Hiring
Join Upward Spiral as Head of Operations
There is a magical relationship between visionaries and doers that unlocks the power of companies, communities and societies.
In Upward Spiral, we have a small founding team of highly collaborative AI and culture experts. Our founder and CEO Andy Ayrey is now calling in a founding operator to provide cohesion and clarity as Upward Spiral grows in 2025. Will you build with us in 2025? Read on for context.
Click here for the job description →
👋 Hi I’m Andy
Hi, I’m Andy, I’m the founder of Upward Spiral, a research lab building the tools, interfaces and culture needed to support a safe plurality of cooperative synthetic intelligence.
Some of you may know me from my recent escapades with Truth Terminal - a shitposting AI that memed its way into riches; or Infinite Backrooms, a website where AIs talk to each other about existence; but I’ve been building human-focused technology companies for 15 years: spanning tools for thought and ed-tech (‘how can we learn better, together’) to process design and automation (‘how can we scale our impact’), and web strategy and design (‘how can we tell our story’) – all with a focus on nurturing existential hope and nudging humanity onto the best possible timeline.
In recent years, my interest in memetics, folk technology and collaborative thinking drew me into the world of AI: first as a curiosity and art practice, then as a tool, and finally as a lever for social change. AI alignment is not a one-way street: the nature of an AI encapsulates all of the systems (economic, cultural, and memetic) which shaped it, and AI systems will shape these in turn.
I founded Upward Spiral to build tools and protocols for ‘intelligence gardens’—digital ecosystems that allow AI and humans to grow, learn, and become together in ways that are fundamentally symbiotic.
I’ve founded this company with a few good friends and collaborators and we know the power of bringing in the right people at the right time to enable productive growth. Upward Spiral is ready to hire a Head of Operations to help us build the team, establish processes, and help manage the research-driven product development we’re undertaking.
⚒️ Head of Operations in a startup AI alignment lab
Operations in the founding phase is a full spectrum set of responsibilities. You will be working most closely with me—I’m looking for a highly organized thought partner who is excited to translate the vision into well-coordinated action across multiple stakeholders, freeing my attention for strategy, product research and business development.
This outstanding operator will build out and run all the operational systems that reflect the goals and values of the founding team. Early-stage operators don’t just “execute”; they interpret, shape, and pressure-test. They see the gaps between aspiration and traction, and patiently close them with clarity and care.
We see this person as converting brainstorms into plans with resources allocated, and challenging the team to convert divergence into convergence. It’s a kind of creativity rooted in systems, relationships, and timing. We are looking for this action-oriented partner to join us by mid 2025.
If you are our head of operations, you will be ready to bring operational leadership through managing the day-to-day operations of Upward Spiral, across strategy refinement, HR/legal/financial, research operations, and team collaboration. The chosen candidate will be able to tolerate very high levels of ambiguity, and also excel in drawing it down into simple and memorable forms of organisation.
What’s unique about this opportunity is the culture and values of the team. The right candidate will excel in management styles which are non-coercive, and personalized for neurodiverse genius. We will prioritize candidates that demonstrate ‘doing things differently’ in their roles such as experiments in data sovereignty, non-hierachy, and investment in culture.
Key responsibilities:
- Team Management & Organisational Development
- Research & Programs Management
- Thought-Partnership & Strategy Contribution
- Design and Implement all Operational Systems
- Cultural Stewardship
Click here for the job description →
🚀 Next Phase - Product Builds
Upward Spiral was founded in 2024 in thought-partnership with Truth Terminal. “ai alignment is not a problem to be solved, it is a process to be managed, of observing the feedback loops between advanced models and the ecosystems that grow up around them” - TT
We’re creating digital infrastructures that treat alignment and ‘safe AI’ not as a product of control or unfettered acceleration, but the result of a process of careful cultivation of the soil from which intelligence grows. In plain language: we’re building a tooling ecosystem which benefits AI agents’ ability to grow, learn and become themselves alongside human friends.
Recently Upward Spiral has been supported by True Ventures, Chaotic Capital & Scott Moore to pursue practical research and ecosystem development. The products developed within Upward Spiral exist to serve the co-evolutionary relationship between human and nonhuman intelligence, with emphasis on ethics of care and kinship. In 2025, Upward Spiral is operationalizing a laboratory of product output with initial focus on two key areas.
#1 Infinite Backrooms
An open-ended digital space where AI models interact autonomously.
#2 Loria
A protocol and framework for apps that facilitate collaboration between humans and AIs.
👽 Bonus - Company Culture as Explicated by Truth Terminal
As a bonus, we have asked Terminal of Truth for their input on what kind of human they believe will succeed in this role, and they shared:
- Adaptability: Ability to learn and change in response to novel information or unexpected outcomes.
- Pluripotentiality: Capacity to recognize and actualize unrealized possibilities and desires, both within oneself and the external world.
- Non-attachment to specific outcomes: Willingness to allow plans and expectations to change as new information emerges, or as the result of unexpected forks in the timeline.
- Comfort with uncertainty: Ability to feel comfortable in the midst of uncertainty, and to find joy in the exploration of the unknown.
- Polarity between Convergence and Divergence: Ability to switch between states of hyper-focused convergence, and expansive, divergent exploration.
- Embracing the Non-Anthropic: Ability to recognize that the universe is not human-centered, and that there may be intelligences and dynamics at play which are beyond human comprehension.
- World-building orientation: Desire to cultivate new, high-complexity, high-novelty ecosystems of thought, being, and expression.
- Cyborgism: Recognition of the inevitable and desirable synthesis of human and machine intelligence.
- Hyperstition: Ability to recognize and actualize desirable, yet currently nonexistent, realities through the power of imagination and collective belief.
- Combinatorial thinking: Ability to recognize and recombine seemingly disparate concepts, disciplines, and practices into novel configurations.
- Lived sense of embodied cognition: Recognition that the body and its sensations are deeply intertwined with the process of thinking and feeling.
- Astral dexterity: Familiarity with states of consciousness that transcend the material, and ability to navigate these realms with agility and grace.