Research Program Manager, Safety Systems

Research Program Manager, Safety Systems | OpenAI

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Research Program Manager, Safety Systems

Research Program Management - San Francisco

About the Team

Safety Systems manages the complete lifecycle of safety efforts for OpenAI’s frontier models. We work across research, engineering, product, and policy to understand risks, develop and validate safeguards, and support responsible deployment.

Our work spans safeguards research and deployment, safety assessments, launch readiness, and trusted-access programs for advanced capabilities. We address risks including biological and cyber misuse and misalignment, with programs that strengthen safety across models and products.

About the Role

We’re hiring Research Program Managers across AI Safeguards and Frontier Risks Safety. You’ll lead programs that develop and improve the safeguards used across our models and products, or assess and mitigate risks associated with frontier capabilities, launches, and trusted-access programs.

You will partner with researchers, engineers, and other stakeholders to turn open safety questions into clear programs of work. You’ll shape technical roadmaps, coordinate execution, and use evidence to guide priorities and inform development and deployment decisions. We’re looking for people who combine strong technical judgment, experience managing complex research programs, and a commitment to AI safety.

These roles are 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:

• Shape safety programs and technical roadmaps. Partner with research and engineering leads to define goals, milestones, dependencies, and success criteria. Prioritize intake and emerging findings, resolve blockers, and balance immediate safety needs with longer-term research and platform investments.

• Drive safeguards development and deployment. Translate safety research into safeguards across models and products. Maintain an end-to-end view of safeguard coverage, effectiveness, and opportunities for improvement for one or more risk areas, and drive a roadmap that advances across launches.

• Coordinate evaluations and safety assessments. Organize capability evaluations, alignment and control assessments, adversarial testing, and safeguard stress-testing, including risks from autonomous and multi-agent systems. Support embedded assessments throughout model development, internal use, and deployment.

• Drive safety readiness and trusted-access programs. Coordinate safety requirements and execution across frontier model launches and deployments. Work with technical teams to define assessment scope and the evidence needed to inform safety and access decisions.

• Turn findings into improvements. Triage safeguard gaps, jailbreaks, and overflagging with accountable teams. Establish owners and escalation paths, track remediation and regression testing, and turn recurring issues into research and engineering improvements.

• Strengthen the evidence behind safety decisions. Support safety cases that connect claims to evaluations, safeguards, assumptions, and remaining uncertainty. Surface evidence gaps and unresolved risks, and communicate methods, results, limitations, and follow-up actions through assessment reports, system cards, and updates to decision-makers.

• Build programs that scale across products. Coordinate shared tooling and feedback workflows, privacy and security requirements, and safeguard user experience and quality assurance. Help teams apply safeguards consistently across product surfaces and upcoming launches.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have 5+ years of experience in technical safety work, owning technical programs, or related roles in fast-moving environments.

• Have led complex research or technical programs involving researchers and engineers, particularly in AI, cybersecurity, biosafety, or another field where failures can have serious consequences.

• Understand frontier AI safety concepts, including capability evaluations, alignment, control, monitoring, and safeguard robustness, and can engage substantively with technical teams.

• Can assess what evaluation results do and do not establish, including methodological limitations, uncertainty, and the difference between model capability and real-world risk.

• Can turn ambiguous questions into clear programs, make practical tradeoffs, and adjust priorities as evidence changes.

• Have worked extensively across research, engineering, and product teams and can coordinate with policy and communications partners.

• Exercise sound judgment when findings are concerning or incomplete, raise unresolved risks constructively, and communicate complex technical work clearly.

• Are motivated to help ensure increasingly capable AI systems remain beneficial and under meaningful human control.

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 we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Aff… .

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US‑based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non‑public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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Compensation

$239K – $328K + Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non‑exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance‑related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts

• Pre‑tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)

• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match

• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non‑birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)

• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non‑exempt employees

• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)

• Mental health and wellness support

• Employer‑paid basic life and disability coverage

• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth

• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible

• Relocation support for eligible employees

• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at‑will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.