Research Manager, Biological Safety
AI safety and research company organized as a public benefit corporation, hiring a research manager in the Bay Area
| Employer | AI safety and research company organized as a public benefit corporation, hiring a research manager in the Bay Area (not named) |
|---|---|
| Location | San Francisco, CA (Bay Area) · Hybrid |
| Type & level | Full-time · Manager |
| Pay | USD 405k–485k base Source: pay range stated in the source posting |
| Visa path | O-1A fit (senior candidates) |
| Role family | AI Safety & Alignment Researcher |
About the role
This role leads the research engineering team that builds biological-safety evaluations, datasets and classifiers for frontier AI models. The team measures what new models can do in biology and tunes safeguards so they resist determined bad actors without blocking legitimate life-science researchers. It is a hands-on management post that sets technical direction and turns results into deployment recommendations.
What you'll do
- Manage, coach and hire a team of research scientists and engineers working on biological-safety evaluations and classifiers.
- Set the roadmap for the biological-safety research agenda and decide when a safeguard is ready to ship.
- Own the quality of capability evaluations on biological tasks and turn the results into deployment recommendations for leadership.
- Guide the building of training and evaluation datasets for safety classifiers, working with threat-modeling experts.
- Oversee classifier training and iteration with ML engineers, balancing adversarial robustness against false positives.
- Direct red-teaming of safeguards and partner with Research, Product, Policy and government affairs teams to embed biological safety in model development.
Requirements
- Experience managing a technical team, including hiring, coaching and performance management.
- Proficiency in Python with a scientific programming and data analysis background.
- Solid grasp of ML fundamentals, enough to critically review evaluation design and classifier development.
- Working knowledge of modern biology, including high-throughput assays, gene synthesis, genome editing and protein engineering.
- Experience designing quantitative evaluations and drawing defensible conclusions from noisy results.
- Familiarity with dual-use research concerns and biosecurity frameworks, plus clear writing for non-technical audiences.
Nice to have
- 3+ years of people management, ideally leading research scientists or ML engineers.
- Experience building a team or function from a small headcount.
- 8+ years of hands-on life sciences work, such as molecular biology, drug discovery or computational biology.
- Experience with large language models and with training or deploying production classifiers for rare, high-consequence categories.
- Familiarity with adversarial robustness, red-teaming or safety evaluation of ML systems.
Pay & benefits
USD 405k–485k base. The posting does not list benefits beyond the salary range and a hybrid policy requiring office presence at least 25% of the time.
Pay source: pay range stated in the source posting. Market data, not an offer from O1DMatch.
Visa path
People in AI safety research leadership often support an O-1A case with published research, citations, invited talks, peer-review service, and evidence of leading high-impact work or holding a senior role at a distinguished organization. The posting states no citizenship restriction and says the employer offers visas, though not for every role or candidate. An employer like this or a U.S. agent can file the petition. Approval depends on the individual evidence.
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