At a Glance
- Tasks: Explore how AI can enhance group decision-making and tackle human coordination challenges.
- Company: Join SplitStay, a forward-thinking startup focused on innovative AI solutions.
- Benefits: Flexible hours, equity opportunities, and the chance to shape impactful research.
- Other info: Collaborate directly with the founder in a remote, dynamic environment.
- Why this job: Be part of groundbreaking research that merges AI with human behaviour for real-world impact.
- Qualifications: Open to researchers or practitioners passionate about behavioural science and AI.
The predicted salary is between 30000 - 40000 £ per year.
Help explore one of AI's most overlooked questions: Can AI help groups reach better decisions together?
This role exists because of one question that has fundamentally changed how we think about SplitStay. Over the past year, building SplitStay has changed how I think about AI. When I started the company, I thought we were solving a problem in travel. Today, I think travel is simply where a much broader challenge becomes impossible to ignore: helping groups reach decisions.
Modern AI has become remarkably capable of helping individuals. We can search, write, analyse, translate and generate with extraordinary speed. Yet helping a group of people navigate different preferences, constraints and trade-offs remains surprisingly difficult. That feels less like a software problem and more like a human one.
I have a hypothesis. I believe recent advances in AI create an opportunity to revisit decades of research into human coordination. Not to replace human judgement or automate consensus, but to build tools that help groups understand one another better, surface hidden constraints, explain trade-offs more clearly, reduce unnecessary friction, and ultimately help people reach better decisions together.
Questions like these have been explored for decades in fields such as:
- Behavioural Science
- Negotiation
- Human–Computer Interaction
- Collective Decision-Making
- Organisational Behaviour
- Computational Social Science
- Collective Intelligence
- Multi-Agent Systems
The challenge isn't that we lack research; it's that very little of it reaches the software people use every day. I'd like SplitStay to become one place where those worlds genuinely meet.
Why travel? Because it exposes coordination failures every single day. A group trip forces people to reconcile different budgets, schedules, priorities, and expectations before anything can happen. Booking technology already exists, but helping the group reach the booking decision is a different challenge.
I'm intentionally looking for one long-term collaborator. Not someone to validate my thinking, but someone to challenge it. Someone who enjoys asking difficult questions and is excited by seeing rigorous research tested with real users solving real problems. Whether you're a professor, postdoctoral researcher, research fellow or practitioner matters far less than how you think.
Success isn't another startup feature or academic publication. Success is building products that quietly embed decades of behavioural research into everyday life. If users coordinate more effectively without ever knowing why, I think that's a meaningful form of research impact.
Practical details:
- Long-term strategic collaboration
- Approximately 20 hours per month
- Equity through the Founder Institute FAST Agreement
- Remote
- Direct collaboration with the founder
The structure matters far less than finding the right intellectual fit. If your work intersects with this question, I'd be delighted to exchange ideas. I'm looking for someone who enjoys questioning assumptions, as I suspect the most valuable insights will come from discovering where our current thinking is incomplete.
Can AI help groups reach better decisions together? I don't know. I'd like to find out.
Founding Research Advisor — Human Coordination & AI employer: SplitStay
At SplitStay, we pride ourselves on fostering a collaborative and innovative work culture that encourages intellectual curiosity and rigorous research. As a Founding Research Advisor, you will have the unique opportunity to engage in meaningful projects that bridge the gap between behavioural science and AI, all while working remotely with a founder who values challenging assumptions and exploring new ideas. Our commitment to employee growth and the potential for equity through the Founder Institute FAST Agreement makes SplitStay an exceptional employer for those looking to make a significant impact in the field of human coordination and decision-making.
