Manager of Risk & Trust Operations

OUR MISSION Reflection is a research lab making intelligence open and accessible for everyone to use, customize, and build on. We build open models that let anyone control their intelligence and help shape the future of AI. Our mission: make intelligence open and accessible to all. ROLE OVERVIEW The Manager of Risk & Trust Operations is responsible for translating the organization's risk governance frameworks and policies into operational reality. This leader owns the operational machinery that validates adherence, surfaces issues, and drives resolution. The result is a continuously evidenced, audit-ready risk posture that can be confidently represented to customers, regulators, and leadership. Spanning commercial risk support, third-party risk management, controls assurance, AI safety operations, and risk issue management, this role serves as the operational center of gravity for the Risk & Trust function — coordinating across product, engineering, legal, and compliance teams to ensure risk obligations are not just understood, but actively evidenced and remediated where gaps exist. This is a high-visibility, high-impact role that operates across all business functions. Success requires the ability to translate complex risk concepts into verifiable risk management, influence without direct authority, and build trusted relationships internally and externally. WHAT YOU'LL DO Commercial Risk & Go-to-Market Support - Drive the end-to-end lifecycle for risk assessments and certifications supporting the deals pipeline and go-to-market efforts, ensuring risk reviews are completed with the speed and rigor the business requires. - Partner closely with sales, legal, and product teams to scope and deliver risk assessments tailored to customer requirements, industry verticals, and deal-specific obligations. - Develop and maintain a library of reusable risk assessment artifacts, certifications, and evidence packages that accelerate commercial cycles without compromising quality. - Serve as a risk subject matter expert in customer-facing conversations, due diligence requests, and RFP responses involving risk, compliance, and AI safety topics. Third-Party & Vendor Risk Management - Conduct upfront due-diligence assessments, ongoing risk monitoring, and on-demand risk reviews of third parties and vendors supporting organizational operations. - Design and operate a scalable third-party risk management program that reflects the organization's risk appetite, vendor criticality tiers, and evolving regulatory expectations. - Establish clear criteria for vendor risk tiering, onboarding requirements, and ongoing monitoring cadences — ensuring continuous visibility into the risk profile of the extended enterprise. - Coordinate with procurement, legal, and technology teams to ensure vendor risk findings are reflected in contracting, remediation timelines, and relationship management decisions. Controls Assurance & Obligation Validation - Validate and evidence the design and operational efficacy of policies, standards, controls, and guardrails related to risk management — translating governance intent into demonstrable operational outcomes. - Design and execute controls testing programs that provide reliable, audit-quality evidence of control effectiveness across the organization's obligation landscape. - Develop and maintain structured assurance documentation that enables confident representation of risk posture to regulators, auditors, and enterprise customers. - Identify and escalate control design or operational gaps, working cross-functionally to drive timely and durable remediation. AI Safety Program Assurance - Assure the design and operating efficacy of the organization's AI safety program, responsible AI and ethics frameworks, and AI safety and transparency artifacts — including regular assessment of whether operational practices align with stated principles and commitments. - Govern the pre-deployment risk review process for new models and major capability updates, ensuring structured evaluation against safety criteria, ethical frameworks, and applicable obligations before release. - Develop and maintain pre-deployment review workflows, risk thresholds, escalation paths, and sign-off requirements that scale with the organization's model release cadence. - Provide assurance reporting on the ongoing effectiveness of AI safety controls, surfacing trends, gaps, and emerging risks to leadership and relevant governance bodies. AI Abuse & Safety Incident Response - Own the AI abuse and safety violation response program end-to-end, including detection, triage, investigation, response coordination, and remediation tracking. - Maintain the AI incident registry across the model lifecycle, ensuring all safety-relevant events are captured, classified, investigated, and closed with appropriate rigor and audit trail. - Develop and continuously refine detection methodologies,