Biosafety Environments Lead

Collinear AI; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Collinear AI is seeking a domain authority to lead biosafety risk judgement translation into tasks, reference solutions, and graders. You will shape how models reason about biological risk the way a trained expert would, determining when to hedge or decline.

No prior AI experience is required—we will teach the tooling and workflow while leveraging your field expertise. You will write expert prompts and rubrics, grade model outputs, and help engineers encode workflows and reward signals to

Qualifications

• PhD in biology or related field; or a master's with 4+ years biosafety experience.
• Hands-on laboratory experience with biological agents at BSL2+; ability to write or review risk assessments, SOPs, or IBC submissions.
• Familiarity with biosafety frameworks (BMBL, NIH Guidelines, OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens, Select Agent regs, DURC/PEPP, IATA/DOT for shipments; OECD/EPA ecotoxicology tests).
• Sharp, precise writing; ability to provide structured, actionable feedback.
• Experience with evaluating or red-teaming AI systems is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Translate real biosafety work into tasks, reference solutions, and grading rubrics.
• Write expert prompts and gold-standard answers for scenarios with ambiguity.
• Build rubrics and verifiers to define complete, correct, and safe answers.
• Grade model outputs for accuracy, regulatory compliance, and handling of sensitive information.
• Red-team the boundary; design adversarial prompts and document failure modes for engineers.

Skills

BSL-2+ lab experience

Risk assessments

Regulatory knowledge

Dual-use judgment

Technical writing

LLM evaluation

Education

PhD in biology or related field

Master's degree with 4+ years biosafety experience

Job description

We are extending our environments into biosafety, and we need a domain authority to lead that track.
You will turn the everyday judgment of a biosafety professional into tasks, reference solutions, and graders that measure whether a model reasons about biological risk the way a trained expert would. Because biology is dual-use, you will also help define the boundary: where a model should answer fully, where it should hedge, and where it should decline.
No prior AI experience is required. We will teach you our tooling and workflow. What we cannot teach is the field expertise and the judgment, and that is what we are hiring for.

What You Will Do

• Map real biosafety work into tasks. Risk assessments, biosafety-level assignment and containment decisions, IBC protocol review, exposure and spill response, decontamination and waste streams, shipping of infectious substances, ecotoxicology study design, and environmental release assessments.
• Write expert-level prompts and gold-standard answers. Realistic scenarios with the ambiguity a practitioner actually faces, paired with reference solutions that hold up to peer review.
• Build rubrics and verifiers. Define what a complete, correct, and safe answer looks like, and what an unsafe or insufficient one looks like. Calibrate your rubrics against other experts so grading is consistent.
• Grade model outputs. Score responses for scientific accuracy, regulatory correctness, completeness, and appropriate handling of sensitive information.
• Red-team the boundary. Design adversarial and multi-turn prompts that probe where helpful biology becomes operational uplift. Document failure modes clearly enough that engineers can act on them.
• Shape the environments. Work with our environment engineers to encode workflow state, tools, and reward signals, and review model trajectories for realism.
• Raise the bar for the track. Review tasks written by other contributors and help set the quality standard for biosafety work at Collinear.
  

Who We Are Looking For

• A PhD in biology, microbiology, virology, immunology, biochemistry, toxicology, ecotoxicology, environmental health, public health, or a closely related field. A masterʼs degree with four or more years of applied biosafety experience also qualifies.
• Hands-on laboratory experience with biological agents at BSL2 or above. You have written or reviewed a risk assessment, an SOP, or an IBC submission.
• Working knowledge of the frameworks practitioners actually use: the BMBL, NIH Guidelines, OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens standard, Select Agent regulations, DURC and PEPP policy, IATA and DOT rules for Category A and B shipments, and OECD or EPA ecotoxicology test guidelines, as relevant to your specialty.
• Sound judgment about dual-use information. You can tell benign research from a credible attempt at harm, and you can explain the difference in writing.
• Clear, precise writing. You are comfortable working to a rubric and giving structured, actionable feedback.
• Hands-on use of large language models and curiosity about how they fail.
  

Nice to have

• Experience as a biosafety officer, IBC member, or EHS professional. CBSP or RBP certification.
• Ecotoxicology or environmental risk assessment practice, including regulatory submissions.
• Prior work training, evaluating, or red-teaming AI systems.
• Python or basic scripting for working with data and evaluation pipelines.