Cosmos
Cosmos · Austin, Texas (relocation provided) · Full-time · $150K to $250K plus benefits & travel
About Cosmos
Cosmos backs founders and researchers building the institutions that help us author our own lives and renew a free society in the age of advanced AI. We call them philosopher-builders; the people who, like Benjamin Franklin, turn convictions about human goods into lasting institutions.
Cosmos Institute conducts research through the Cosmos Research Group, which has Senior Research Fellows from Google DeepMind, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft, and through partners in Oxford, including the HAI Lab. It also organizes seminars, awards fellowships and grants, and funds new research institutions. We’ve developed an extensive community and content platform, and are preparing to launch an in-person Academy for top technologists in Austin.
Cosmos Ventures, with a first fund of $77.6 million and initial portfolio including AIUC, Prime Intellect, and Workshop Labs (acquired by Thinking Machines), backs the founders who are turning those convictions into companies.
We believe AI will create the biggest opening for institution-building since the American founding. AI is not a normal technology that society will simply absorb.
Our work is organized around three pillars:
- Human Autonomy: Our capacity for self-direction, original judgment, and independent deliberation.
- Truth-Seeking: Open inquiry, debate, and error correction without institutional censorship.
- Decentralization: Systems that resist coercion, institutional capture, and centralized control.
Your role
You will be the right hand to our founder, Brendan McCord. Brendan is one of the leading thinkers on AI and human autonomy, making the case in essays, talks, and debates to the people building and governing the technology, from the frontier labs to Washington. He is writing a book on human autonomy in the age of AI with Harry Law of Cosmos Institute, and co-teaches a graduate seminar on philosophy and AI at Oxford, where he was a Visiting Fellow at St Catherine’s College. In business, he was founding CEO of two AI startups acquired for a combined $400 million. In government, he founded the Pentagon’s first applied AI organization and wrote its first AI strategy. He serves on the AEI-Urban Institute Commission on AI and the Future of the American Workforce, the board of the Mercatus Center, and the advisory board of the Harvard Data Science Review. Brendan is a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. Between the two, he spent 610 days underwater on a submarine.
Your main responsibility will be ensuring that Brendan’s priorities have clear owners and are executed on. This could include (but is not limited to) our work on human autonomy and private market governance, the expanding set of programs run by Cosmos Institute, the Cosmos Ventures fund, and Brendan’s upcoming book. You will extend his judgment so that he can spend his time effectively on our highest-value projects.
In a typical week, you might send Brendan a one-page status across every workstream before Monday’s team meeting, turn one of his voice memos into a campaign plan with owners, brief him for a meeting with a lab leader or major donor, prep him for a media interview, clear the backlog of inquiries in his inbox, and fly with him to San Francisco or DC.
You will report to Brendan, work closely with Kush Kansagra, President of Cosmos Institute, the rest of the Cosmos Institute team, and the Cosmos Ventures team. As you will be working closely with Brendan, you will need to be based in Austin, Texas. We will support you with any relocation costs.
Your responsibilities
- Run the operating rhythm. Know every major workstream well enough to provide weekly status reports, identify any blockers, and support the team in fixing any issues.
- Turn intent into campaigns. Help turn Brendan’s ideas and thinking into plans with owners, milestones, and targeted asks.
- Prepare and follow through. Write briefs that inform high-stakes meetings and appearances, and ensure follow-up.
- Clear the path. Work through inbound so the right things reach Brendan. Use careful judgment in external communication and ensure that people still reach Brendan directly.
- Drive the machinery. Keep board preparation on schedule, steward donor relationships, and manage the media and podcast pipeline. Ensure that Brendan has the resources he needs to write and launch his upcoming book.
- Be a thought partner on hard calls. Provide independent judgment on hard questions related to our institutional design, team structure, and prioritization.
- Build. Use Claude Code, Codex, and whatever else works to make all of this faster. We expect you to ship tools and new processes, not just documents.
- Travel with Brendan. Be available for events, seminars, and talks, and take the meetings he can’t.
Who you are
- Exceptionally capable and fast. You are likely 3 to 8 years into your career. The people who thrive in seats like this have often been early founders or operators, or have outgrown a prestigious job. For instance, you might have worked at or founded a startup before; tried consulting or banking; worked closely with a public figure; or been an investor who now wants to build something.
- Exacting. Your work is right the first time: names, numbers, dates, and tone. This role only works if your drafts meet a very high bar.
- Intellectually serious. You have read our essays, and you disagree with at least one of them. You can hold strong convictions about philosophy and frontier AI.
- Fluent with AI. You extensively leverage Claude Code or Codex to build fast. In the application process, we will ask to see something that you’ve built. (Ideally, you’re comfortable working in the terminal and can work fluently with agents.)
- High EQ and service orientation. You don’t seek credit, but build bridges and bring positivity.
- All in. You will move at a founder’s pace, including evenings and weekends when it matters, because you care about the mission as much as we do.
Where this role will stretch you
- You will context switch a lot. The work is spread across the Institute, the Academy, and a venture fund. You’ll need to be able to juggle philosophy and term sheets.
- The scope will be ambiguous. The work doesn’t often have clear feedback loops, and progress may be incremental or invisible.
- You will deal with questions with no clear answer. Our work concerns the intersection of philosophy, technology, and institution building, and requires both depth and breadth.
What you will get
- A seat next to Brendan in the rooms with the labs, policymakers, leading thinkers, and founders shaping the future of frontier AI.
- Unrivaled exposure across domains, including seeing how a book gets made, how a fund is raised and run, how a nonprofit and a university research partnership get built, and how a seminar at Oxford gets taught.
- Fast career progression with opportunities across our growing community. After two years, if you want to build a thesis-aligned company, we will back you. If you’d rather join a company, we’ll help place you at one of the best in our community.
What this role is not
- Not an executive assistant. We have a great one.
- Not a manager of a team. You’ll make owners more effective, but you won’t direct them.
- Not a public-facing springboard. You’ll build your profile, but your focus will be supporting Brendan and the wider team.
How to apply
Complete this short form by Sunday, November 8.
We review applications in batches, so please apply early.
Process
- Written application
- Initial 25 min call covering fit and process, with Sienna, Head of Talent at Cosmos Institute
- Paid work task (to be completed over two days)
- 30 min task debrief and logistical chat with Kush, President of Cosmos Institute
- In-person sessions with Brendan in Austin, including going for a walk and having lunch together
