Incubator Programme Lead

Job Description

Applications close: 16 September 2026 at 23:59 CET. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible. We will be assessing candidates on a rolling basis and may close applications early if we find an exciting candidate.

Start date: ASAP

Hours: Full-time

Location: Remote anywhere in Europe or the UK (compatible with CET working hours), with an ability to travel for team retreats and some in-person elements of the programme. We can not sponsor visas for this role.

Compensation: €80,000 - €95,000 for a London-based hire. We would adjust for years of previous experience and cost of living wherever the candidate is based. We’re willing to go higher for the right fit.

How to apply: Please fill in https://talosnetwork.fillout.com/incubator-lead. Requires an up-to-date CV and short motivation statement.

Contact: careers@talosnetwork.org

The Role

The European AI governance ecosystem is growing fast, with more people entering the field every year. Yet this growth hasn't translated into increased capacity to act: Europe still has too few organisations and people dedicated to navigating the AI transition successfully. Talos Network is launching an Incubator programme to close that gap, and we are looking for a driven, talented executor to take it from pilot to fully-fledged programme.

As Programme Lead for Talos Network’s new Incubator, you'll take ownership of a programme in its formative phase and actively shape what it becomes. Much of the first year of this role will be spent defining the shape of the programme and iterating based on live engagement and feedback, with real participants and funding at stake. This role suits someone action-oriented, energised by building a new programme with little structure or steer.

We’re currently testing an MVP through the Talos Fellowship Incubation Track, but our aim is to run a standalone 3–4 month intensive cohort that supports incubatees to scope, test, and launch new European AI governance initiatives ASAP (ideally, we kick off participant recruitment in November 2026, with the incubation programme pilot kicking off around February 2027). Participants select a project from a Talos-mapped set of field gaps. They receive structured mentorship, network access, co-founder matching, and – based on their project traction and the strength of their proposals by the end of the programme – seed funding of up to ~€50k per project.

Getting the right participants is the most important input to this programme. That makes finding and attracting exceptional people the highest-value thing to get right, and assessing this quickly will be your first priority. Programme shape matters too, but our bet is that with the right participants, a relatively light container can carry a lot – so you will be able to iterate quickly and let the design follow what you learn.

This role has the potential to multiply how fast the field iterates. You’ll be critical to making this programme go well - and if it does, a meaningful share of the European frontier AI governance initiatives that exist in the next three years will exist because of your work.

What You'll Do

You'll work closely with – or split responsibilities with, depending on complementary strengths – our Talent Lead (~0.3 FTE) and another AI Governance Lead (~0.5 FTE).

In your first few months, you’ll:

• Recruit, vet and select participants for the Incubator with our Talent Lead and AI Governance Lead, including from our own fellow and alumni base (if you can start before EOY 2026).
• Run short hypothesis-testing cycles to assess whether we’ve found the right talent and learn which programme variables support them best.
• If the early tests are promising, set out how to scale the programme's impact over the coming months-years.

Ongoing

Strategy

• Keep the programme aligned with Talos's two-year strategy and mission, making the case for how the Incubator contributes to Europe's frontier AI governance capacity or adapting if it isn’t.
• Own the gap-identification work underpinning the programme: build on our existing work mapping where European frontier AI governance is missing capacity, drawing on expert and funder input, and keeping that map alive.
• Track open hypotheses and iterate on the programme's structure as evidence comes in, including recommending changes of direction.
• Build a profile of an outstanding incubatee, how they differ from talent for other Talos programmes, and where to find them.

Delivery

Some elements of the incubation programme may occur in person

• Be the face of the programme – organising and co-facilitating external content and workshops.
• Design and run co-founder matching.
• Support participants 1:1 from project strategy through project management, tracking what each venture needs to succeed and developing participants as founders so that Incubatees leave more capable of building things in this field, whatever happens to the specific initiative they came in with.

Impact

• Assess seed grant applications and track what participants go on to build, with an eye for what makes a founder or a proposal promising.
• Define what success looks like for a programme with no established benchmarks, and work with our MEL function to measure it.
• Keep leadership and the wider team close to what you're learning – sharing evidence, live uncertainties, and recommendations as they emerge, including into funder reporting.

