Teacher

TARA Teacher — Role Description

Location: Remote

Duration: Part-time, 5 September – 20 December 2026

Compensation: $80 AUD per hour, up to 13 hours per week

Position overview

The Technical Alignment Research Accelerator (TARA) is a 14-week program designed to upskill technical APAC talent in AI safety. Using the ARENA curriculum, TARA covers advanced ML topics including transformer architectures, reinforcement learning, mechanistic interpretability, model evaluation techniques and alignment science.

As a Teacher, you'll work remotely to guide approximately 25–30 participants across 2–3 city cohorts. All instruction and support is delivered online — you don't need to be physically present in any of the cities. You can be based anywhere in the world, as long as you're available during your assigned cities' Saturday session hours.

Round 2 runs across APAC cities spanning UTC+5:30 to UTC+12, with Saturday sessions starting between 9:30 AM and 10:00 AM local time depending on the city. You'll be assigned a cluster of cities based on your availability.

You'll be part of a team of 3-4 Teachers. All cohorts run synchronously (e.g. everyone does Week 1 together, Week 5 together, projects together etc), so you can support each other with lecture prep, live queue management, and project feedback.

The role involves leading Saturday sessions and providing flexible remote support. Total time commitment is approximately 10-13 hours weekly: 7.5 hours on Saturdays plus 2.5-5.5 hours of weekday support and preparation.

Course structure & weekly schedule

Each Saturday begins with you introducing new technical concepts, followed by pair programming sessions. The standard Saturday schedule (~7.5 hours):

• Hour 1: Lecture introducing the week's topics
• Hours 2–3: Pair programming with remote Teacher support
• Midday: Lunch
• Hours 4–6: Continued pair programming with Teacher support
• 4pm: Teacher-led afternoon session — recap of the day's material, broader AI safety and ecosystem content, and program housekeeping
• End of day: Daily download — participants share progress and predict challenges for the coming week

During the week, participants work independently on the material while you provide asynchronous Slack support (~2.5-5.5 hours).

Core responsibilities

Saturday session delivery

• Lead 1-hour lectures on weekly curriculum topics covering topics such as RL, transformer architectures, mechanistic interpretability, and model evaluations. (Round 1 curriculum for reference - currently being updated)
• Deliver a short 4pm session each Saturday on topics in AI safety. We will provide a curriculum to use for these sessions, but they will broadly discuss the AI safety ecosystem, risks from AI, current research and other relevant topics
• Proactively check in with pairs via Slack to see if they need help
• Jump on Zoom calls or Slack huddles to work through problems as they arise
• Encourage "learning in public" — when you help someone solve a problem, post the resolution so others can benefit

Weekday support

• Offer asynchronous support via Slack for participants working independently
• Help resolve environment setup issues, compute access problems, and technical blockers

Assessment and feedback

• Review participant project proposals during the final curriculum phase (Weeks 8–11)
• Provide technical feedback on projects (Weeks 12–14)

Team collaboration

• Participate in weekly Teacher check-ins
• Step in for other Teachers if needed — our multi-Teacher model provides backup coverage
• Share learnings and resources across clusters

Qualifications

Required

• Completed most or all of the ARENA curriculum
• Strong Python and PyTorch skills
• Strong grasp of RL, transformer architectures, mechanistic interpretability, sparse autoencoders, and model evaluation
• Experience explaining complex technical concepts
• Ability to mentor in programming/ML
• Patient and encouraging teaching style
• Proactive communication habits
• Genuine interest in AI safety
• Available for the icebreaker session on Saturday 5 September (~3 hours)
• Available every Saturday from 12 September – 12 December 2026 (~7.5 hours per session)

Nice-to-have

• Technical AI alignment research experience
• Previous experience running technical workshops or bootcamps
• Experience with distributed/remote teaching

Why join us?

• Shape APAC AI safety talent development: Help expand the first dedicated technical AI safety program across the Asia-Pacific region
• Teaching autonomy: Help define how we teach AI safety concepts
• Career development: Deepen your technical and teaching abilities
• Community impact: Build technical AI safety communities across multiple cities
• Collaborative team: Work alongside other Teachers

Application process

Applications close 8 August. We aim to:

• Begin reviewing and interviewing candidates as applications come in
• If we find the right people before applications close we might hire them. Early applications are encouraged!
• Conduct interviews on a rolling basis through July and August
• Make final offers by mid/late August
• Begin Teacher onboarding the week of 24 August

Questions? Contact yanni@taraprogram.org, zac@taraprogram.org and ahmed@taraprogram.org

Apply here: https://airtable.com/app8WHWKuljjN9VcF/pagGdbZ8AiYBBu2nL/form