Research Engineer / Scientist, Robustness & Safety Training

Details

About the Team

The Safety Systems team is responsible for various safety work to ensure our best models can be safely deployed to the real world to benefit the society and is at the forefront of OpenAI's mission to build and deploy safe AGI, driving our commitment to AI safety and fostering a culture of trust and transparency.

The Model Safety Research team aims to fundamentally advance our capabilities for precisely implementing robust, safe behavior in AI models, and to leverage these advances to make OpenAI’s deployed models safe and beneficial. This requires a breadth of new ML research to address the growing set of safety challenges as AI becomes more powerful and used in more settings. Key focus areas include how to enforce nuanced safety policies without trading off helpfulness and capabilities, how to make the model robust to adversaries, how to address privacy and security risks, and how to make the model trustworthy in safety-critical domains.

We seek to learn from deployment and distribute the benefits of AI, while ensuring that this powerful tool is used responsibly and safely.

About the Role

OpenAI is seeking a senior researcher with passion for AI safety and experience in safety research. Your role will set directions for research to enable and empower safe AGI and work on research projects to make our AI systems safer, more aligned and more robust to adversarial or malicious use cases. You will play a critical role in shaping how a safe AI system should look like in the future at OpenAI, making a significant impact on our mission to build and deploy safe AGI.

Responsibilities

• Conduct state-of-the-art research on AI safety topics such as RLHF, adversarial training, robustness, and more.
• Implement new methods in OpenAI’s core model training and launch safety improvements in OpenAI’s products.
• Set the research directions and strategies to make our AI systems safer, more aligned and more robust.
• Coordinate and collaborate with cross-functional teams, including Trust & Safety, legal, policy and other research teams, to ensure that products meet high safety standards.
• Actively evaluate and understand the safety of models and systems, identify areas of risk and propose mitigation strategies.

Requirements

• Demonstrated passion for AI safety and making cutting-edge AI models safer for real-world use.
• 4+ years of experience in the field of AI safety, particularly in areas like RLHF, adversarial training, robustness, fairness & biases.
• Ph.D. or other degree in computer science, machine learning, or a related field.
• Experience in safety work for AI model deployment.
• In-depth understanding of deep learning research and/or strong engineering skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment.

Benefits

• Base pay range listed for this role: $310,000 – $460,000 (total compensation may include equity and performance-related bonuses).
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Paid parental leave and paid medical/caregiver leave.
• Paid time off and 13+ paid company holidays, plus paid sick or safe time as required by law.
• Mental health and wellness support; employer-paid basic life and disability coverage.
• Annual learning and development stipend.
• Daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits as eligible.
• Relocation support for eligible employees.
• Additional taxable fringe benefits (charitable donation matching, wellness stipends) may be provided.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI emphasizes safety, inclusivity, and equitable sharing of AI benefits. The company is an equal opportunity employer and provides reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.