Protection Scientist Engineer, Intelligence and Investigations

Details

OpenAI's Intelligence and Investigations team identifies and investigates misuses of our products to inform product policy and build scaled safety mitigations. Protection Science Engineering is an interdisciplinary role combining data science, machine learning, investigation, and policy/protocol development. As a Protection Scientist Engineer you will design and build systems to proactively identify and enforce on abuse across OpenAI products, sustain monitoring, prototype defenses against high-risk harms, and respond to critical escalations. Some investigations may involve sensitive content (sexual, violent, or otherwise disturbing material). The role includes participation in an on-call rotation.

Responsibilities

• Scope and implement abuse monitoring requirements for new product launches.
• Improve and automate processes to sustain monitoring operations for existing products.
• Prototype and productionize detection, review, and enforcement systems for major harms.
• Respond to and investigate critical escalations not covered by existing safety systems.
• Work cross-functionally with Product, Policy, Ops, Investigative, and Engineering teams to understand risks, ensure access to sufficient data, and build scaled tooling.

Requirements

• At least 4 years of experience performing technical analysis and detection, especially using SQL and Python.
• Experience in trust & safety, or working closely with policy, enforcement, and engineering teams; strong investigative mindset.
• Experience with basic data engineering tasks (building core tables, writing production data pipelines).
• Understanding of machine learning principles and experience executing ML workflows; experience scaling and automating processes with language models is a plus.
• Basic software development skills; role writes productionized code.
• Ability to handle sensitive content and participate in an on-call rotation to resolve urgent escalations outside normal work hours.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration and communication skills.

Location and Work Arrangement

• Role can be based in San Francisco, New York City, or Washington, with Remote - US also listed as an option.
• Includes on-call rotation and may require work outside normal business hours.

Benefits

• Base salary range: $220,000 - $425,000 (offers equity).
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer HSA contributions.
• Pre-tax accounts (Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, commuter benefits).
• 401(k) with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave; flexible PTO for exempt employees.
• 13+ paid company holidays and periodic company office closures.
• Mental health and wellness support; employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning & development stipend; daily meals and meal delivery credits as eligible.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional compensation components may include equity and performance-related bonuses; background checks administered per applicable law.