Private Draft

The 29 personas behind AI

We’ve organized every stage and persona in the AI supply chain, informed by real recruiting at frontier companies. Click any row to see matching profiles from our talent graph.

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AI Policy & Strategy

Navigates regulation and geopolitics

AI Policy & Strategy

Summary

Known as: AI Policy Lead, Government Affairs, Regulatory Strategy, AI Ethics & Policy, Public Policy Manager

Shapes and navigates the regulatory, geopolitical, and institutional environment for AI. At frontier labs, policy shapes what gets trained, what safety commitments bind the org, and how models are released. At applied companies, maps to regulatory affairs and go-to-market positioning. The talent pool is distinct: policy schools, think tanks, government, and legal backgrounds.

Specializations

Regulatory Analysis & Compliance Strategy — Interprets and tracks regulatory frameworks (EU AI Act, export controls, sector-specific regulation) and translates them into company posture: what's required, what's coming, and what the org should commit to before it's forced to. Produces the regulatory assessments that shape release decisions and market entry.

Government Engagement & Public Affairs — Builds relationships with policymakers, regulators, and standards bodies. Shapes consultations, responds to rulemakings, manages public-sector interfaces, and represents the company in policy forums. Different hiring profile from regulatory analysis — this is relationship-driven and requires government or Hill experience.

Compute Governance & Strategic Forecasting — Tracks the geopolitical dynamics that affect hardware access, deployment boundaries, and competitive position: semiconductor export controls, compute sovereignty initiatives, and cross-border data restrictions. Strategic forecasting on how regulatory and geopolitical shifts will reshape what's trainable, deployable, and sellable over 1-3 year horizons.

Shapes the commitments that Governance operationalizes. Export controls and compute governance touch substrate (semiconductor policy, chip export restrictions).

Where the Work Lives

[1]Substrate

[2]Compute

[3]Intelligence

Secondary

Policy decisions directly shape what gets trained and what capabilities are developed.

[4]Systems

Secondary

Defines safety commitments and release policies that constrain how models are deployed.

[5]Distribution

Primary

Shapes regulatory strategy, go-to-market positioning, and how models are released to market.

Candidate Archetypes

Tom Banks

Anthropic

Regulatory strategist

Translates regulatory text into company posture, commitments, and release constraints.

Jason Ness

OpenAI

Government affairs

Builds relationships, shapes consultations, and manages public-sector interfaces.

Rupert Lee

Google

Compute geopolitics

Tracks policy moves that affect hardware access, deployment boundaries, and strategic risk.

Company Scale

Early-Stage

Rare

Growth

Occasional

Enterprise

Primary

Frontier labs and large tech facing regulatory scrutiny. Growth-stage hires for regulated markets and anyone selling into the EU post-AI Act. Healthcare and financial services accelerate the timeline.

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