AI Behavior Engineer (Forward Deployed)

fde; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 310,000 - 500,000; Full time

Job summary

Transluce is seeking an AI Behavior Engineer (Forward Deployed) to work in San Francisco, collaborating with policymakers, civil society partners, and frontier labs to rapidly explain why AI systems act as they do and when they fail.

This role involves deployment work on government-evaluator contracts, including building harmful-manipulation evals for the EU AI Office, and designing privileged-access oversight exercises.

Job description

Work directly with policymakers, civil society partners, and frontier labs to rapidly answer why AI systems act the way they do and when they fail. Execute on Transluce's government-evaluator contracts (including building harmful-manipulation evals with the EU AI Office), design privileged-access oversight exercises with frontier labs, and adapt behavioral-evaluation pipelines to partner contexts (mental health, persuasion, evaluation awareness). Based in San Francisco.

$310K–$500K at a nonprofit is the plot twist of the week — Jacob Steinhardt and Sarah Schwettmann's eval lab pays frontier-lab money for an FDE whose 'customers' are the EU AI Office and civil-society partners, with privileged-access evaluation exercises run inside frontier labs. Deployment work where the deployment target is AI oversight itself.

AI Behavior Engineer (Forward Deployed) at Transluce. Location: San Francisco. Compensation: $310K–$500K. Posted July 24, 2026.