5+ years of experience in technical safety work or related roles in dynamic environments.
Proven leadership in complex research or technical programs, especially in AI or cybersecurity.
Strong understanding of frontier AI safety concepts and ability to engage with technical teams.
Ability to assess evaluation results, including limitations and uncertainties.
Experience in translating ambiguous questions into actionable programs and adjusting priorities based on evidence.
Extensive collaboration with research, engineering, and product teams, including policy and communications.
Strong judgment in addressing concerning findings and communicating complex technical issues.
Responsibilities
Shape safety programs and technical roadmaps with research and engineering leads.
Drive the development and deployment of safeguards across models and products.
Coordinate evaluations and safety assessments, including adversarial testing.
Manage safety readiness and trusted-access programs for frontier model launches.
Turn findings into actionable improvements and track remediation efforts.
Strengthen evidence behind safety decisions through comprehensive assessments.
Build scalable programs that ensure consistent application of safeguards across products.
Benefits
Hybrid work model with 3 days in the office per week.
Relocation assistance for new employees.
Full Job Description
About the Role
We're hiring Research Program Managers across AI Safeguards and Frontier Risks Safety. You'll lead programs that develop and improve the safeguards used across our models and products, or assess and mitigate risks associated with frontier capabilities, launches, and trusted-access programs.
You will partner with researchers, engineers, and other stakeholders to turn open safety questions into clear programs of work. You'll shape technical roadmaps, coordinate execution, and use evidence to guide priorities and inform development and deployment decisions. We're looking for people who combine strong technical judgment, experience managing complex research programs, and a commitment to AI safety.
These roles are based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.
In this role, you will:
Shape safety programs and technical roadmaps. Partner with research and engineering leads to define goals, milestones, dependencies, and success criteria. Prioritize intake and emerging findings, resolve blockers, and balance immediate safety needs with longer-term research and platform investments.
Drive safeguards development and deployment. Translate safety research into safeguards across models and products. Maintain an end-to-end view of safeguard coverage, effectiveness, and opportunities for improvement for one or more risk areas, and drive a roadmap that advances across launches.
Coordinate evaluations and safety assessments. Organize capability evaluations, alignment and control assessments, adversarial testing, and safeguard stress-testing, including risks from autonomous and multi-agent systems. Support embedded assessments throughout model development, internal use, and deployment.
Drive safety readiness and trusted-access programs. Coordinate safety requirements and execution across frontier model launches and deployments. Work with technical teams to define assessment scope and the evidence needed to inform safety and access decisions.
Turn findings into improvements. Triage safeguard gaps, jailbreaks, and overflagging with accountable teams. Establish owners and escalation paths, track remediation and regression testing, and turn recurring issues into research and engineering improvements.
Strengthen the evidence behind safety decisions. Support safety cases that connect claims to evaluations, safeguards, assumptions, and remaining uncertainty. Surface evidence gaps and unresolved risks, and communicate methods, results, limitations, and follow-up actions through assessment reports, system cards, and updates to decision-makers.
Build programs that scale across products. Coordinate shared tooling and feedback workflows, privacy and security requirements, and safeguard user experience and quality assurance. Help teams apply safeguards consistently across product surfaces and upcoming launches.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Have 5+ years of experience in technical safety work, owning technical programs, or related roles in fast-moving environments.
Have led complex research or technical programs involving researchers and engineers, particularly in AI, cybersecurity, biosafety, or another field where failures can have serious consequences.
Understand frontier AI safety concepts, including capability evaluations, alignment, control, monitoring, and safeguard robustness, and can engage substantively with technical teams.
Can assess what evaluation results do and do not establish, including methodological limitations, uncertainty, and the difference between model capability and real-world risk.
Can turn ambiguous questions into clear programs, make practical tradeoffs, and adjust priorities as evidence changes.
Have worked extensively across research, engineering, and product teams and can coordinate with policy and communications partners.
Exercise sound judgment when findings are concerning or incomplete, raise unresolved risks constructively, and communicate complex technical work clearly.
Are motivated to help ensure increasingly capable AI systems remain beneficial and under meaningful human control.
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company was founded in 2015 by a group of technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and John Schulman. OpenAI's mission is to develop and promote friendly AI for the betterment of humanity. The company has developed a number of cutting-edge AI technologies, including GPT-3, a language processing system that can generate human-like text. OpenAI has received funding from a number of high-profile investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
