Head of AI Safety

Moonshot; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 110,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

15 days paid vacation

Private healthcare

Dental & Vision Insurance

Life & Disability Insurance

401k & Roth contributions

Employee share options

Generous parental leave

Job summary

Moonshot is seeking a Head of AI Safety to lead the delivery, development, and growth of our AI Safety portfolio, combining violence prevention, behavioral risk, and online harms with practical AI safety evaluation. This senior role works with frontier AI companies, governments, and regulators to improve model safety and policy, while guiding teams and managing client engagements.

The role emphasizes red teaming, evaluation frameworks, and ethical, legal compliance.

Qualifications

• Experience in trust & safety, online harms, or violence prevention.
• Ability to translate insights for technical and government audiences.
• Experience designing research, evaluation frameworks, or interventions for harm categories.
• Proven project, team, and budget management skills.
• Excellent written communication for government, foundations, or enterprise.
• Comfort with highly sensitive content and wellbeing practices.
• Strong judgment navigating ambiguity and stakeholder environments.
• Willingness to travel and work outside regular hours as needed.
• Eligible to work in the US and pass security clearance procedures.

Responsibilities

• Lead and quality-assure AI safety work across harm categories using red teaming and adversarial evaluation.
• Advise frontier AI companies on improving model safety, products, policies, and interventions.
• Translate insights from experts into actionable guidance for technical and gov audiences.
• Set the methodological approach for the AI safety portfolio and evaluation frameworks.
• Lead red teaming and evaluation with test scenarios, scoring, and policy alignment.
• Identify patterns and risks and develop practical recommendations for model behavior and protections.
• Maintain rigorous documentation for technical, government, and foundation audiences.
• Ensure ethical and legal compliance across contractual and data-protection obligations.
• Identify operational, reputational, and delivery risks and manage them.
• Represent Moonshot externally in meetings with regulators and sector engagements.
• Provide leadership and coaching to Moonshot's AI safety team.
• Support workforce planning, performance management, and professional development.
• Coordinate with internal teams supporting the portfolio (ops, finance, research, engineering).
• Develop AI safety portfolio growth, partnerships, and funding opportunities.
• Lead proposal development and renewals with precise language for technical/government audiences.
• Develop repeatable methodologies and service offerings for portfolio growth.
• Support external communications and thought leadership.
• Oversee project planning, staffing, budgeting, and delivery timelines.

Skills

Trust & Safety

AI safety

Project management

People management

Written communication

Security clearance

Business development

Travel willingness

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

Moonshot is recruiting a Head of AI Safety to lead the delivery, development, and growth of our AI Safety portfolio. The role combines Moonshot's expertise in violence prevention, behavioral risk, and online harms with the emerging practice of evaluating and improving the safety of AI systems. The portfolio addresses harm categories including pathways to violence, extremism, child sexual exploitation, abuse and grooming (CSEA), mental health and crisis, and risks affecting children and teenagers.

The Head of AI Safety will serve as Moonshot's primary applied AI safety counterpart for frontier AI companies, governments, and regulators. The role will work closely with model, policy, trust and safety, product, research, and engineering teams. This is not an engineering or data-science role, but it is a hands-on position requiring the successful candidate to lead and participate directly in red teaming and adversarial evaluation, working in detail with evaluation methodologies, test scenarios, model responses, safety policies, and intervention frameworks. The role holds responsibility for client and partner relationships, project and staff management, methodological quality, and business development. The Head of AI Safety will build and maintain relationships across the wider AI safety ecosystem, including with governments, foundations, regulators, academics, researchers, and civil society organizations.

Candidates must be based in MA, CO, NY, VA, GA, PA, MD, WI, TN, TX, OR, NJ, or DC. Occasional travel may be required.

Your responsibilities will include:

Applied AI Safety, Evaluation, and Advisory

• Lead and quality-assure Moonshot's applied AI safety work across harm categories including pathways to violence, extremism, CSEA, abuse and grooming, mental health and crisis, and risks affecting children and teens, using methods such as red teaming and adversarial evaluation of AI systems.
• Advise frontier AI companies on how to improve the safety of their models, products, policies, and intervention systems.
• Translate insights from psychologists, child-safety specialists, violence-prevention practitioners, safeguarding experts, and other subject-matter experts into clear, actionable guidance for model safety, policy, product, research, and engineering teams.
• Set the methodological approach for the portfolio, translating violence-prevention, safeguarding, and behavioral-risk expertise into structured and testable evaluation frameworks.
• Lead and participate directly in red teaming and adversarial evaluation, working in detail with test scenarios, model responses, scoring criteria, safety policies, and evaluation results.
• Identify patterns, edge cases, and potential safety failures, and develop practical recommendations for improving model behavior and user protections.
• Maintain rigor and clear documentation across the team's technical deliverables, suitable for technical, government, and foundation audiences.
• Ensure work is delivered within a clear ethical framework and in compliance with contractual, legal, data protection, and ethics obligations.
• Identify, manage, and advance operational, reputational, delivery, and partnership risks.

