Senior Researcher, Civil Safety Sciences

About CARMA: The Center for AI Risk Management & Alignment (CARMA) is a forward-thinking research institution operating as a fiscally-sponsored project of Social & Environmental Entrepreneurs, Inc. (SEE), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit corporation. Our core mission is to help human society navigate, foreshorten, and safely mitigate the complex and potentially catastrophic risks arising from increasingly powerful, transformative AI and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) networks. Grounding risk management in rigorous analysis, CARMA develops policy frameworks, advances advanced technical safety approaches, and builds deep resilience methodologies to protect humanity and the biosphere before outsized technological threats materialize.

Position Overview

We are seeking an exceptionally brilliant, autonomous Senior Researcher to join our Civil Safety Sciences program. In this high-influence strategic research seat, you will investigate how rapidly advancing AI capabilities compress the timelines on which genuinely novel threats emerge—opening up dangerous hazard classes that fall entirely outside of established CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear) and cybersecurity playbooks. Operating with significant intellectual autonomy under the broad direction of the Executive Director, you will lead advanced horizon-scanning initiatives, model biosphere-scale vulnerabilities, and accelerate stabilizing technologies to shift the offense-defense balance in favor of humanity. This track demands a multi-disciplinary scientist comfortable with massive uncertainty, expert-level adversarial reasoning, and systems thinking.

Key Responsibilities

• Horizon-Scanning & Threat Modeling: Conduct rigorous, structured horizon-scanning for novel AI-enabled hazard modules, formulating predictive methodologies for threat vectors that completely lack historical base rates.
• Next-Generation Detection Exploration: Investigate open-ended and highly adaptive detection sciences, including dynamic pathogen surveillance networks and novel environmental toxicology tracking infrastructure.
• Deep Resilience Capacity Analysis: Execute exhaustive feasibility studies on fallback lifelines and infrastructure safety frameworks engineered to function when centralized coordination, public utilities, or sunlight cannot be assumed.
• Biosphere-Scale Vulnerability Triage: Analyze catastrophic threats arising from geoengineering arrays, synthetic microbes designed for terraforming or remediation, and nontraditional environmental activity.
• Scientific Metaresearch & Alignment: Develop advanced scientific metaresearch architectures tracking how empirical evidence is generated, aggregated, and safely translated into action where feedback loops are inherently weak.
• Global Cross-Border Coordination: Cultivate distributed research networks by creating industry standards, hosting specialized convenings, and providing usable decision-support assets to frontline community responders.
• Grant Writing & Science Diplomacy: Co-author high-signal grant applications, build customized mathematical risk-visualization tools, and translate technical data layers into clear value narratives for policymakers, funders, and public non-specialists.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• An Advanced Degree ( PhD or multi-MS highly preferred ) in a hard-science or engineering discipline with verified analytical cross-over across multiple natural science tracks (e.g., biosecurity, microbiology, systems engineering, ecology, or resilience sciences).
• 5+ years of relevant postgraduate research or applied security experience, with a proven history of independently running complex projects from framing through delivery.
• Substantive background applying adversarial reasoning models (grounded in fields such as red-teaming, biosecurity protocols, dual-use technology assessment, or defense analysis).
• Demonstrated capability to construct logical frameworks and track trends inside highly unstructured, rapidly shifting data landscapes with extreme uncertainty.
• A robust publication record or equivalent verified body of independent work mapping technological risks, environmental safety, or detection models.
• Outstanding verbal and written communication mechanics, optimized to translate high-science frameworks into actionable policy directives.
• Location Context: 100% remote-first operational framework open to qualified global researchers (requires occasional travel for technical laboratory demonstrations and team offsites).
• Contract Parameters: US-authorized candidates will be engaged under internal employee lines; candidates based outside the US will be onboarded as independent contractors with project-focused responsibilities due to fiscal sponsor limitations.

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Interdisciplinary academic credentials bridging computer science algorithms with biology, critical infrastructure engineering, or atmospheric physics.
• Direct operational background in active biosurveillance, emergency preparedness networks, crisis data visualization, or science diplomacy.
• Familiarity with cognitive security models, structured expert elicitation, or foresight methodologies.

What We Offer

• Competitive Compensation Matrix: A flat annual baseline salary ranging from $155,000 – $215,000 USD , scaled transparently according to your academic breadth and independent project history.
• The exceptional intellectual freedom to independently run and dictate the global research trajectory for civilizational resilience technologies.
• Profound geographical remote flexibility complemented by fully funded international laboratory visits, research conventions, and team offsites.
• A deeply inclusive, impact-obsessed organizational culture focused entirely on addressing long-term existential threats before they can manifest.