Project Manager

Location: San Francisco, CA

Compensation: $70,000-$100,000, depending on years of experience.

About Episteme

Episteme is an R&D company dedicated to identifying and supporting the world’s most exceptional scientific researchers across various disciplines and geographies. Our focus lies in projects and individuals with immense potential to significantly benefit humanity but do not quite fit established conventions and institutions. With a multi-decade horizon, we aim to revolutionize the nature and process of scientific discovery through a large-scale research system.

Mission:

Episteme’s mission is to maximize the agency, freedom, and impact of the world’s most courageous and unorthodox scientists and researchers. We aim to become the most effective for-profit and autocatalytic model for translating and deploying fundamental scientific research into large-scale human outcomes and sustainable businesses. We strive to enable exceptional talent with a unique perspective to work on their own ideas, collaborate with peers, and translate their work into real-world impact.

About the Role

Joining us at the forefront of an unprecedented mission, you will collaborate closely with the operations and research teams to understand workflows and develop project management strategies to increase efficiency across the organization. Your responsibilities will include:

Operational and Administrative Tasks

• Ensure all meetings have agendas in advance, distribute follow-up notes, and follow up on action items to ensure follow-through on all tasks.

• Monitor all operational tasks by the entire ops team, ensuring follow-through and to identify areas where team members need support to complete tasks.

• Send reminders ahead of planned due dates.

• Regularly communicate updates on open activities, current progress, and any completed tasks.

• Exercise discernment and judgement to help prioritize tasks in a fluid environment, to ensure progress is moving forward.

Research Program Coordination

• Track and process purchasing requests and coordinate quotes from multiple vendors (lab supplies, compute credits, software licenses).

• Maintain budget spreadsheets, flagging overspend or upcoming renewals.

• File and organize receipts, invoices, and contracts for finance.

• Ensure research documentation (ELNs, shared drives, GitHub repos) is organized, accessible, and version-controlled.

• Help ensure research progress at a program level is actively monitored and items that are consistently delayed are flagged for additional support.

• Provide tactical guidance for scientists on how to implement project management best-practices to improve the productivity of their groups.

Risk & Bottleneck Management

• Keep a running issues log (e.g., delayed compute jobs, missing data, shipping delays).

• Proactively flag risks to leadership and suggest solutions (e.g., alternative suppliers, rescheduling experiments).

• Monitor project dependencies (waiting on collaborators, waiting on data) and keep them visible to the team.

Episteme is an early-stage company and with that, comes a culture of flexibility and fluidity. While the above are the expectations of the role, we may ask you to collaboratively work with your Manager to redefine some of your responsibilities on specific projects or in general. We hope you find this fluid culture exciting as it will give you insight into many aspects of the Company as you build your career.

Qualifications:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree (scientific field preferred)

• Certifications: Project Management Professional Certification required.

• Experience: Minimum of 4 years in a similar role, and previous experience working in a research environment.

• Skills:

• Proven expertise supporting researchers and scientists.

• Prior experience working effectively with senior executives.

• Project management as a primary job duty in a previous role is required.

• Demonstrated judgement and ability to prioritize action in a fluid and complex environment.

• Knowledge:

• Skilled with project management tools and methods (e.g., Gantt charts, project management tools, resource tracking).

• Experience tracking resources including budgets, computing time, lab space, and personnel availability so projects stay on target and resources are used wisely.

• Abilities: Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills, with a proactive approach to execution. Ability to learn new skills on the job. Passion for connecting seemingly disparate ideas to further the Episteme mission

• Attributes: Results-oriented, proactive, and adaptable with a passion for the Company's vision and mission and being a part of a growing and positive work environment.

Benefits:

• Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO): unlimited time off plus 9 company holidays.

• Health Insurance: Comprehensive health coverage, including medical, dental, and vision plans. Employees are covered at 100%, with 80% coverage for employee + dependents and employee + family plans.

• Disability & Life Insurance: 100% company-paid short-term disability, long-term disability, basic life insurance, and Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D) insurance.

• Parental Leave: 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave to support you through the exciting and challenging first months of parenthood.