securebio - Senior Research Scientist, AI Biosecurity Assessments
Requirements
• A PhD in pathogen biology, microbiology, virology, or a closely related field. We will consider equivalent depth from other paths, but expect most strong applicants to hold a doctorate. Wet-lab experience is preferred. • Strategic judgment about how evaluation results map onto real-world biological risk, and about where technical safeguards succeed and fail. • Deep interest in safeguards and their failure modes, alongside contributory biological capabilities. • Ability to turn complex technical results into clear, well-structured writing. • Comfort with short, intensive project cycles and shifting priorities with emerging model releases. • Roughly a year of coding in an industry or graduate research setting, and working fluency in Python. • Direct experience with the Inspect AI framework, or with building and evaluating LLM or agent systems more broadly. • Familiarity with biosecurity policy, threat assessment, or counterterrorism work. • Experience working with AI developers, or in a regulated or NDA-heavy environment.
Responsibilities
• Work with AI firms and internal research and engineering teams to carry out high quality, informative capability and safeguard assessments of emerging AI models. • Execute evaluation pipelines, analyze data and identify how results align with relevant threat models and risk levels. • Manually assess models for both willingness and knowledge across specialized domains of biology. • Synthesize findings into clear evaluation reports, technical write-ups, and risk summaries for partners and regulatory bodies. • Contribute to papers, reports, and our public dashboard https://securebio.org/benchmarks/ of trends in capabilities.
Benefits
• Our employee benefits reflect our belief in investing to build the strongest possible team, in which everyone receives the trust and support they need to excel. Our benefits package includes: • COMPREHENSIVE HEALTHCARE • Comprehensive healthcare coverage, including health, dental & vision insurance, as well as a yearly mental health allowance for every employee. • FLEXIBLE WORK SCHEDULE • Flexible work hours; unlimited paid time off (PTO) for all employees; and minimum 12 weeks fully-paid parental leave. • DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES • Generous professional development opportunities, including fully-paid conference sponsorships and a yearly development allowance for every employee. • Employer 401(k) match up to 4% of total salary. • APPLICATION PROCESS • We will review applications on a rolling basis, and are looking for someone to start as soon as possible. • After considering your written application, we may ask you to complete a short work test, and invite you to a screening interview. High-performing candidates may be invited to further interviews and/or paid trial tasks. We will also require up to two reference checks.
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