Priority Safety Pod Lead - AI Conversations

TaskUs; Texas; Hybrid; USD 51,000 - 73,000; Full time

Job summary

TaskUs is seeking a Priority Safety Pod Lead to steer frontline crisis response for youth safety in a fast-paced digital environment. This senior role leads escalation, coaching, policy refinement, and cross-functional collaboration to ensure rapid, accurate decisions during imminent-threat scenarios.

You will mentor frontline specialists, co-develop training, audit decision accuracy, and partner with Shift Team Leads to maintain high standards of safety and compliance while delivering

Qualifications

• Master's degree in social science field.
• 3+ years in crisis intervention or hotline/chat de-escalation.
• 2+ years in clinical lead or management role.
• Fluency in English (written and spoken).
• Experience with risk assessment tools (C-SSRS, CAMS, QPR).

Responsibilities

• Escalation & critical decision making for frontline staff.
• Decode grey-area edge cases and provide clear guidance.
• Maintain decision velocity under high-pressure conditions.
• Oversee high-acuity crisis escalations and match to risk severity.
• Perform shift quality audits and calibration workshops.
• Develop onboarding and ongoing training modules for staff.
• Protect data privacy and ensure regulatory compliance.
• Represent safety team with internal stakeholders and external partners.
• Foster resilience and oversee healthy shift dynamics.

Skills

Crisis leadership

Trauma-informed leadership

Decision making under pressure

Policy compliance

Training & coaching

Stakeholder management

Team mentorship

Education

Master's Degree in Social Science

Tools

Google Workspace

Job description

Job Description

Pioneer a safer digital environment for young people turning to AI for guidance and connection. As a Priority Safety Pod Lead, you step into a high-impact leadership role that steers our frontline response. You will guide and empower frontline specialists through crisis escalations and nuanced edge cases, translating ambiguous user interactions into clear, actionable direction. As a Pod Leader, you actively shape team growth, co-authoring training programs, auditing decision accuracy, and driving continuous policy refinement. Working alongside the Shift Team Lead (who manages operational logistics), you'll inspire, mentor, and elevate your shift to operate with unmatched precision, empathy, and resilience that protects vulnerable youth in real time.

Work Schedule: This is a 24/7/365 operation. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd shifts available with shift differential for overnight, weekend, and holidays. Details provided during the interview phase.

Compensation: $45.00/hour

Remote Work Model: Ability to work remotely with occasional on-site days. You'll need to live within 120 miles of New Braunfels, TX TaskUs so you can come in when needed, such as for training or tech support.

About You

Holding a Master's degree in a social science field (Social Work, Counseling, Psychology, etc.), you are a seasoned crisis practitioner who thrives at the intersection of human behavior and digital technology in fast-paced work environments. You possess a sharp clinical lens and deep comfort with ambiguity - you are as adept at guiding imminent-threat escalations as you are at decoding complex, grey-area conversations. You don't just know how to manage acute crisis scenarios; you excel at coaching and mentoring others to do the same. Driven by a passion for pioneering youth safety in frontier AI, you take pride in being a supportive clinical leader who understands what it takes to build, scale, and stand up a brand-new program from the ground up.

Key Responsibilities

Escalation & Critical Decision Making: Act as the shift-dedicated authority for frontline Content Safety Specialists. Rapidly evaluate, decide, and resolve complex crisis escalations and acute suicide or self-harm distress signals that exceed frontline specialist decision thresholds with the potential to engage with local law enforcement and child protective services.

Grey-Area Edge Case & Intent Decoding: Apply advanced intuition and human behavior dynamics to resolve ambiguous, non-standard conversational logs where youth slang, dark humor, creative writing, and veiled distress overlap - establishing clear guidance when frontline specialists need consultation and direction.

Decision Velocity & Performance Under Pressure: Balance rapid decision-making with uncompromised clinical accuracy during high-stress operational spikes, ensuring the shift meets strict queue turnaround times, low escalation latency, and performance KPIs.

High-Acuity Escalation Oversight: Provide direction for crisis workflows, directly matching the scope and immediacy of the escalation to the youth's risk severity.

