Technical Abuse Investigator

Details

About the Team

OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Intelligence and Investigations team detects, investigates, and disrupts the misuse of OpenAI products—particularly critical or novel harms—and enables partner teams to develop data-backed model policies and scalable safety mitigations.

About the Role

As a Technical Abuse Investigator on the Intelligence and Investigations team, you will detect, investigate, and disrupt malicious use of OpenAI’s platform and scale parts of the investigative process to disrupt harm at scale. This role combines investigative judgment with technical fluency: much of the work involves navigating complex datasets to surface actionable abuse signals rather than only reviewing individual reports.

You will design and implement lightweight technical solutions (for example, notebook templates, SQL/Python data pipelines, dashboards, or internal utilities) that enable specialized investigators to identify, track, and act on abuse at greater scale. You will work closely with engineering, legal, investigations, security, and policy partners to respond to time-sensitive escalations, investigate activity that falls outside existing safeguards, and translate investigative insights into scalable detection and enforcement strategies.

This role participates in an on-call rotation for urgent escalations outside normal hours. Some investigations may involve sensitive content, including sexual, violent, or otherwise disturbing material. The role works PST and is open to remote work within the United States, with a strong preference for candidates based in San Francisco or New York.

Responsibilities

• Detect, investigate, and disrupt abuse and harm in collaboration with policy, legal, global affairs, security, and engineering teams using complex datasets.
• Develop and iterate on abuse signals and investigative methods, and scale one-off insights to reduce manual effort and expand coverage.
• Build and maintain lightweight technical solutions such as SQL/Python data pipelines, investigation templates, dashboards, or internal utilities for investigators.
• Develop a deep understanding of OpenAI’s products, data systems, and enforcement mechanisms, and collaborate with engineering and data teams to improve investigative tooling, data quality, and workflows.
• Communicate investigation findings through written briefs, data-backed recommendations, and escalation summaries.
• Rotate (infrequently) into an incident response role requiring rapid threat triaging, investigation, mitigation, sound judgment, and concise briefings to senior leadership.
• Scale and automate manual investigative processes to act as a force multiplier for the investigations team.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in at least two of the following domains: agentic AI misuse; automation; encryption; terrorism; fraud; violence; child exploitation; data science; dashboarding; API abuse; product exploits; prompt injection; distillation.
• 5+ years of experience investigating and mitigating abuse in a relevant domain.
• 4+ years of relevant technical projects (experience with technical implementation and tooling).
• Experience scaling or automating processes, including with LLMs or ML techniques.
• Strong technical fluency with complex datasets and the ability to build lightweight data solutions (e.g., SQL and Python data pipelines, notebooks, dashboards).
• Strong presentation and written communication skills for conveying safety work and investigative findings to internal and external stakeholders.
• Ability to work in ambiguous, rapidly changing, and high-pressure environments and to participate in on-call rotations.

Benefits

• The posting lists a base pay range and notes that total compensation includes equity and performance-related bonuses.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts.
• Pre-tax Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter accounts.
• 401(k) with employer match.
• Paid parental, medical, and caregiver leave; flexible PTO; paid company holidays and office closures; paid sick/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.

Location & Work Hours

• Role works PST, is open to remote work within the United States, and heavily prefers candidates based in San Francisco or New York City.
• Participation in an on-call rotation is required.