Partnerships

• Build a mentor bench of founders, operators, senior practitioners and subject-matter experts.
• Understand where new ventures add most value to European AI governance – as standalone organisations, merged into existing ones, or scaling initiatives already underway – and build the relationships with funders, incubators and key organisations that make those routes real.

Who We're Looking For

You might be a particularly good fit for this role if you have:

• Direct experience of building something from nothing: founding or co-founding an organisation, launching a new programme or venture, establishing and maintaining new partnerships, or an early operating role at a start-up or young nonprofit.
• Agency: you make things happen that wouldn't otherwise happen, with little direction, because you want to see them exist in the world.
• Strong judgement about early-stage ideas: for example, what makes a plan promising, what makes a founder credible.
• Excellent project management: including the ability to deliver on time and to a high standard while parts of the programme are still being designed.
• A willingness to move between strategy and delivery: from shaping the programme's direction to running co-founder matching.
• An enabler's ambition: you're motivated by backing promising people and excited about multiplying their impact.
• An unusually high amount of comfort with ambiguity, including working at an organisation that is scaling and evolving and potentially adapting the programme idea drastically depending on the outcome of the pilot.
• A strong interest in reducing risks from advanced AI and creating a resilient and flourishing future.
• Strong written and verbal communication; the confidence to give regular and honest feedback.

Nice to have:

• An understanding of policy dynamics and how political will can be cultivated.
• Experience designing or running an incubator, venture programme or founder fellowship.
• Experience on either side of a fundraise, in grantmaking or investment, or in programme impact assessment.
• A working understanding of the European AI governance landscape.
• A network among (European) AI policy or tech organisations, funders or founders.
• Experience coaching or mentoring people through career transitions or venture launches.

Further information

Benefits

• 36 days of paid holiday (including national holidays)
• Dedicated budgets for professional development, conferences and team retreats
• Flexible work schedule & location
• A fun team that genuinely cares about each other and values living full lives outside work
• A key role in a growing, high-impact organisation
• The chance to directly shape Europe’s capacity to govern the most transformative technology in history

Application Process

• Mid-September: Application deadline, with invitations to ~3-hour paid work test and interviews made on a rolling basis until then
• Beginning October: Paid work trial (if needed) & reference checks
• Mid-October: Offer made to successful candidate

About Talos Network

Talos Network is Europe's leading capacity-building organisation for frontier AI governance.

We care about a world where beings flourish. But getting there depends heavily on whether advanced AI is developed wisely, which in turn depends on power not concentrating in too few hands: fewer actors with the power to make decisions about the future means fewer checks and balances, and less room to recover from bad decisions. A more plural world, with middle powers legitimate enough to broker trust between frontier actors, is less volatile and more conducive to navigating the safe and prosperous transition to advanced AI. Europe is well placed to be one of those powers: it has market power, democratic legitimacy, a strong talent base, SMEs embedded in the AI supply chain, a habit of scrutinising technology's societal effects, and centuries of credible scientific institutions. What's missing is people – frontier-AI-literate talent positioned to make that coordinating role a reality.

Talos exists to build that capacity. We find mission-aligned people who take frontier AI risk seriously, give them the training, networks and skills to succeed as policy entrepreneurs, and place them where governance decisions get made. Since 2022, our early-career Talos Fellowship has graduated 130 alumni, and our mid-career Policy Leaders Programme is scaling after a strong first pilot. Over 70% of our fellows have moved into roles that directly shape AI safety policy. Our alumni co-founded the Arq Foundation, the KIRA Center, the Centre pour la Sécurité de l’IA (CeSIA) and hold positions at the EU AI Office, the UK AI Safety Institute, RAND Europe, Apollo Research, SaferAI, among others.

But Europe's AI governance field is still thin relative to the scale of the problem. Too few organisations and people are strengthening Europe’s role in global AI governance. That is why we’re excited to launch the Incubator Programme: taking people with the agency to build and the conviction to tackle hard problems, and giving them the support, network, and funding to found the initiatives the field currently lacks.

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Ready to help shape the future of AI governance in Europe?

Apply here

If you're excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if you don't meet 100% of the criteria. Research shows that people from underrepresented groups tend to “self-select” out of opportunities, even when they are qualified.