Senior Research Scientist, AI Biosecurity Assessments
$235k - $300k • Remote • Remote • Full-time
Posted 1mo ago
Remote Work Policy
Fully remote
Employment Type
Full-time
Categories
AI Research Engineer
About the job
SecureBio is seeking a Senior Research Scientist to join their AI Biosecurity Assessments team. In this role, you will evaluate frontier AI models for dual-use biological risks before their public release. This involves running technical assessment pipelines, analyzing model behavior, and producing reports that inform relevant audiences about identified risks. Your work will contribute to setting industry safety standards and influencing policy bodies like the NIST US AI Safety Consortium and the European AI Office. You will collaborate with AI firms, internal research teams, and policy makers to ensure the safe development and deployment of advanced AI technologies.
Responsibilities
- Conduct high-quality capability and safeguard assessments of emerging AI models in collaboration with AI firms and internal teams.
- Execute evaluation pipelines, analyze data, and align results with relevant threat models and risk levels.
- Manually assess models for biological knowledge and willingness to engage in harmful activities.
- Synthesize findings into clear evaluation reports, technical write-ups, and risk summaries for partners and regulatory bodies.
- Contribute to research papers, reports, and public dashboards on AI capabilities and trends.
Requirements
- PhD in pathogen biology, microbiology, virology, or a closely related field (or equivalent depth of experience).
- Strategic judgment regarding the mapping of evaluation results to real-world biological risk and the effectiveness of technical safeguards.
- Deep interest in safeguards, their failure modes, and contributory biological capabilities.
- Ability to translate complex technical results into clear, well-structured writing.
- Comfort with short, intensive project cycles and adapting to shifting priorities with new model releases.
- Approximately one year of coding experience in an industry or graduate research setting.
- Working fluency in Python.
- Familiarity with biosecurity policy, threat assessment, or counterterrorism work.
- Experience working with AI developers or in regulated/NDA-heavy environments.
Benefits
- Comprehensive healthcare coverage (health, dental, vision).
- Yearly mental health allowance.
- Flexible work hours.
- Unlimited paid time off (PTO).
- Minimum 12 weeks fully-paid parental leave.
- Generous professional development opportunities.
- Fully-paid conference sponsorships.
- Yearly development allowance.
- Employer 401(k) match up to 4% of total salary.
- Referral bonus up to $5,500.