Research Scientist

About the Team Security is at the foundation of OpenAI’s mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Security team protects OpenAI’s technology, people, and products. We are technical in what we build but are operational in how we do our work, and are committed to supporting all products and research at OpenAI. Our Security team tenets include: prioritizing for impact, enabling researchers, preparing for future transformative technologies, and engaging a robust security culture. About the Role OpenAI is seeking to build an investigative capability for Secure Manufacturing & Stealth programs. The risk surface for unreleased products, prototypes, confidential hardware, infrastructure, supply chain, manufacturing, and launch-readiness efforts spans employees, vendors, suppliers, logistics partners, physical movement of assets, procurement records, manufacturing workflows, access systems, device telemetry, and adversarial collection. This role is intended to build and run investigations across that specialized environment. Responsibilities Lead complex SMS investigations to proactively identify and mitigate risks to unreleased products, prototypes, confidential hardware, secure manufacturing programs, and launch-readiness efforts. Investigate unauthorized disclosure, suspected leaks, insider risk, supplier compromise, vendor misconduct, theft, diversion, tampering, counterfeiting, surveillance, adversarial collection, and suspicious activity involving sensitive programs. Connect digital evidence, physical access activity, supply chain records, manufacturing data, vendor behavior, employee activity, collaboration metadata, procurement records, shipping data, and OSINT into clear findings and risk-reduction actions. Conduct proactive threat hunting to surface early indicators of compromise, collection, leakage, or insider activity affecting sensitive programs. Develop investigative playbooks, evidence-handling standards, escalation paths, reporting mechanisms, and recurring-risk feedback loops tailored to secure manufacturing and stealth environments. Qualifications 8+ years of investigative experience in corporate security, insider risk, supply chain security, counterintelligence, cyber investigations, manufacturing security, or related domains. Experience supporting sensitive programs, secure manufacturing environments, hardware programs, R&D environments, classified or restricted-access programs, or high-value intellectual property protection. Proven ability to independently lead complex end‑to‑end investigations across cyber, physical, operational, human, and external partner domains with minimal supervision. Strong understanding of insider threat, supply chain risk, vendor risk, information leakage, physical security investigations, and adversarial collection methods. Ability to analyze disparate evidence sources, including physical access records, visitor logs, device logs, endpoint telemetry, collaboration tools, procurement records, shipping records, manufacturing workflows, vendor documentation, communications metadata, and OSINT. Excellent cross‑functional collaboration skills, especially with Legal, HR, Engineering, Procurement, Supply Chain, Physical Security, Cybersecurity, IT, and external partners. 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. Equal Opportunity Employer 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 affirmative action and equal employment opportunity policy statement. 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. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link. 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