards additional retirement savings or bonuses (independent of group and individual performance)
- A team of passionate world-class experts in their field
- A collaborative and inclusive work environment in our vibrant office space in the heart of Little Italy, in the trendy Mile-Ex district, close to public transportation

## About LawZero

LawZero is a non-profit organization committed to advancing research and creating technical solutions that enable safe-by-design AI systems. Its scientific direction is based on new research and methods proposed by Professor Yoshua Bengio, the most cited AI researcher in the world. Based in Montreal, LawZero’s research aims to build non-agentic AI that learns primarily to understand the world rather than to act in it, giving truthful answers to questions based on transparent and externalized probabilistic reasoning. Such AI systems could be used to accelerate scientific discovery, to provide oversight for agentic AI systems, and to advance the understanding of AI risks and how to avoid them. LawZero believes that AI should be cultivated as a global public good—developed and used safely towards human flourishing. For more information, visit [www.lawzero.org](https://www.lawzero.org/)

You belong here

At LawZero, diversity is important to us. We value a work environment that is fair, open and respectful of differences. We welcome applications from highly qualified individuals interested in working towards our mission in a respectful, inclusive and collaborative setting.

Your personal information will be collected and processed by LawZero to evaluate your application for employment in compliance with our [Privacy Policy](https://lawzero.org/en/website-privacy-notice). Under privacy laws in force in your country of residence, you may have several privacy rights, such as to request access to your personal information or to request that your personal information be rectified or erased. Details on how you can exercise your rights can be found in our Privacy Policy.

## About LawZero

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: LawZero is a Canadian nonprofit research organization developing "Scientist AI," a non-agentic, safe-by-design artificial intelligence system.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Nonprofit research organization; funded through philanthropic grants)
- **Headquarters**: Montréal, Quebec, Canada
- **Founded**: June 3, 2025
- **Founders**: Yoshua Bengio

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI Safety Research
- **Target customers**: The organization is not a commercial entity; its research outputs are intended for the global public good, with potential downstream users including governments, AI companies, and scientific researchers.
- **Mission or purpose**: To develop AI systems that are "safe by design" through technical research insulated from commercial and government pressures, cultivated as a global public good.

## Products & Services
- **Scientist AI**: A novel, non-agentic AI system designed to understand the world through probabilistic reasoning, produce transparent and auditable predictions, and have no hidden goals or preferences. The system is built on three mechanisms: contextualization (separating facts from opinions), consequence invariance (preventing feedback from downstream outcomes), and a generator–estimator architecture (a creative generator held accountable by a neutral estimator). Intended uses include accelerating scientific discovery, providing guardrails for agentic AI systems, and advancing understanding of AI risks. **Type**: Research / Technical Framework

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (nonprofit)
- **Key Metric**: Total Philanthropic Funding: > US$35 million (as of August 2025, including a grant from the Gates Foundation). An additional > CAD$100 million in financial backing from the Government of Canada was under discussion as of February 2026.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Funders include Jaan Tallinn, Schmidt Sciences, Coefficient Giving, the Future of Life Institute, and the Gates Foundation. Operating partner is Mila – Quebec AI Institute. Affiliated with MATS (AI-alignment training program).
- **Growth Signals**: Launched in June 2025 with ~15 researchers; grew to ~30 employees by February 2026, with stated plans to expand to more than 100 within a year. Secured significant government interest (letter of intent from the Government of Canada). Inaugural board and global advisory council announced in January 2026, including high-profile members such as historian Yuval Noah Harari and former Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Founder Reputation**: Founded by Yoshua Bengio, the world’s most cited living AI researcher and a Turing Prize winner, lending unparalleled scientific credibility.
- **Mission-Driven Position**: Operates as a nonprofit, explicitly insulated from market and government pressures, which differentiates its research from major for-profit AI labs (e.g., OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic).
- **Unique Technical Approach**: Its core concept, "Scientist AI," is a fundamentally different path to advanced AI—non-agentic and designed for safety from the ground up—rather than a modification of existing agentic systems.
- **Compute Advantage**: A potential partnership with the Government of Canada is structured to provide substantial compute resources (the majority of expenditure is for compute), a critical and expensive resource for frontier AI research.

## Strategic Focus
- **Research & Development**: The entire organization is focused on advancing the "Scientist AI" framework, with primary activities being theoretical research (as seen in arXiv preprints and white papers), algorithm development, and building the technical architecture.
- **Talent Acquisition**: Aggressively hiring to scale the research team from ~30 to over 100 people within the next year.
- **Global Governance**: Building a global advisory council and board to influence AI safety policy and standards, in addition to technical research.
- **Scientific Application**: One concrete application area being explored is the use of Scientist AI to accelerate drug discovery and scientific research, supported by the Gates Foundation grant.

## Why Work Here
- **Highly Mission-Driven**: A rare opportunity to work on fundamental AI safety research at a nonprofit, free from the commercial pressures of major AI labs. The explicit goal is to build AI as a global public good.
- **World-Class Leadership**: Work directly under and alongside Yoshua Bengio and a leadership team with deep expertise in AI.
- **Growth Trajectory**: The organization is in a rapid scaling phase (growing from 15 to 100+ people), offering early employees significant influence and rapid career growth.
- **Prime Location**: Based in Montréal, a major AI research hub with access to talent from Mila and top universities.
- **Policy Impact**: Involvement with a high-profile global advisory council that includes former heads of state, offering a chance to shape AI governance.
- **Work Environment**: The culture emphasizes safety, mission integrity, and rigorous scientific research. The organization is structured as a research lab, not a commercial entity.

## Sources
1. [LawZero Official Website](https://lawzero.org/en)
2. [LawZero Careers Page (Greenhouse)](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/lawzero)
3. [Wikipedia - LawZero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LawZero)
4. [LawZero Team Page](https://lawzero.org/en/team)
5. [LawZero Research Page](https://lawzero.org/en/research)

## Other roles at LawZero

- [Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-recruiter-lawzero-berlin-1sw0crxr6y20) — Berlin, Germany
- [Platform Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/platform-engineer-lawzero-montreal-4bef2adt2wpn) — Montréal, Canada
- [Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-talent-acquisition-lawzero-montreal-j5eqjx54dfe3) — Montréal, Canada
- [Senior ML Data Processing Developer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ml-data-processing-developer-lawzero-berlin-5wp0w4r3spk7) — Berlin, Germany / Montréal, Canada
- [Senior Researcher Communications Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-researcher-communications-specialist-lawzero-montreal-70swcv9djdbd) — Montréal, Canada
- [Machine Learning Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-manager-lawzero-berlin-ddxs7d0jnk2v) — Berlin, Germany / Montréal, Canada
- [Join our Talent Community (future opportunities)](https://feeny.ai/job/join-our-talent-community-future-opportunities-lawzero-multiple-a0gzf9abwev7) — Multiple
- [Mathematical Scientist for AI Safety Research](https://feeny.ai/job/mathematical-scientist-for-ai-safety-research-lawzero-berlin-kv2e1etp7wk0) — Berlin, Germany / Montréal, Canada
- [Director, Evaluations](https://feeny.ai/job/director-evaluations-lawzero-berlin-nhj2b35b8jy2) — Berlin, Germany / Montréal, Canada
- [Senior Distributed ML Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-distributed-ml-engineer-lawzero-berlin-s1y2jvk4zw5q) — Berlin, Germany / Montréal, Canada