Special Projects Director

Special Projects Director

Final date to receive applications: 12 October 2026

Department:
Leadership

Employment Type:

Flexible

Location:

Remote

Reporting To:
Chief Operations Officer, Carolyn Footitt

Compensation: $130,000 - $160,000 / year

• Role:
  Special Projects Director (Leadership)
• Salary: $130.000 – $160.000 gross annual. For other currencies, we use a 5-year rolling average exchange rate.
• Location:
  
  Fully remote. UTC-5 to UTC+2 preferred.
• Job Type: Full-time (40 hours per week) preferred, and minimum 35 hours per week required.
• Reports to:
  
  Chief Operations Officer, Carolyn Footitt
• Start date:
  
  As soon as possible, but no later than January 4, 2027
• Final date to receive applications:
  Monday, October 12, at the end of the day (23:59) Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12:00).
• Contact:
  Please email (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below). if you have any questions.

RP's Special Projects Program (SP) - RP's portfolio of fiscally sponsored and incubated projects - is entering its most significant growth phase yet, and this role will own the program end to end. Whoever takes this on will define how SP scales from here, with leadership over its strategy and its growing team.

RP is a US 501(c)(3) research and implementation nonprofit working across global health and development, animal welfare, and reducing global catastrophic risk, including risks from advanced AI. Beyond our own research, RP acts as a fiscal sponsor - under a Model A structure - to a portfolio of independent, high-impact projects, each running its own show day to day while RP provides the legal, financial, HR, and compliance support to accelerate them towards spin-off and further impact.

SP helps founders get started on their project from day one, eliminating the 6-18 months a founder would otherwise spend standing up a legal entity and becoming tax-exempt. That acceleration matters enormously when the window for impact is short. Beyond speed, SP sponsorship provides a lower-risk environment for testing proof of concept: projects can validate mission fit and demonstrate traction before committing to the cost and complexity of independent legal existence.

Our SP program has supported numerous projects through their fastest growth phase, from a headcount size of one to 30+ and multi-million dollar budgets - including Epoch AI, Apollo Research and IAPS, all of which grew under SP before spinning off as independent organizations.

SP is growing - more projects, more countries, more complexity - and the systems and approaches that got it this far won't hold at the next size. Growth at this stage could look like taking the team from around 7 FTE today to somewhere in the 12-16 FTE range within a year, and launching upwards of 10 new sponsored projects - but figuring out what growth is actually necessary and appropriate, and at what pace, is a core part of what this role is for.

You'll be the first person whose full-time job is building what comes next: a real risk framework, a sustainable fee model, a clear graduation path for projects that have outgrown fiscal sponsorship, and a growth strategy for the ones still to come.

You'll manage the Special Project Managers and the rest of the SP team who support sponsored projects day to day. This is a Leadership position at RP, meaning you’ll have a seat at the table for all major organizational strategic decisions and authority to set your team’s strategy, growth plans, and budget. It's a high-leverage position: getting the right systems in place now will position SP for further growth and the ability to support even more impactful projects.

This is a role for someone comfortable being the person that a fast-growing team will rely on for new answers and solutions - where "I don't know, let me find out" is a normal Tuesday, and…