Principal, Programs and Policy; Tech and AI San Francisco

Principal, Programs and Policy (Tech and AI)

About Omidyar Network (ON):

Omidyar Network is a philanthropic organization whose mission is to bend the arc of the digital revolution toward shared power, prosperity, and possibility. Digital technology is a powerful and ubiquitous force that, harnessed wisely, makes wondrous things happen. We believe in working together to guide tech's trajectory intentionally. Our vision is for our shared humanity to steer our digital future. So far, we have committed more than $1.94 billion to initiatives that share our vision.

We engage, partner, and fund some of the world's brightest thinkers and innovators to guide our digital future toward the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

About the Programs and Policy team:

Our programs and policy team focuses on the key drivers of our shared digital future: the culture, the governance, and the business of digital tech. Through our grant making and advocacy, we aim to shape more intentional societal governance and amplify our shared agency. We collaborate with a broad range of stakeholders, including investors, tech firms, policymakers, consumers and workers to guide tech's trajectory and establish coalitions and countervails in civil society.

Programs team members join Omidyar Network from a wide range of backgrounds in policy, advocacy, nonprofits, community organizing, technology, consulting, philanthropy, education, and the arts.

About the Role:

In this role, you will help shape how frontier technology develops and who has the capital and convening power to influence that trajectory. Our portfolio includes some of the most consequential AI companies of the decade, and our partners include the people writing the policies, papers, and standards that will govern these technologies for the next two decades.

This role is built for someone who reads a new model release and immediately wants to know what it means for governance; who is drawn to questions about how powerful technologies get built and by whom; and who wants to spend the next phase of their career working inside those questions.

You will work across investments, grants, ecosystem-building, and thought leadership — helping originate and complete both for-profit deals and grants, building the relationships that make those deals possible, and helping shape ON's voice on where technology is heading. This is neither a pure investing role nor a pure grantmaking role.

This is a builder's role for someone who is fluent in the language of frontier tech, comfortable moving between Silicon Valley boardrooms and civil society convenings, and energized by the question of how to make powerful technologies go well.

This role will report to Director, Programs and Policy (based in Washington, DC).

How You’ll Contribute to our Impact:

• Help implement the Responsible Technology & AI strategy. Translate strategy into action across our priority domains — frontier AI, nuclear and advanced energy, brain‑computer interfaces, and adjacent areas. Help shape how the strategy evolves as the technology and the field evolve.
• Originate and maintain relationships across the ecosystem. Build a deep, durable network across AI labs and technology companies, venture capital firms, AI-focused philanthropies, academic institutions, and civil society organizations. Use these relationships to surface signals, identify trends early, and connect the right people to one another. Many of ON's best opportunities and best ideas come through this network — you will be a primary node in it.
• Manage complex stakeholder ecosystems. Convene and participate in conversations across constituencies that don't typically share a room — journalists, founders, researchers, policymakers, funders, and advocates. In practice this means organizing small listening events and round tables, attending relevant conferences, participating in relevant working groups, and serving as a credible interlocutor for ON across very different audiences.
• Develop ON’s point of view in writing. Develop internal memos and external thought pieces on where the technology is going, what we are seeing in the field, and what ON's point of view…