Founders Associate (Business Operations)

Pluralis Research carries out foundational research on Protocol Learning: multi-participant training of foundation models where no single participant has, or can ever obtain, a full copy of the model. The purpose of Protocol Learning is to facilitate the creation of community-trained and community-owned frontier models with self-sustaining economics.

As a Founders Associate (Business Operations), you'll build up to owning end-to-end projects across go-to-market, operations, and "the 100 other broken things" that need fixing in a startup. One day, you'll be managing campaigns directly with our CEO, the next you'll be fixing a broken integration or engaging with contributors.

This is by no means an easy gig, but it is the best entry point into a startup one could ask for - exposure to all facets of an AI business, working direct with the exec team at a time of rapid growth.

Key Responsibilities

• GTM Execution: You want to own and drive go-to-market strategy and execution - supporting our growth and partnerships initiatives.
• Operational Excellence: Build and maintain operational infrastructure: processes, tooling, reporting. You find something broken, you relish in fixing it.
• Strategic Projects: Exposure to strategic projects across partnerships, community, marketing and ecosystem development.
• Business Ops: Directly support our founder & CoS in day to day operations of the business.
• High Agency: Pick up and run with whatever is the most important task on any given week.

What We're Looking For

• In General: 1-2 years of experience in management consulting (tier-1), high-growth startup operations, or venture capital.
• High Agency: Demonstrated bias toward action. You default to doing, not asking for permission.
• Strong analytical toolkit: comfortable building models, pulling apart data, and synthesising findings into clear recommendations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication. You can draft a professional memo and rally an executive team behind it.
• Genuine interest in AI: Whether current models, decentralised systems, or frontier technology. You may be non-technical, but you're curious enough to go deeper than the average person.

Bonus Points

• Show us what you tinker with that's AI related on weekends.
• Experience with highly complex technical infrastructure.
• Highly succinct in actions and impact.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive base salary.
• Equity that represents meaningful ownership in an early stage startup.
• Remote-first culture.
• Regular cadence of offsites and opportunity to work in the US.
• Direct access to the founder and exposure to every function of the business.

FYI's

• This role is only open to candidates with full working rights, based in Australia.
• Applicants must have professional-level English proficiency (written and spoken).
• Pluralis is a remote team across Australia and the US. You'll need to be comfortable working across timezones and collaborating with a diverse, distributed group.
• Recruiters: we aren't looking for agency support at this time. We'll reach out if we need help.

Backed by Union Square Ventures and other tier-1 investors, we're a world-class, deeply technical team of ML researchers. Pluralis is unapologetically ideological. We view the world as a better place if we are able to implement what we are attempting, and Protocol Learning as the only plausible approach to preventing a handful of massive corporations monopolising model development, access and release, and achieving massive economic capture. If this resonates, please apply.