We are hiring
See open positionsStarting teams wanted
SAIN has chapters in Groningen, Amsterdam and Utrecht. This winter we are starting three more: Eindhoven, Delft and The Hague. Each city gets a starting team of four people: a Chapter Director, an Education Lead, an Events Lead and a Communications Lead. All four roles are paid and part-time.
Soft deadline 16 November 2026. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, with priority to early applicants.
You would be the person building a SAIN chapter in your city, and you will be in charge of setting up everything. However, you’ll have support: a funded national organisation behind you, and a network of advisors, researchers and partner organisations who want nothing more than your chapter to succeed.
Not there yet
Already behind you
We have identified these three cities as the highest-potential ones for us to expand to. Here is, very briefly, why we think so.
TU/e, the Center for Safe AI and the Brainport region
Brainport is home to ASML and one of Europe's densest clusters of engineering talent.
Likely a valuable technical chapter with some important governance questions sprinkled in: interpretability, evaluations, engineering, compute verification and the governance of the hardware AI runs on.
Apply in Eindhoven (opens in a new tab)TU Delft
The largest technical university in the Netherlands, with deep strengths in robotics and embodied AI. TU Delft's ELLIS unit coordinates themes including Verification & Safe and Responsible AI, Multiagent Systems & Robust and Adversarial ML, and Sequential Decision Making.
Likely also a strong technical chapter, with a potentially stronger emphasis on embodied AI safety.
Apply in Delft (opens in a new tab)Ministries, regulators and campuses
Ministries, regulators, international institutions, and the Leiden and Haagse Hogeschool campuses. Notably strong for cybersecurity, with national and international cyber institutions, including The Hague Security Delta (HSD), Europe's largest security cluster.
Likely a strong governance chapter that reaches civil servants and policy professionals as much as students.
Apply in The Hague (opens in a new tab)New chapters start as incubating chapters. From mid-December 2026 to June 2027, the starting team will develop the chapter towards a few concrete milestones. Importantly, although this phase is part of the incubation, internally we’ll treat you as a SAIN chapter from the start.
We’ll agree on where we want to be in June 2027; how you get there is up to you. We’ll work together to make sure you reach your fullest potential. In June 2027 we will do a final review of how things have gone. Chapters that get there become official SAIN chapters, and the director and lead roles stay paid part-time positions.
Mid-December 2026
A joint kickoff for all three starting teams.
January 2027
Team, office space, channels, and a first course on the calendar.
Spring 2027
The chapter runs its first course and regular public events.
June 2027
A final review together. Chapters that get there become official SAIN chapters.
The milestones we agree on together
Discussion groups, hackathons, talks, and the evenings after. In Groningen, Amsterdam and Utrecht, people meet friends and collaborators at SAIN, and often find their next step in AI safety. Apply now, and a year from now your city has a community like this, built by you.
Apply to a starting team (opens in a new tab)
Everything the three existing chapters learned the hard way is written down, set up, and yours from day one.
In a funded national organisation, with SAIN's name and backing behind you.
From SAIN's national team: likely at least a call every two weeks, a visit in person every so often, and help whenever you ask for it.
SAIN's organisational wiki: course curricula and facilitator guides, all our playbooks on events, communications and more, and the brand kit, all ready to use.
The Airtable talent pipeline we use, the Discord server where all of SAIN's community is, and the software that automates the stuff that would be annoying to do yourself.
For events and materials, handled through SAIN.
To our advisors, researchers and partner organisations, and to the teams in the other five cities.
A package to help you develop professionally in AI safety, which we try to offer every SAIN team member.
If the chapter does well, it officially becomes a SAIN chapter, and the director and leads have the opportunity to stay on paid part-time contracts.
Every starting team has the same four roles. Open one for the full description. You can apply for more than one, and the form asks which city you are based in.
Leads the starting team and opens the city's doors. 12 hours a week depending on preference and availability, December 2026 to June 2027, with possibility of extension based on funding and incubation success.
Every SAIN chapter started with one person who had a vision and made it happen. In Groningen, Amsterdam and Utrecht that took years of trial and error. In Eindhoven, Delft and The Hague we want it to take six months, because this time the director has all of SAIN's resources to get started.
As the Director, you would be the person leading everything in your city. You will develop the team (and will even be included in the final interviews of the other starting team roles in your city if possible) and open the doors to collaboration: at the university or hogescholen, with local organisations, and in The Hague with the ministries and institutions. By June there should be a chapter that runs basically autonomously. You work directly with SAIN's national team, and you are accountable for whether your city reaches its milestones.
