Operations Manager in London

The Society for Technological Advancement (SoTA) finds and accelerates the progress of exceptional scientists, engineers and technologists early in their trajectories. Since launching in 2024 as a part-time project, we’ve held 22 selective deeptech events with 1,800 attendees – Hackathons, Frontiers Nights and Debates – and published 140 articles to 7,000 subscribers through SoTA Letters. We’ve surfaced teams that have collectively raised tens of millions in venture capital; Workshop Labs, acquired by Thinking Machines, launched through a SoTA Hackathon. 10 Downing Street described us as “magic” and recruited our members to rewire the state. We’re a non-profit Community Interest Company preparing to launch our Fellowship. This will be a 6-month programme giving 10 of our most promising members fast grants for exploratory projects, experimental lab access, AI and compute credits, mentorship from leading founders and researchers, and a talent-dense peer group – to help them find their life’s work.

We are hiring an Operations Manager to own the infrastructure behind this Fellowship and the programmes that feed into it. You’ll work directly with SoTA’s founders and build relationships with our partners across deeptech startups, AI labs, academia, independent research organisations, venture capital, and government.

What you'll own:

• End-to-end logistics for SoTA Hackathons, Commissions (engineering challenges), and Frontiers Nights (demos and discussion)
• Fellowship operations: fast-grant management, dinners, seminars, and compute and AI credit access
• Contractor and vendor coordination (design, videography, catering)
• Internal systems, tooling, and documentation — building SoTA’s playbook
• Trusted partner and stakeholder relationships (sponsors, judges, speakers)
• Supporting the founding team on budget tracking and funder reporting

You'll thrive here if you:

• Have run complex events or programmes end-to-end and can point to things that would have broken without you
• Work fluently across operational detail and strategic decisions
• Build systems and repeatable processes, rather than holding everything in your head
• Care about British science, technology and progress, and want to support the exceptional talent driving it
• Are the kind of person SoTA exists to find: industrious, interdisciplinary, and excited about the opportunities unlocked by technoscientific progress

Details:

• Location: London, hybrid
• Salary: £60k-70k depending on experience
• Full-time, reporting to the founders
• Aiming for an October 2026 start so you’re in post before the Fellowship launches
• This is partly an events role, so evening work is offset with time off in lieu
• We’re unable to sponsor visas at this stage

To apply:

Email careers@ilikethefuture.com with one example of a complex thing you've organised end-to-end – including what nearly went wrong and how you handled it – along with your CV and a couple of lines on why you’re interested.