Business Operations Director [Closed]

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Key Information

Applications for this role are currently CLOSED, but we look forward to opening this round in the future.

Role: Business Operations (Biz Ops) Director / Manager / Lead

Location: London, UK (working full-time from Longview’s East London office). We would consider a remote position in the US for exceptional candidates.

Starting Salary: tbd, ~£50,000 - ~£85,000 / ~$65,000 - ~$115,000 commensurate with skills & experience. This range is intentionally wide to capture varying degrees of experience and seniority. 

Benefits: 

UK: 10% employer pension, private healthcare including vision and dental, 25 days holiday minimum; 4 months fully paid family leave; £5,000/year wellbeing budget, £2,400/year professional development budget, and a well-stocked office fridge. 

US: 10% 401(k) contribution; 100% employer-paid private health insurance with UHC; dental & vision with Guardian; 25 days vacation + 8 federal holidays; 4 months fully paid family leave; $3,000 annual professional development budget; Wellbeing budget that can be used for gym memberships and fitness classes up to $100 per month

Application Deadline: Currently, applications are closed. This job advertisement is live for current candidates, and for potential future candidates if we do reopen this role.

Start date: ASAP; though we are willing to wait for the right candidate

About Longview Philanthropy

Longview Philanthropy’s mission and activities

Longview Philanthropy is a non-profit based in the UK and US. We design and execute bespoke giving strategies for major donors. Our grant recommendations are driven by the conviction that we can use evidence and reason to find the highest-impact donation opportunities. We focus on global challenges that could transform our future for many generations to come, including AI safety and governance, biosecurity, and nuclear weapons policy. Everything we offer is free-of-charge and independent. We currently advise donors worldwide. 

Impact in this role

In this role, you’ll be directly responsible for our non-staff resources and ensuring they are optimised to support the organisation to move as much impact-adjusted money as possible to reduce risks from AI and nuclear weapons, and biosecurity.

You will be responsible for ensuring ‘the train stays on the tracks’ with respect to key systems & resources & for identifying where ops can leverage their speciality to accelerate our core mission. This might mean implementing new systems, scrapping inefficient ones, and building a team of contractors or staff to offer capacity to other teams.

A core part of our 2025 operations strategy is for the ops department to become more agile and to act as a force multiplier across the organisation — the Biz Ops lead will be an essential to us achieving that strategic change. We’d be excited to work with you on shaping the exact responsibilities of Biz Ops at Longview. You’ll report to the COO and (within reason) have the budget needed to hire junior staff, engage contractors and implement high impact projects. 

Longview Philanthropy’s team culture

We are a collaborative, dedicated, and positive team. We are all deeply motivated by the work that we do and the impact we can have. We are an ambitious organisation with a culture of clear communication, commitment to excellence, direct feedback, ownership over our work and a strong focus on outcomes. Candidates who are likely to succeed in this role are people who are excited to work in a high standards, high efficiency and high productivity environment. 

Responsibilities

The below describes two quite different buckets of work - we’re excited to discuss how you could  build out your team to take on some of these responsibilities. 

Flex Capacity

Longview has grown and historically our programme teams have had minimal operational support for their core work. Our Programme Officers (POs) have reported their impact is limited by spending time on work which is not their unique value add; or by lacking the ops support to make projects happen. We are excited for the Biz Ops lead to free up PO (and Exec & Advisory) time to work on their unique value add, and to counterfactually make projects happen. Projects might include:

    1. Identifying the need for a contractor on a programme team and making that happen i.e. work with a recruiter or through your own network to find a shortlist & get the right contractor selected & onboarded compliantly with minimal input from the POs.
    2. Project managing a prize for important research we think should be done. This might mean working with our compliance and finance teams to see if it’s feasible and what the time cost would be and submitting this as input for the decision whether to go ahead. If we do the prize, then you’d own the operational side.
    3. Running the operational side of a request for proposals (RFPs).
    4. Identifying a painful system or process on the programme / exec / advisory teams and resolving it e.g. a suboptimal grant tracking system. This would mean getting to the spirit of the problem and likely outsourcing & managing the resolution.

