[P] Data Engineer, Safeguards

United States Digital Space LLC; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 320,000 - 405,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Visa sponsorship

Hybrid work policy

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC in San Francisco is seeking a Data Engineer for the Safeguards team. In this role, you will build data pipelines and infrastructure critical for AI safety. Responsibilities include creating models for abuse detection and developing dashboards for monitoring model behavior.

The position requires strong SQL and Python skills, along with experience in cloud data platforms. Salary ranges from $320,000 to $405,000 annually, and the role adheres to a hybrid work policy.

Qualifications

• Proficiency in SQL and Python for ETL/ELT pipelines.
• Experience with cloud data platforms like BigQuery or Redshift.
• Familiarity with data stack tools such as dbt, Airflow, or Spark.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable data pipelines.
• Develop dashboards for Safeguards teams.
• Implement data quality frameworks.

Skills

SQL

Python

ETL/ELT pipeline building

Data visualization tools

Cloud data platforms

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

BigQuery

Airflow

Tableau

Job description

About the company

The company’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

As a Data Engineer on the Safeguards team, you will build the data foundations that keep our AI systems safe. The Safeguards team works to monitor models, prevent misuse, and ensure user well-being — and doing that well requires robust, reliable data infrastructure.

In this role, you will design and build the pipelines, warehousing solutions, and analytical tooling that power our safety and trust efforts at scale. You’ll work closely with engineers, data scientists, and policy teams to ensure the Safeguards organization has the data it needs to detect abuse patterns, measure the effectiveness of safety interventions, and make informed decisions about model behavior and enforcement. This is a high-impact role where your work directly supports the company’s mission to develop AI that is safe and beneficial.

Key responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines that support safety monitoring, abuse detection, and enforcement workflows
• Develop and optimize data models and warehousing solutions to enable efficient analysis of large-scale usage and safety data
• Build and maintain dashboards and reporting infrastructure that give Safeguards teams visibility into model behavior, misuse patterns, and enforcement outcomes
• Collaborate with engineers to integrate data from multiple sources — including model outputs, user reports, and automated classifiers — into a unified analytical layer
• Implement data quality frameworks, monitoring, and alerting to ensure the reliability of safety‑critical data
• Partner with research teams to surface data insights that inform model improvements and safety interventions
• Develop self‑service data tooling that enables stakeholders to explore safety data and generate reports independently
• Contribute to data governance practices, including access controls, retention policies, and privacy‑compliant data handling

Minimum qualifications

• Proficiency in SQL and Python, with hands‑on experience building and maintaining ETL/ELT pipelines
• Experience with cloud data platforms such as BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake, or similar
• Experience with modern data stack tools such as dbt, Airflow, Spark, or similar orchestration and transformation frameworks
• Experience building dashboards and data visualizations using tools such as Looker, Tableau, or Metabase
• Ability to communicate clearly and translate complex data concepts for both technical and non‑technical audiences

Preferred qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or a related role
• Comfort contributing across the stack and picking up work outside your immediate scope when the situation calls for it
• Background in trust and safety, integrity, fraud, or abuse detection data systems
• Experience with large‑scale event streaming systems such as Kafka, Pub/Sub, or Kinesis
• Experience building data infrastructure that supports ML model monitoring or evaluation
• Familiarity with data privacy and compliance frameworks such as GDPR, CCPA, or similar
• Background in statistical analysis or experience working closely with data scientists
• A genuine interest in the societal implications of AI and in making AI systems safer

Compensation

Annual Salary: $320,000 – $405,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum Education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required Field of Study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum Years of Experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location‑based Hybrid Policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa Sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren’t able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.