Research Engineer, Rule of Law

About the Company The company’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems. About the Institute The company is a public benefit corporation building some of the world's most powerful AI systems. The Institute is a new externally-facing organization within the company whose purpose is to give the world new information about how the AI systems we build are affecting the economy, democratic institutions, and the people and organizations that interact with our systems. The Institute sits inside a frontier lab, with access to information only AI developers possess. That position is what makes our work different. We don't just study AI from the outside. We study it from within. About the Role Increasingly powerful AI systems will challenge societal functions at all levels. The company has done pioneering work examining the economic impacts of AI; the Rule of Law Team takes an analogous approach to a different question: how will AI impact our constitutional democratic institutions? We ask how AI might put pressure on democracy and the rule of law, and we seek out ways of protecting democratic freedoms, both in the short and long term, and through strategies aimed at technology as well as policy. As a Research Engineer on the Rule of Law team, you'll conduct technical and sociotechnical research at the intersection of AI and democratic institutions. Your work will span safety evaluations, model improvement, institutional analysis, and the development of novel applications of AI to support civic life and efficient and accountable government. The work will directly contribute to our research publications, policy work, safety systems, and products. Although our work will evolve over time, it currently spans three broad areas: Assuring that our AI agents rigorously obey the law: evaluations and fine‑tuning to assess and improve how models process legal constraints, including alignment work in settings where defining the optimization objective is hard and novel techniques may needed. Helping to ensure that AI reinforces the foundations of constitutional democracy: understanding how AI will impact the structure of government itself, and doing what we can to uphold popular sovereignty, ethical and accountable government, and the rule of law, including through the collaborative development of new applications of AI itself. Enriching and expanding civic participation: using AI to support democratic deliberation, improve the interface between citizens and government services, and help citizens deliberate with one another in an informed and constructive way around policy issues. Responsibilities Design and run AI safety evaluations focused on legal alignment, and conduct technical work (including fine‑tuning) to improve targeted aspects of model performance. Leverage AI to analyze institutional vulnerabilities created or exacerbated by AI itself, and develop accompanying sociotechnical mitigations. Develop novel applications of AI to bolster and enrich democratic processes. Conduct rigorous sociotechnical studies on how information furnished by AI can support informed deliberation and debate. Partner closely with researchers, policy and law experts, and other cross‑functional teams across the company to advance our safety mission. Translate research insights into actionable recommendations for both product and policy. You may be a good fit if you: Have deep expertise in AI together with substantive expertise in government, law, political science, or public policy. Have advanced skills in deep learning, together with capabilities in data science, mechanism design, govtech, deliberative tech, or a related field. Deeply understand experimental design, data analysis and inferential statistics. Have at least five years of work experience in academia, industry, or government. Are comfortable navigating the ambiguity inherent to novel research, including settings where the objective itself is hard to define. Have strong technical skills in sociotechnical settings: thinking carefully about human factors, how AI systems interact with groups of humans, and human behavior. Are energized by working at the intersection of technical research and questions of democracy and institutional design. Strong candidates may also have experience with: Designing and running evaluations or fine‑tuning experiments on large language models. Large‑scale data analysis. UX and interface design, with an eye toward making complex tools intuitive for non‑technical users. Engineering with privacy considerations front of mind. Research relating to deliberative technology, civic technology, or the societal impacts of AI. Working with or within government, courts, legislatures, or public policy institutions. Representative Projects AI safety evaluations focusing on legal alignment, with technical work to improve targeted aspects of model performance. Analysis of institutional vulnerabilities, with accompanying work toward technical mitigations. Development of novel applications for AI to bolster and enrich democratic processes. Sociotechnical work focused on how information furnished by AI can support informed deliberation and debate. Logistics Annual Salary: $320,000 – $485,000 USD. Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience. Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience. Minimum years of experience: Internal job level requirements for the position. Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices. Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. If we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa. #J-18808-Ljbffr United States Digital Space LLC