Quality Oversight, Calibration & Inter-Rater Reliability: Perform systematic quality reviews and case audits. Facilitate regular shift calibration workshops and audit sessions to minimize decision variance and maintain protocol fidelity across shifts.

Training Development, Coaching & Policy Oversight: Design, update, and deliver onboarding modules and continuous training. Provide structured 1:1 coaching based on audits, policy changes, and translate recurring edge-case trends into actionable recommendations.

Data Privacy & Compliance Oversight: Ensure shift-wide adherence to the highest standards of discretion regarding youth conversational logs, user personally identifiable information (PII), and proprietary safety protocols, enforcing strict compliance with privacy regulations and corporate non-disclosure guidelines.

Stakeholder Management & Cross-Functional Alignment: Professionally represent the Content Safety team when interacting with high-stakes external stakeholders while building and maintaining collaborative, trust-based relationships across internal operational and policy teams.

Shift Resilience & Operational Wellness Leadership: Foster a trauma-informed shift culture by modeling proactive self-care, monitoring team fatigue, enforcing shift guardrails, and guiding clinical debriefs to manage secondary traumatic stress across the frontline team.

Core Competencies

Advanced Clinical Acuity & Edge-Case Synthesis: The ability to evaluate complex, ambiguous text logs, synthesize subtle context, and apply safety frameworks decisively when navigating novel or non-standard user interactions.

Trauma-Informed Leadership & Emotional Resilience: Deep personal resilience combined with the capacity to model emotional regulation, guide incident and shift debriefs, and foster psychological safety for frontline specialists exposed to distressing crisis content.

Elevated Crisis Authority & Decisiveness: The capability to make swift, defensible, high-stakes determinations during rapid-onset emergency escalations, balancing ethics, legal obligations, and emergency response workflows.

Contextual & Cultural Intelligence: Intuitive grasp of evolving youth internet subcultures, digital communication styles, and online vernacular, allowing for accurate interpretation of tone and intent in text with the skill to teach Content Safety Specialists how to accurately decode.

Instructional Excellence & Clinical Coaching: The talent for translating complex human behavior and psychology concepts and edge-case learnings into digestible training modules, delivering constructive 1:1 coaching, and driving shift-wide protocol calibration.

Policy Stewardship & Regulatory Governance: Uncompromising commitment to data privacy standards and platform protocols, paired with the ability to audit compliance and translate recurring edge cases into actionable policy recommendations.

Programmatic Ownership: Self-directed drive, personal accountability, and operational grit needed to stand up new workflows, manage shift escalation queues, and maintain high team standards in a remote environment.

Cross-Functional Diplomacy & Stakeholder Engagement: Skill in building collaborative, trust-based relationships across internal teams (Shift Team Leads, Policy SMEs, QA) and professionally representing the safety framework to high-stakes external partners and emergency services.

Required Education & Experience

• Master's Degree in a Social Science field (psychology, counseling, social work, or similar tracks)
• 3+ years of experience in crisis intervention, risk screening, or hotline/chat-based de-escalation (or a commensurate combination of education and experience)
• 2+ years of experience in a clinical lead, supervisory, or management role, including direct oversight of staff and clinical workflows.
• Experience with the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS), Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS), Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR), or other commensurate risk rating tools
• High level of discretion and confidentiality
• Above-Average fluency in written and spoken English

Preferred Education & Experience

• Experience working in call center environment
• Experience with remote work

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

• Demonstrated capacity to foster positive, productive working relationships across all organizational tiers, serving as a trusted clinical bridge between shift peers, operational leads, and platform leadership.
• High proficiency in Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive) and comfort with navigating web-based dashboards and digital communication tools.
• Deep expertise in 24/7 operational shift dynamics, with a commitment to modeling strict shift discipline, driving seamless shift handovers, and ensuring uninterrupted shift readiness across fast-paced rotations.

Disclaimer

TaskUs is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We celebrate and support diversity; we are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. TaskUs people first culture thrives on it for the benefit of our employees, our clients, our services, and our community.