Importantly: this role is about building something from nothing, and about people. Whilst AI safety knowledge is helpful, your job is to gather the most knowledgeable people into your community, not to be that person yourself. You need enough grounding to represent the field credibly, which is why we ask, at least, for a completed AI safety course. You are the one that builds, that keeps the team together, and that multiplies what everyone else does.
This means we expect high agency from you. For instance, you will not get a week-by-week checklist. Instead, we will set the destination together, you then choose the route, and you pull in support when you need it.
What the chapter looks like depends on the city. In Eindhoven and Delft, a technical profile fits best: you will mostly be talking to engineers, students and researchers. In The Hague, the director is ideally someone who knows how the government works from the inside. It is your job to identify your city's strengths and steer AI safety into the field.
One form for all four roles and all three cities. You can apply for more than one role.
Brings the first AI safety course to the city. 8 hours a week depending on preference and availability, December 2026 to June 2027, with possibility of extension based on funding and incubation success.
Courses are where most people's path into AI safety begins. At SAIN, hundreds of people a year take one at our existing chapters, and many of them go on to (research) projects, jobs and chapter roles of their own. In your city, that first course does not exist yet. You make it exist!
You will not have to write a curriculum. We already have a clear playbook and curricula running in three cities, with readings, session plans and facilitator guides. Your job is to bring one to your city, get as many of the best people in your city to join, make sure they finish, and go on to develop themselves further.
Which course comes first depends on the city: most likely a technical track in Eindhoven and Delft, and a governance & policy track in The Hague. You decide this with your director.
One form for all four roles and all three cities. You can apply for more than one role.
Makes the chapter visible, one event at a time. 8 hours a week depending on preference and availability, December 2026 to June 2027, with possibility of extension based on funding and incubation success.
Events are how a chapter becomes visible. A good talk or hackathon is where most people first meet the community. It is also where the people who will later run its courses and projects first show up. In a new city, every event is also proof that there are people here who take AI safety seriously.
You plan and run the chapter's first events, from the first meetup to talks that people travel for. You do not start from zero: SAIN's events playbook, speakers from the other chapters' networks, and a budget are there. What we need is someone who makes events happen reliably, gets the right people in the room, and makes them want to come back. That will be you!
The audience differs per city. In Eindhoven it is TU/e students and Brainport engineers, and in Delft TU Delft students and researchers. In The Hague it is civil servants, policy professionals and students. Your role is to deliver events that build on your city's strengths and opportunities. Each event is an opportunity to bring the local community and newcomers together while representing SAIN's mission and values authentically.
One form for all four roles and all three cities. You can apply for more than one role.
Builds the chapter's audience from zero. 8 hours a week depending on preference and availability, December 2026 to June 2027, with possibility of extension based on funding and incubation success.
Nobody joins something they have never heard of. That is where you come in! You make sure the right people in your city hear about AI safety: researchers and professionals who would make great facilitators, engineers and students who have been quietly worried about the progress of AI and need a community, and civil servants who want to understand what is actually going on.
You launch the chapter's social media accounts and make them run reliably. As SAIN, we have a brand kit, templates and more that are ready to be used. You will be working together with the national team and the other chapters' Communications Leads to share what works and what doesn't. What does not exist yet is an audience in your city, and building one is the job.
Importantly: this role is about getting the right people to act (sign up, show up, apply, move through the talent pipeline, and so on), not about follower or like counts per se.
The tone will differ per city. In The Hague, being able to communicate in Dutch matters a lot, in Delft not so much. You should know your city best, though.
One form for all four roles and all three cities. You can apply for more than one role.
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, with priority to early applicants. The soft deadline is 16 November 2026.
Your CV, a few short written questions, and one question for each role you apply for. About 45 minutes.
If your application stands out, we'll give you a short task that mirrors the role you'll be doing, which takes about two hours.
45 minutes with two people from SAIN, including a discussion of your work sample.
By mid-December we invite a starting team of four people per city.
If you are in the starting team, your work will really kick off in mid-January!
If you are not in the starting team, you are still the start of the chapter’s community! We will send you what you need to join SAIN’s online community, so you are among the first to hear about new activities and opportunities in your city.
If we do not have strong enough applications to start the incubation in a particular city, we will open a second round later on.
Safe AI Netherlands (SAIN) is a Dutch non-profit developing the talent the Netherlands needs to address the risks of transformative AI. We build the national AI safety talent pipeline to get people from first contact to first real contribution. Then we connect them to the institutions and organisations that need them.
We do not sponsor visas. If you are in the Netherlands on a student residence permit, you can still apply.
Apply by 16 November 2026. We read applications every week, so applying early means hearing back early.
