Head of Policy & Security Research Lab

Scale AI Scale AI · Data AI · San Francisco, CA +1 · Policy

Lead a team of research scientists, policy experts, and engineers focused on foundational AI safety and security work, including developing frameworks and benchmarks for frontier AI models. The role requires a strong technical and policy background with extensive knowledge of frontier risk evaluations, AI control, and preparedness research.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own day-to-day responsibilities for the strategy, direction and execution of Scale’s Policy Research Lab
  2. Collaborate with a team of internal researchers, leading research labs across governments, industry, and academia.
  3. Working alongside a team of internal researchers drive initiatives related to frameworks and benchmarks for frontier AI models.
  4. Manage and coordinate the lab's projects, partnerships and strategy, including direct work with global AI safety institutes.
  5. Finalize, coordinate, and execute the lab's recruiting plan and research agenda.

Skills

Required

  • 6+ years of relevant academic or work experience
  • Track record of impactful research and/or policy contributions
  • Experience leading teams in relevant areas including AI Safety Policy, Thought Leadership and Research publications
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills for cross-functional collaboration.
  • Experience building and mentoring teams of research scientists and engineers.
  • A strong technical and policy background with a deep understanding of the AI safety space.
  • Extensive knowledge of frontier risk evaluations, AI control, and preparedness research.
  • Established connections with government partners, particularly AI safety institutes.

Nice to have

  • Publications at major machine learning/AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, CVPR) and/or journals.

What the JD emphasized

  • AI safety and security work
  • frontier AI models
  • AI safety space
  • frontier risk evaluations
  • AI control
  • preparedness research

Other signals

  • AI safety and security research
  • frontier AI models
  • AI control and preparedness research