Research Scientist, Safety Oversight

Google Inc.; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 207,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

DeepMind in Mountain View, CA is seeking a Research Scientist to advance the safety and oversight of deployed AI models, turning production data into actionable safety insights. You will build data pipelines and evaluation methods to monitor model safety and alignment and collaborate with teams across GenAI Safety.

The role requires a PhD or equivalent in a related field and 3 years of experience shipping technical AI products; deep domain knowledge in generative AI and LLMs is essential for

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3 years of experience building and shipping technical products.
• Experience in the domain area of generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM).

Responsibilities

• Build classifiers and large-scale data pipelines to detect model misbehavior and misuse end-to-end.
• Research and develop cross-context monitoring systems to detect coordinated harms, developing novel signal aggregation methods across disparate user sessions to identify large-scale attack vectors.
• Think critically about novel methods for monitoring using model activations, actions, chains-of-thought and final answers.
• Collaborate closely with infrastructure teams and data scientists to scale your work and regularly share results with the wider safety team.

Skills

Generative AI

LLMs

Education

PhD in Computer Science or related field

Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field

Job description

Research Scientist, Safety Oversight, DeepMind

DeepMind Mountain View, CA, USA

• PhD in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3 years of experience building and shipping technical products.
• Experience in the domain area of generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM).

Preferred qualifications:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 3 years of experience developing code, running experiments and analyses collaboratively with coding agents.
• Experience building large-scale, highly parallelised data pipelines, working on data quality, automated evaluation design and simple statistical modeling.
• Ability to approach new research questions and implement technical solutions for them at scale.
• Ability to use AI every day to build and find ways to push the frontier of model capabilities to accelerate work.

About the job

We aim to turn production data into intelligence on the safety of deployed AI models. Safety Oversight is a new team tasked with using large-scale production traffic and a variety of automated evaluation methods to monitor the safety and alignment of deployed models. Our work will ensure we measure the real-world efficacy of our safety stack—both of in-model safety training and out-of-model safety mitigations to ensure we are effective in our goal of deploying safe models that are used for widespread public benefit.

The Safety Oversight team sits within the GenAI safety organization and is accountable for ensuring that when a model safety issue occurs in production, or when a user is misusing our model at scale, we detect and understand it, so the safety risk can be rapidly mitigated. We will collaborate closely with teams working on safety training and evaluation for Gemini and GenMedia models.

The Generative AI (GenA)I Safety team operates in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment. We take the possibility of tangibly dangerous model capabilities seriously as AI advances, and we believe that proactive monitoring and deployment-time oversight are critical for safe AI development.

Artificial intelligence will be one of humanity’s most transformative inventions. At DeepMind, we are a pioneering AI lab with exceptional interdisciplinary teams focused on advancing AI development to solve complex global challenges and accelerate high-quality product innovation for billions of users. We use our technologies for widespread public benefit and scientific discovery, ensuring safety and ethics are always our highest priority.

We are pushing the boundaries across multiple domains. Our global teams offer learning opportunities and varied career pathways for those driven to achieve exceptional results through collective effort. Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $207000 - $300000 (USD) + 20% bonus target + equity + benefits

• Build classifiers and large-scale data pipelines to detect model misbehavior and misuse end-to-end.
• Research and develop cross-context monitoring systems to detect coordinated harms, developing novel signal aggregation methods across disparate user sessions to identify large-scale attack vectors.
• Think critically about novel methods for monitoring using model activations, actions, chains-of-thought and final answers.
• Collaborate closely with infrastructure teams and data scientists to scale your work and regularly share results with the wider safety team.

Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to building a workforce that is representative of the users we serve, creating a culture of belonging, and providing an equal employment opportunity regardless of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding), expecting or parents-to-be, criminal histories consistent with legal requirements, or any other basis protected by law. See also Google's EEO Policy , Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal , Belonging at Google , and How we hire .

Google is a global company and, in order to facilitate efficient collaboration and communication globally, English proficiency is a requirement for all roles unless stated otherwise in the job posting.

Equity is granted exclusively and discretionarily by Alphabet Inc. on the basis of an agreement concluded between you and Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is your sole contractual partner with respect to equity grants. GSU grants are not guaranteed, are discretionary, are subject to approval by the Alphabet Inc. board of directors or its delegate, the terms of the relevant Alphabet Inc. stock plan, and your grant agreement. They have no impact on statutory payments. Current or past grants do not confer an acquired right.