Lead, Frontier AI Systems

Please Note: This role requires the ability to work on site 3 days per week per company policy. The annual salary range for this role is $140,000-$160,000 in San Francisco. This role is not eligible for international relocation or work authorization support. The World Economic Forum, committed to moving the world forward, is the international organisation for public-private cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. The Centre for AI Excellence (CAIE) is a global future-focused platform advancing responsible innovation through the power of AI, data, and intelligence to reshape industries, economies, and societies - unlocking transformative potential in an equitable and human-centered way. As a forward-looking global platform for multistakeholder dialogue and collaboration, we examine how AI, data, and digital ecosystems converge to create value, while driving their responsible adoption and real-world impact through a global community. The World Economic Forum CAIE is looking for a Lead for its Frontier AI Systems & Capabilities workstream, part of the AI Global Alliance, offering a unique opportunity to shape how frontier AI capabilities are understood globally and how they translate into real-world deployment, safeguards, and system design. Frontier AI examines the novel capabilities emerging from advanced models and system architectures, and how these capabilities translate into real-world systems, behaviours, and deployment dynamics across sectors. As they become embedded into economic and security infrastructures, they are reshaping geopolitics, economic productivity, and the nature of systemic risk. In this role, you will lead work focused on understanding what frontier AI systems can actually do and what that means in practice. You will stay continuously up to date with the latest technical developments in AI, anticipating the trajectory of frontier capabilities before large-scale deployment and translating advances in models into a clear understanding of real-world system behaviour, scaling dynamics, implications and emerging forms of risk. The work focuses on system dynamics, coordination, autonomy, and interaction across models, tools, infrastructure, and physical environments, and turns these insights into globally shared reference points, design requirements, and informs governance mechanisms. Success in this role means earlier visibility into frontier capability shifts, shared reference points across the ecosystem, stronger alignment between frontier research, standards, and real-world deployment, and more informed decision-making to anticipate and mitigate emerging systemic risks. This role is based in San Francisco and will report to Head, Data and AI Innovation. Responsibilities Initiatives development • Define and evolve the strategic direction for the Frontier AI Systems & Capabilities workstream, setting priorities in response to rapid technical developments and ecosystem needs. • Lead capability horizon scanning across frontier models and system architectures and analyse how emerging capabilities translate into system behaviours, deployment patterns, and operational constraints. • Develop system foresight analyses that identify emergent behaviours, scaling dynamics, institutional gaps, and risk inflection points before large-scale deployment. • Analyse model-to-system translation, including how advances in planning, memory, simulation, and coordination reshape autonomy, interaction, and oversight needs. • Identify emergent failure modes at the model and system level, including breakdowns in coordination across agents, tools, organizations, and physical and digital environments. • Develop capability- and system-centric frameworks for evaluation, assurance, and deployment, treating identity, permissions, observability, traceability, coordination, and interoperability as architectural design requirements. • Lead analysis of embodied and spatially grounded AI systems to understand real-world interaction dynamics, irreversible failure modes, and control and assurance requirements for deployment in physical environments. • Convene frontier labs, infrastructure providers, standards bodies, safety institutes, and policymakers to establish shared technical reference points that shape research, system design, and safeguards. • Oversee workstream delivery, including planning, resourcing, stakeholder engagement, and reporting, ensuring high-quality outputs on tight timelines. Community engagement • Serve as the primary point of engagement for external stakeholders, maintaining ongoing strategic dialogue with frontier labs, partner companies, governments, standards bodies, and civil society leaders. • Engage C-level executives and senior policymakers in shaping and advancing the Centre’s Frontier AI workstream, ensuring sustained strategic participation and high-level commitment. • Build, manage, and continuously activate the Frontier AI community within the Centre, including stewardship of the relevant Global Future Council and associated expert networks. • Maintain structured and regular engagement with community members to remain at the forefront of real-world applications, deployment dynamics, and systemic implications of frontier AI technologies. • Design, convene, and facilitate high-impact community engagements, including roundtables, working groups, workshops, and executive briefings. • Cultivate and sustain strategic partnerships with leading organizations, governments, research institutions, and industry actors to advance the objectives of the Centre for AI Excellence (CAIE). Team and resources • Lead and manage team members supporting the Frontier AI Systems & Capabilities workstream, providing strategic direction, mentorship, and performance oversight. • Collaborate with Forum partners to recruit, onboard, and coordinate Fellows and project contributors, ensuring effective integration and delivery of high-quality outputs Requirements and Experience • Advanced degree (Master’s) in AI, Systems Engineering, Computer Science, Business, or Technology Governance. • 7+ years experience working on frontier AI capabilities, system architecture, AI safety, or advanced technology governance with a focus on real-world deployment. • Demonstrated technical fluency in contemporary AI systems (e.g., foundation models, agentic systems, multi-agent coordination, evaluation methods, deployment infrastructure). • Proven ability to analyse emergent system-level risk across models, agents, tools, and infrastructure. • Familiarity with areas such as interoperability, identity, observability, and coordination protocols. • Experience translating frontier technical research into actionable frameworks for C-level stakeholders, assurance mechanisms, standards, or policy instruments • Ability to operate under high uncertainty and develop structured analysis in fast-moving environments. • Community management and project management experience. • Strong track record engaging model developers, infrastructure providers, governments, or multilateral institutions, with executive-level communication and coalition-building capability. Why join us? Join an independent and impartial organization with over 55 years of connecting leaders to make sense of global challenges and move the world forward together.