Member of Technical Staff, Embedded Assessments

METR; Berkeley (CA); Hybrid; USD 402,000 - 688,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Catered lunch and dinner daily

Relocation stipend

Unlimited PTO

21-week parental leave

Transit/parking stipend

Professional development

Mental health support

Wellness benefits

Home office equipment

Job summary

METR embeds researchers and engineers inside frontier AI labs for extended periods to investigate incidents, stress-test internal monitoring, and assess loss-of-control risks in deployment. The role evolves as the risk assessment methodology matures, with opportunities to build tooling, scale operations, and contribute to independent information about AI risks.

Ideal candidates bring expertise in prompt engineering, security, or large codebases, plus strong communication and the ability to work

Qualifications

• Two or more of the following skills are required: prompting LLMs, security experience, ability to navigate large codebases, strong communication, threat modeling expertise.

Responsibilities

• Embed in frontier AI labs for weeks at a time with 1–4 METR staff.
• Develop methodology, talk to researchers, build tooling, write up results.

Skills

prompting LLMs

security experience

codebase familiarity

loss-of-control threat modeling

communication & stakeholder mgmt

trustworthy reputation

Job description

About METR

We are a nonprofit research organization that develops scientific methods to assess AI capabilities, risks, and mitigations, with a specific focus on threats related to AI R&D automation and misalignment.

We believe it is robustly good for policymakers and civil society to have a clear understanding of risks from AI systems, and we are extremely excited to build a team of ambitious, excellent people to tackle one of the most important challenges of our time.

Overview

METR has started embedding researchers inside frontier labs to investigate incidents, stress-test labs’ internal agent monitoring systems, and assess loss-of-control risks from internal deployment. As agent capabilities increase, we expect this to be one of the most important sources of independent information the world has about catastrophic risks from advanced AI.

As the source of information becomes more important, we'll need many more talented researchers and engineers who can conduct embedded exercises. We expect this role to be a large part of METR's impact in the next year. We want to build on the momentum from previous exercises to further develop our risk assessments.

What the job looks like

You’ll be embedded in a frontier AI lab for up to several weeks at a time, likely alongside 1-4 other METR staff. Between exercises, you'll practice, develop the general methodology, talk to other researchers, build tooling to make future exercises go better, help us hire and scale, write up results, and plan/coordinate future exercises.

We are looking for embedded researchers and engineers across multiple current and potential future exercises: AI R&D acceleration assessment, compute allocation, monitorability red-teaming, incident investigations, and more. We expect this role to evolve significantly as we develop and prototype this new form of risk assessment.

Ideal candidate

We are looking for candidates with at least two of the following skills, although the ideal candidate will have most or all of them:

• You’re good at prompting LLMs, are familiar with research relevant to the fields above (or can get up to speed quickly).
• You have some security experience.
• You can get spun up on large codebases quickly.
• You’re scrappy, creative, independent, and self‑directed (because during the exercises you’ll only have a few other METR employees you can talk to). The work is novel and you’ll need to figure a lot of stuff out on the fly largely by yourself.
• You are excellent at loss‑of‑control threat modeling and breaking down safety cases.
• You’re good at verbal communication, writing, and stakeholder management (e.g., navigating complex relationships with frontier labs).
• You’re trustworthy and have a good reputation.

$402,048 - $687,759 a year

METR also has a host of benefits:

• The office: Catered lunch and dinner daily; in‑office gym and shower
• Relocation support: Stipend for moving to the Bay Area
• Time‑off and leave: Unlimited PTO and 21‑week parental leave for new parents
• Commuter benefit: Monthly transit/parking stipend and an annual Uber budget
• Professional development benefit: for training, courses, conferences, and AI safety education
• Mental health benefit: for therapy, medication, and other mental health expenses
• Wellness benefit: for gym memberships and other wellness expenses
• Work equipment benefit: for home office and workstation equipment expenses

Our Culture

METR is a mission‑driven organization. We believe our work can meaningfully shape humanity's future for the better, and we want to be the best people in the world doing this work. We have a tight‑knit, collaborative research culture rooted in truth‑seeking and integrity. We’re fiercely committed to producing high‑quality, trustworthy science. We’re honest and transparent about our results, especially when they may go against the grain. We’ve earned trust as reliable partners who handle confidential information with care. We maintain a low‑ego, drama‑free environment focused on what matters.

Hybrid Preferred:

Our technical team members are in our office in Berkeley 3-5 days/week. We would ideally like for you to be in person too, but we are happy to be flexible here. If you lack US work authorization and would like to work in‑person, we can likely sponsor a cap‑exempt H‑1B visa for this role.

We encourage you to apply even if your background may not seem like the perfect fit! We would rather review a larger pool of applications than risk missing out on a promising candidate for the position.

We are committed to diversity and equal opportunity in all aspects of our hiring process. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We welcome and encourage all qualified candidates to apply for our open positions.