Client & Partner Management

• Serve as Moonshot's primary applied AI safety counterpart for frontier AI company partners, governments, regulators, and the wider ecosystem invested in AI safety.
• Build trusted relationships with model, policy, trust and safety, product, research, and engineering teams.
• Build and sustain relationships across the wider AI safety ecosystem, including governments, foundations, regulators, academics, researchers, civil society organizations, and specialist practitioners.
• Represent Moonshot externally in meetings, briefings, workshops, and sector engagement, including with regulators and policymaker audiences.

Team Leadership & Management

• Provide direct leadership, coaching, and management to Moonshot's AI safety team.
• Foster a collaborative, accountable, and mission-driven team culture, with particular attention to wellbeing given the sensitive nature of the work.
• Support workforce planning, performance management, and professional development across the team.
• Ensure effective coordination with internal teams supporting the portfolio, including operations, finance, research, and technical teams.

Portfolio Development & Growth

• Develop Moonshot's AI safety portfolio, identifying strategic opportunities, partnerships, and funding.
• Lead proposal development, scoping, and renewals with technical credibility, using precise, defensible language suited to technical and government audiences.
• Develop repeatable methodologies, service offerings, and partnerships that allow the portfolio to grow while maintaining methodological rigor and delivery quality.
• Support external communications, publications, briefings, and thought leadership that establish Moonshot as a credible voice in applied AI safety.
• Oversee project planning, staffing, budgeting, forecasting, and delivery timelines across the portfolio.

Essential:

• Experience in trust & safety, online harms, or a closely related field such as violence prevention, safeguarding, or public health, and the ability to adapt that knowledge to AI systems.
• Curiosity about AI and the ability to build technical fluency quickly, enough to engage credibly with technical counterparts at AI companies. Much of this work is new, so comfort learning as you go matters more than existing AI safety expertise.
• Experience designing research, evaluation frameworks, or interventions for harm categories such as violent extremism, CSEA, self-harm and crisis, or targeted violence.
• Demonstrated experience managing projects, teams, budgets, partners, and clients, with strong people management skills.
• Excellent written communication, with experience producing credible (not promotional) material for government, foundation, or enterprise audiences.
• Comfort and demonstrated resilience working with highly sensitive or graphic content (CSEA, extremist material, crisis content), with awareness of wellbeing practices for this kind of work.
• Strong judgment and the ability to navigate ambiguity, competing priorities, and sensitive stakeholder environments, including representing organizations externally.
• Willingness to travel and work outside regular hours where needed to accommodate clients or respond to incidents.
• Highly trustworthy, with discretion and diplomacy, and willing to undertake relevant security clearance procedures.
• Experience supporting business development, grant funding, or procurement.
• Commitment to Moonshot's mission.
• Candidates must be eligible to work in the US, and will be required to undertake and pass any relevant security clearance procedures per client needs.

Desirable:

• Direct experience in model safety, red teaming, or adversarial evaluation of LLMs or other AI systems.
• Understanding of LLM architecture, safety tooling, or trust & safety policy.
• Prior experience in child safety evaluation, teen-safety product work, or grooming and CSEA detection.
• Familiarity with government or regulatory engagement, such as briefing officials or supporting policy submissions.
• Experience with intervention or diversion program design that can transfer to AI-mediated interventions.
• Academic or applied background in radicalization studies, forensic psychology, or violence risk assessment.
• Familiarity with taxonomy or classifier development, including how testing data feeds a classifier.

• 15 days paid vacation leave, plus Federal holidays and 1 day additional paid leave for Native American Heritage Day.
• Flexible public holiday policy with the option to work federal holidays in exchange for a day off at another time.
• Full private healthcare package, including coverage for partners and children.
• Dental & Vision Insurance.
• Life & Disability Insurance.
• 24/7 access to free counseling via our Employee Assistance Program.
• 3% matched 401k contributions.
• 401(k) Roth Contributions.
• Generous maternity and paternity leave: 26 weeks paid maternity leave, 8 weeks paid paternity leave.
• All permanent employees are granted share options upon employment.

Salary: $110,000 - $120,000 (depending on skills and experience).