Security Preparedness Lead, Coding Agents

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a security-focused individual to lead Preparedness work, ensuring the defense against potential threats to internal AI agents. This role involves developing threat models and collaborating with various departments to prioritize security investments.

The ideal candidate has a strong technical background, experience with advanced persistent threats, and a creative approach to solving complex security problems. Join a mission-driven team in San Francisco.

Qualifications

• Exceptional hands-on technical executor.
• Experience with advanced persistent threat actors or cyberoffensive groups.
• Ability to creatively design security controls under constraints.
• Leadership experience in technical programs or teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain threat models against advanced attacks.
• Identify critical security investments based on risks.
• Partner with teams to align on security implementation plans.
• Lead technical execution for security measures and controls.
• Collaborate with penetration testers to improve defenses.

Skills

Hands-on technical execution

Experience with advanced persistent threat actors

Creative problem-solving in security

Leadership in technical programs

Job description

About the team

Preparedness is a critical Safety Research team at OpenAI, which is focused on mitigating AI threats to global security that could scale to an extreme level of severity.

Our work involves:

1. Measurement. Monitoring and predicting the evolving capabilities of frontier AI systems.
2. Mitigation. Keeping misuse safeguards, alignment tools, and security measures on track to adequately address extreme threats that might arise in the future.
3. Coordination. Setting mitigation targets by maintaining OpenAI’s preparedness framework, and partnering with other staff to achieve these targets.

This is urgent, fast‑paced work that has far‑reaching implications for the company and for society.

About the role

The stakes of securing OpenAI increases as our internal coding and research becomes increasingly driven by autonomous AI agents. Compromising these agents could allow a cyber threat actor to compromise many other parts of the company. In this role, you would lead Preparedness work defending the security of our internal AI agents against insiders, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), or powerful AI agents. We’re looking for a strong hands‑on technical executor with experience working directly with advanced cyber threat actors.

In this role, you will:

• Develop and maintain threat models via which advanced attackers could compromise our coding assistants and automated security systems.
• Identify security investments that are especially critical to make in advance; for example, prioritizing by implementation lead‑times, costs, and benefit.
• Partner with Security, Infrastructure, Research, Legal, and Preparedness to align on implementation plans and tradeoffs.
• Lead technical execution directly when needed, including prototyping controls, writing and reviewing software, and coordinating engineers across teams.
• Work with penetration testers to close gaps in defenses.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Are an exceptional hands‑on technical executor.
• Have worked with advanced persistent threat actors, or other capable cyberoffensive groups.
• Can creatively reason about non‑standard security problems and design workable controls under tight constraints.
• Have led technical programs or teams.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US‑based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non‑public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link.