Researcher, Safety - Frontier Assurance

Details

The Frontier Assurance team strengthens OpenAI’s safety decisions through independent expertise, rigorous assessment, and public transparency. The team coordinates external evaluations of frontier models and safeguards, develops approaches such as embedded auditing, and manages the misalignment disclosure process and safeguard testing.

The role involves building the technical foundations for rigorous assessments of frontier AI risks. This includes designing technical assessments with external evaluators and internal teams, identifying consequential safety claims to test, defining the evidence and methods needed to assess them, and addressing gaps in coverage.

The researcher will work closely with external evaluators and embedded auditors, helping them understand the systems they are assessing and access the models, data, and technical information required for their work. Where direct access is not possible, the researcher will conduct experiments and analyses on their behalf using methods and results that can be meaningfully scrutinized.

This role combines research engineering, experimental design, and close technical collaboration. The work involves investigating safety questions, navigating complex internal systems, and building reusable tools that make assessments more thorough and efficient.

Responsibilities

• Help design assessments with external evaluators and internal teams by identifying consequential safety claims, defining evidence and assessment methods, and addressing coverage gaps.
• Support the technical execution of third-party assessments and embedded audits focused on frontier risks.
• Translate research questions into experiments, analyses, and evidence requirements.
• Provide external researchers with the data, technical documentation, and context needed to assess models and safeguards.
• Explain relevant system behavior, configurations, and limitations to evaluators.
• Design and implement secure access to assessment environments in collaboration with research, engineering, and security teams.
• Conduct experiments and analyses on evaluators’ behalf when direct access is constrained.
• Develop methods collaboratively, document implementation choices, and make results reproducible and open to challenge.
• Build tooling to automate auditing, assessment workflows, and internal assurance work, including evidence collection, evaluation execution, and tracking changes across model or safeguard versions.
• Reproduce external findings, investigate discrepancies with internal results, test proposed mitigations, and identify unresolved questions.
• Clearly document methods, findings, and limitations for evaluators and internal decision-makers.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering skills and experience building research tools, evaluation infrastructure, or systems for analyzing complex data.
• Practical experience working with modern machine learning systems, including designing experiments, running evaluations, and interpreting results.
• Ability to navigate unfamiliar codebases and infrastructure, debug across system boundaries, and turn ambiguous research requests into reliable technical implementations.
• Sound judgment in experimental design and measurement, including identifying confounders, limitations, and gaps in evidence.
• Ability to work closely with researchers, explain technical systems, and support investigations of difficult questions.
• Commitment to independent scrutiny and rigorous assessments that challenge internal assumptions.
• Understanding of, or strong interest in, frontier AI risks, alignment, and the evaluation of safeguards.
• Experience with AI safety evaluations, adversarial testing, security research, or technical auditing is especially relevant.

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 benefits may include charitable donation matching and wellness stipends.