Work with us
We’re building the founding team
Trajectory Institute on AI is newly formed and small by design. We use AI tooling to do the work of a much larger research shop — which means the first people here own a lot of ground and see their work reach decision-makers quickly.
Below are the kinds of people we’re looking for as we grow. If one of them is you, we’d like to hear from you — even where we haven’t posted a formal, funded opening yet. Tell us what you’d want to build.
Research dissemination & policy engagement Get our research to the people who can use it
Excellent analysis is worth little if it never reaches a desk on deadline. This role carries the Institute’s published research to the people who make decisions — and listens for what they actually need.
What you’d do
- Bring our published analysis, survey results, and tools to congressional and agency staff through nonpartisan educational briefings — offered to offices across the political spectrum, on the same terms.
- Build relationships with researchers, journalists, and policy organizations to widen the reach of our educational materials.
- Do listening-mode outreach: find out what analytical gaps decision-makers face, and bring that back to shape what we study.
- Turn dense research into briefings and explainers a busy staffer can use in an afternoon.
Who you are
- Self-directed and unbothered by a cold inbox and an empty calendar — you make the first move and you follow up.
- Credibly nonpartisan: you can brief a Republican office and a Democratic office the same week and mean it both times.
- Energized by an early-stage organization where you’ll own real surface area, not a slice of someone else’s.
Research & analysis Produce the analysis the field is missing
There is a lot of AI research and very little of it lands in a form a decision-maker can use. This role produces nonpartisan, decision-relevant analysis — rigorous, well-sourced, and written for an educated non-specialist.
What you’d do
- Conduct nonpartisan analysis of how different categories of governance approaches have performed in analogous regulatory domains — comparative and institutional, not specific legislative recommendations.
- Build and maintain our open analytical tools and the evidence base behind them.
- Design and field public-opinion research — including the in-person fieldwork most AI research skips — and publish full methodology every time.
- Write up what the evidence does and does not support, caveats included, for a general audience.
Who you are
- Rigorous and fast: you can take a messy question and ship a defensible, well-sourced answer.
- Comfortable publishing what you’re unsure about, and saying so plainly.
- Entrepreneurial — you want to help define a research agenda, not just execute one.
Looking for advocacy or organizing work?
Direct advocacy, organizing, and lobbying are not part of the Institute’s charitable work — they belong to our independent sister organization, Trajectory Action on AI (a 501(c)(4) social-welfare organization). If that’s the work that excites you, tell us; those roles will be posted there.
How to reach us
There’s no portal and no form. Email us with a short note on what you’d want to work on and anything you’ve built that shows how you think. We read everything.
Write to careers@trajectoryinstitute.org.