Resources you will own

    1. Our office & equipment - the day-to-day management currently sits with the Ops Associate, but if we need to renegotiate the lease or move offices, this is with you.
    2. Staff support - our Ops Associate executes most of the staff support, but ensuring we have a system for team members to raise queries & have them answered efficiently is with you
    3. Cross-departmental communication - as we grow we need scalable systems to ensure everyone has the right information to do their job in alignment with the org mission, working out how to collate and disseminate information will be with you
    4. All our internal systems e.g. Slack, Notion, G-drive, Rippling, company cards, Calendly, Zoom etc. - our Ops Associate is responsible for day-to-day management, but ensuring our systems are fit for purpose is with you
    5. Contractors - this entails building a world-class roster of contractors so if we need something done, we are connected to the right specialist to make it happen. This means sourcing, ensuring compliance, managing spend, negotiating rates, terminating etc.

Within 3 months, a successful BizOps lead will have:

  • Completed an audit (formal or informal) of Longview's internal resources and made a prioritised plan for how to most quickly unlock capacity & efficiency gains 
    • We expect this will be some mix of system/ process improvement & flex capacity support, especially for Programme teams.
  • Defined the Business Operations team & their theory of change
  • Taken high-level ownership of our internal non-staff resources, this means that you understand all our resources & if there is a non-standard issue, you’ll identify it & own the resolution. e.g. we need to hire a dedicated office manager, move office or implement company cards for our U.S. team 
  • Developed an effective independent working relationship with all teams - this means all team members know that if they need something operational done, they come directly to you
  • Built a reputation within the team as a reliable & effective project manager & problem solver

The successful candidate will report to Katie Hearsum, COO, and sit within the operations department.

Who Should Apply for This Role?

The ideal candidate will demonstrate the following attributes:

  • Not a perfectionist: someone who can identify the quick, compliant, best way to get the most impact with the least time cost. Where appropriate, they’ll 80:20 the thing & identify the next high impact opportunity. 
  • Can integrate the needs of diverse stakeholders: you’ll be responsible for org-wide systems, which impact multiple teams. You’ll need to be comfortable working out the system to achieve the most impact  
  • ‘Get to yes’: when someone has a problem, you can understand the spirit of the problem and find a solution, even if it looks different from the original request
  • Exceptional project management: you can own many projects for different stakeholders with varying complexities and urgencies and autonomously ensure all are delivered on target
  • Concise & clear communicator: someone who can interface with anyone in the organisation, understand their pain points and solve them
  • Action-oriented: someone who loves getting things done, and who is comfortable with a role where they have a high degree of autonomy and ownership over their tasks.
  • Comfort in a fast-paced and direct feedback environment.
  • Outstanding attention to detail: the ability to execute tasks without errors.
  • Discretion and confidentiality: commitment to maintaining appropriate levels of confidentiality.
  • Motivated by our mission to move philanthropic capital to reduce catastrophic risk.
  • Bonus (not essential): worked in a Biz Ops related role before 

If you think you are a strong fit for this role, but you’re on the fence about applying because you’re unsure whether you’re qualified, or whether the exact role described excites you, we encourage you to discuss with us. 

Application Process

  • First stage: Send us your CV or resume & fill in an application form
  • Second stage: First interview with Katie (COO) and Gavin (CoS) (30 minutes) 
  • Third stage: Paid work task(s) - 2h-4h  
    • We will pay candidates £50/hr for completing this stage.
    • Anyone doing a paid work task must have the relevant right to work in the place where they are doing the work.
  • Fourth stage: Second interview with Simran (CEO) and Katie (COO) (1 hour) and reference checks
  • Fifth stage: in-person 3-5 day work trial
    • We recognise an in-person trial is a significant commitment. An honorarium will be provided to all candidates who complete a work trial and travel and accommodation costs will be reimbursed.
      • For those with the right to work in the UK this will be an in person work trial. For those without the right to work, this will be a remote work trial, but we might request you to travel to our London office to meet the team.
    • We are keen to work with the final candidate(s) to ensure they are able to complete a work trial, and aim to be flexible and accommodating. Please reach out if you are interested in applying but think you’d be unable to complete a work trial.

The starting date for the position will be determined together with the successful applicant. 

Longview Philanthropy is an equal opportunity employer and we aim to employ people with many different experiences, perspectives and backgrounds who share our passion and believe in our mission. We do not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status. We are happy to make any reasonable accommodations necessary to welcome all to our workplace. Please contact us to discuss adjustments to the application process.