Biosafety Environments Lead

Collinear AI; United States; On-site; USD 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Collinear AI is seeking a domain authority to lead its biosafety track. You will translate everyday biosafety judgments into actionable tasks, reference solutions, and graded rubrics to measure model reasoning about biological risk like a trained expert. You will define when to hedge, decline, or answer fully, with a focus on safety and regulatory compliance.

No prior AI experience is required; we will teach tooling and workflow while you bring field expertise and judgment to the role.

Qualifications

• PhD in biology or related field, or a master’s with 4+ years biosafety experience.
• Hands-on lab experience with BSL-2 or higher.
• Familiarity with biosafety frameworks (BMBL, NIH Guidelines, OSHA).
• Ability to write and review risk assessments and IBC submissions.
• Experience with large language models and evaluation pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Map biosafety work into tasks, risk assessments, and containment decisions.
• Write expert prompts and gold-standard answers with peer-reviewed references.
• Build rubrics and verifiers to define complete and safe answers.
• Grade model outputs for accuracy, regulatory compliance, and risk.
• Red-team prompts to probe boundary between safe guidance and uplift.
• Shape environments with engineers for workflow state and rewards.
• Raise the bar by reviewing tasks and setting biosafety standards.

Skills

Biosafety risk assessment

Clear writing

Prompt engineering

Rubrics design

Model evaluation

LLM tooling

Education

PhD in biology or related field

Master’s +4 years biosafety experience

Tools

Python

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.