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Research Engineer, Alignment

OpenAISan Francisco, California, United StatesOnsite

About the Team


The Alignment team at OpenAI is dedicated to ensuring that our AI systems are safe, trustworthy, and consistently aligned with human values, even as they scale in complexity and capability. Our work is at the cutting edge of AI research, focusing on developing methodologies that enable AI to robustly follow human intent across a wide range of scenarios, including those that are adversarial or high-stakes. We concentrate on the most pressing challenges, ensuring our work addresses areas where AI could have the most significant consequences.

By focusing on risks that we can quantify and where our efforts can make a tangible difference, we aim to ensure that our models are ready for the complex, real-world environments in which they will be deployed.The two pillars of our approach are: (1) harnessing improved capabilities into alignment, making sure that our alignment techniques improve, rather than break, as capabilities grow, and (2) centering humans by developing mechanisms and interfaces that enable humans to both express their intent and to effectively supervise and control AIs, even in highly complex situations.

About the Role


As a Research Engineer on the Alignment team, you will be at the forefront of ensuring that our AI systems consistently follow human intent, even in complex and unpredictable scenarios. Your role will involve designing and implementing scalable solutions that ensure the alignment of AI as their capabilities grow and that integrate human oversight into AI decision-making.This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:


We are seeking research engineers and research scientists to help design and implement experiments for alignment research. Responsibilities may include:


  • Develop and evaluate alignment capabilities that are subjective, context-dependent, and hard to measure.

  • Design evaluations to reliably measure risks and alignment with human intent and values.

  • Build tools and evaluations to study and test model robustness in different situations.

  • Design experiments to understand laws for how alignment scales as a function of compute, data, lengths of context and action, as well as resources of adversaries.

  • Design and evaluate new Human-AI-interaction paradigms and scalable oversight methods that redefine how humans interact with, understand, and supervise our models.

  • Train model to be calibrated on correctness and risk.

  • Designing novel approaches for using AI in alignment research

You might thrive in this role if you:



  • Are a team player – willing to do a variety of tasks that move the team forward.

  • Have a PhD or equivalent experience in research in computer science, computational science, data science, cognitive science, or similar fields.

  • Have strong engineering skills, particularly in designing and optimizing large-scale machine learning systems(e.g., PyTorch).

  • Have a deep understanding of the science behind alignment algorithms and techniques.

  • Can develop data visualization or data collection interfaces (e.g., TypeScript, Python).

  • Enjoy fast-paced, collaborative, and cutting-edge research environments.

  • Want to focus on developing AI models that are trustworthy, safe, and reliable, especially in high-stakes scenarios.

About OpenAI


OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. OpenAI Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy StatementFor US Based Candidates: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy PolicyAt OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared.

Join us in shaping the future of technology.Compensation Range: $295K - $440K

Life at OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core. OpenAI is dedicated to putting that alignment of interests first — ahead of profit. Their main product is ChatGPT. They've trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. To achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. Our investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion is ongoing, executed through a wide range of initiatives, and championed and supported by leadership. At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.
Thrive Here & What We Value1. OpenAI is an equal opportunity employer that values diverse perspectives, voices, and experiences. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.2. Our commitment to providing reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities is demonstrated through our global applicant privacy policy and the option for requests via a provided link.3. We believe in shaping the future of technology by creating AI systems that are safe, reliable, and have human needs at their core. Our mission includes encompassing diverse perspectives, voices, and experiences to benefit all of humanity.4. OpenAI's hybrid work model consists of 3 days in the office per week, promoting a collaborative environment while offering relocation assistance for new employees.5. We prioritize impact by supporting researchers, enabling initiatives that have enduring customer and business impact, focusing on data and insights, preparing for future transformative technologies, and engaging in robust security practices.6. Our commitment to safety is evident through our emphasis on creating AI systems with human needs at their core and a fast-paced environment that provides individuals with high autonomy while valuing diverse perspectives and experiences.7. OpenAI's dedication to ensuring AI benefits all of humanity includes providing reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities, adhering to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and considering qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
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