OpenAI
Research
Researcher,AlignmentOversight
Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for Mid+ candidates.
“Researcher, Alignment Oversight at OpenAI. Skills: alignment research, AI safety, ML model training and evaluation, experimental design, system deployment. design and run experiments that improve our ability to oversee increasingly capable models. hands-on model training”
What You'll Achieve.
improving control, accountability, and alignment as AI systems become more capable and agentic; directly improving future model behavior
Industry & Context.
research intuitions for what experiments are likely to teach us something, while staying grounded in implementation details and empirical results
What They're Looking For.
Must Have
hands-on experience training, evaluating, or debugging large ML models, especially LLMs, engineering execution and can turn ambiguous research ideas into reliable experiments, tools, training pipelines, and production-facing systems, research intuitions for what experiments are likely to teach us something, while staying grounded in implementation details and empirical results
Nice to Have
experience with reinforcement learning, post-training, preference optimization, scalable oversight, model evaluation, or adjacent empirical ML research
What You'll Do.
design and run experiments that improve our ability to oversee increasingly capable models
hands-on model training
research infrastructure
translating promising oversight ideas into systems that can operate on real model traffic and real user workflows
design and implement alignment experiments focused on oversight systems for increasingly agentic AI models
deploy practical systems for action monitoring
and human-in-the-loop control
develop evaluations for alignment failure modes of the frontier models such as overeagerness
instruction following failures
avoiding restrictions and scheming propensity
analyze deployment data to understand model failures
and opportunities for training more aligned models
develop techniques for feeding oversight signals back into training while preserving the reliability and independence of the oversight process
produce externally publishable research when results advance the broader science of alignment
move quickly from research intuition to working experiments
and evidence that can shape future models
How You'll Work.
Team & Collaboration
collaborate across research, product, security, safety, and engineering teams to turn alignment ideas into working systems
Full Job Description
ABOUT THE TEAM The Alignment Oversight team at OpenAI develops techniques for improving control, accountability, and alignment as AI systems become more capable and agentic. We combine longer-horizon research with hands-on deployment. We study long-term questions about how increasingly intelligent systems can be supervised, constrained, and corrected, while also building oversight systems that are used in practice today, both internally and externally (see our recent work on code review https://alignment.openai.com/scaling-code-verification/ and action monitoring for codex https://alignment.openai.com/auto-review/). We also study how to learn from real-world deployments: using oversight data and human interventions to train future models to be more aligned, while preserving the effectiveness and independence of the oversight systems themselves. ABOUT THE ROLE As a researcher on the Alignment team, you will design and run experiments that improve our ability to oversee increasingly capable models. You will work on hands-on model training, evaluation design, and research infrastructure, and translating promising oversight ideas into systems that can operate on real model traffic and real user workflows. This role combines longer-horizon research with shorter deployment sprints, with projects typically scoped around 3-6 month research timelines and aimed at directly improving future model behavior. 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: - Design and implement alignment experiments focused on oversight systems for increasingly agentic AI models. - Deploy practical systems for action monitoring, red-teaming, and human-in-the-loop control. - Develop evaluations for alignment failure modes of the frontier models such as overeagerness, instruction following failures, covert actions, avoiding restrictions and scheming propensity. - Analyze d
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