Model Policy, Chemical & Biological Risk

Details

The Safety Systems team works to build and deploy safe AGI, driving AI safety and fostering trust and transparency. The Model Policy team aligns model behavior with human values and norms by developing policy taxonomies, evaluation criteria, and safety guidance for foundational models.

This senior role focuses on creating and developing policies for addressing biological and chemical risks in frontier AI systems. The role sits at the intersection of biosecurity expertise, AI safety research, and policy design, helping ensure that AI systems can support beneficial life sciences research while reducing the risk of misuse.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain model policies governing chemical and biological risk, including how models should safely handle dual-use scenarios.
• Develop structured taxonomies of chemical and biological risk to inform model training data, evaluation benchmarks, and safety monitoring systems.
• Translate biosecurity and chemical security expertise into actionable model behavior.
• Work closely with research and engineering teams to operationalize policy in training and evaluation pipelines.
• Develop broad subject-matter expertise while maintaining agility across topics.
• Identify emerging risk vectors where frontier AI capabilities could lower barriers to harmful activity and develop mitigation strategies.
• Engage with internal and external subject-matter experts in biosecurity, biodefense, and chemical safety to ensure policies reflect real-world risk landscapes.

Requirements

• Strong domain expertise in chemistry, biology, biosecurity, or related fields, with the ability to translate that expertise into principled, operational policies for frontier AI systems.
• Experience researching or working with large language models, machine learning, AI governance, technology policy, or related areas.
• Ability to tackle structured reasoning and classification problems, such as defining boundaries between legitimate scientific inquiry and potentially harmful applications.
• Experience designing, refining, or enforcing policies or safeguards for complex systems, including in AI/ML environments, scientific research governance, national security contexts, or other high-stakes technical domains.
• Comfort navigating ambiguous, high-stakes problem spaces and balancing risk reduction with scientific openness and innovation.
• Ability to build new frameworks from first principles, reason about open-ended problems, and generate novel approaches under uncertainty.
• Ownership of problems end to end, from defining conceptual frameworks through collaborating with research and engineering teams to implement and iterate on solutions.
• Experience at the intersection of science, policy, and emerging technology, such as life sciences research, national security, risk and threat assessment, technology policy, or AI safety.

Workplace & Location

The role is based in the San Francisco office. OpenAI uses a hybrid model with three days in the office per week and optional work from home on Thursdays and Fridays.

Benefits

• Equity, performance-related bonuses for eligible employees, and comprehensive benefits.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for health, dependent care, and commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave.
• Paid time off, company holidays, office closures, and paid sick or safe time.
• Mental health and wellness support.
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily office meals and eligible meal delivery credits.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional taxable fringe benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.