Researcher, Misalignment Monitoring Lead

Details

OpenAI's Safety Research organization develops methods to monitor frontier AI systems, identify emerging risks, and evaluate the effectiveness of safety systems. The role focuses on advancing research and evaluation methods for understanding model behavior and improving monitoring systems in collaboration with research, engineering, and deployment teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead the research and technical direction for evaluating and improving misalignment monitoring of frontier AI systems.
• Design and execute rigorous evaluations to measure monitor effectiveness, identify failure modes, and assess the reliability of monitoring signals.
• Develop methods to stress-test and red-team monitors, including identifying behaviors that evade detection or expose weaknesses in existing approaches.
• Investigate false positives, missed detections, and other monitoring failures to improve the accuracy and usefulness of safety evaluations.
• Build scalable evaluation frameworks and experimental tools for ongoing measurement of monitoring performance as model capabilities evolve.
• Translate research findings into actionable improvements by working with partner teams to strengthen monitoring systems and inform broader safety decisions.
• Establish research priorities and guide technical execution, balancing foundational research questions with practical deployment needs.

Requirements

• Strong background in machine learning research, particularly model evaluations, AI safety, alignment, robustness, or related areas.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technically challenging research projects from identifying important questions through designing experiments and delivering results.
• Strong experimental judgment and understanding of how to design evaluations that are rigorous, reproducible, and difficult to game.
• Hands-on experience building or evaluating machine learning systems, including large language models or other frontier AI systems.
• Experience investigating complex failure modes and distinguishing meaningful safety signals from misleading measurements.
• Comfort working on open-ended research problems where the appropriate methodology or success criteria may not be obvious initially.
• Practical engineering ability to independently build experiments, analyze results, and iterate quickly.
• Clear communication skills and an ability to collaborate across research, engineering, and safety teams.
• Motivation to contribute to reliable oversight mechanisms for increasingly capable AI systems.

Nice to Have

• Experience with AI monitoring, automated evaluations, adversarial testing, or red-teaming.
• Research experience in scalable oversight, AI control, model behavior analysis, or interpretability.
• Experience developing monitoring or evaluation systems used in real-world deployments.
• A track record of technical research leadership, including mentoring researchers or coordinating cross-functional research initiatives.

Benefits

• Base salary of $380,000–$500,000 per year, plus equity.
• 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, paid company holidays, office closures, and 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 benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.

OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. Background checks are administered in accordance with applicable law.