Senior Research Scientist, AI Biosecurity Assessments

SecureBio, LLC; Cambridge, Berkeley (MA, CA); Hybrid; USD 235,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work hours

Unlimited paid time off (PTO)

Parental leave (12 weeks)

Job summary

SecureBio, LLC seeks a Senior Research Scientist to evaluate frontier AI models for dual-use biological risks, run technical assessment pipelines, analyze model behavior, and author reports for stakeholders. You will help shape safety standards and work with policy bodies to advance evaluation frameworks.

Responsibilities include executing evaluation workflows, identifying risk levels, and communicating complex results clearly.

Qualifications

• PhD in pathogen biology, microbiology, virology, or a closely related field.
• Wet-lab experience is preferred.
• Strategic judgment about how evaluation results map onto real-world biological risk.
• Ability to turn complex technical results into clear, well-structured writing.
• Comfort with short, intensive project cycles and shifting priorities with emerging model releases.

Responsibilities

• Carry out high-quality capability and safeguard assessments of emerging AI models.
• Execute evaluation pipelines, analyze data and map results to threat models and risk levels.
• Manually assess models for willingness and knowledge across biological domains.
• Synthesize findings into clear evaluation reports, technical write-ups, and risk summaries for partners and regulators.
• Contribute to papers, reports, and our public dashboard of trends in capabilities.

Skills

Analytical writing

Strategic judgment

Communication

Adaptability

Education

PhD in pathogen biology, microbiology, virology, or closely related field

Tools

Python

Inspect AI framework

Job description

• Work location: Remote within US, with offices in Cambridge, MA and Berkeley, CA
• Approximate Compensation: $235,000 – $300,000, based on experience. This assumes a Cambridge or Berkeley location; salary will be adjusted based on geographic location and cost-of-living.
• Reports to: Head of Applied Research

The role

SecureBio is hiring a Senior Research Scientist to work on our safety assessment engagements with frontier AI developers. You will evaluate models for dual-use biological risks before they are released publicly, running technical assessment pipelines, analyzing model behavior, and writing the reports that inform relevant audiences of any risks identified.

These assessments help set safety standards across the industry and are regularly cited in model cards from leading AI labs. We also work closely with policy bodies including the NIST US AI Safety Consortium and the European AI Office to shape how evaluation frameworks are built.

Responsibilities

• Work with AI firms and internal research and engineering teams to carry out high quality, informative capability and safeguard assessments of emerging AI models.
• Execute evaluation pipelines, analyze data and identify how results align with relevant threat models and risk levels.
• Manually assess models for both willingness and knowledge across specialized domains of biology.
• Synthesize findings into clear evaluation reports, technical write-ups, and risk summaries for partners and regulatory bodies.
• Contribute to papers, reports, and our public dashboard of trends in capabilities.

Qualifications

A strong candidate would have the following qualifications

• A PhD in pathogen biology, microbiology, virology, or a closely related field. We will consider equivalent depth from other paths, but expect most strong applicants to hold a doctorate. Wet-lab experience is preferred.
• Strategic judgment about how evaluation results map onto real-world biological risk, and about where technical safeguards succeed and fail.
• Deep interest in safeguards and their failure modes, alongside contributory biological capabilities.
• Ability to turn complex technical results into clear, well-structured writing.
• Comfort with short, intensive project cycles and shifting priorities with emerging model releases.

Preferred

• Roughly a year of coding in an industry or graduate research setting, and working fluency in Python.
• Direct experience with the Inspect AI framework, or with building and evaluating LLM or agent systems more broadly.
• Familiarity with biosecurity policy, threat assessment, or counterterrorism work.
• Experience working with AI developers, or in a regulated or NDA-heavy environment.

About SecureBio

Joining SecureBio means joining a mission-driven international team dedicated to protecting the world from biological threats. Through in-house research and development and collaborations with experts across academia, industry, and government, we build the tools, technologies, and institutions the world needs to be secure against future biotechnology.

Our employee benefits reflect our belief in investing to build the strongest possible team, in which everyone receives the trust and support they need to excel. Our benefits package includes:

Flexible work hours; unlimited paid time off (PTO) for all employees; and minimum 12 weeks fully-paid parental leave.

401(k)

Employer 401(k) match up to 4% of total salary.

Starting 2027: up to 10% of salary in 401(k) contributions: 5% automatically, plus a 100% match on up to another 5%.

Referral bonus

We offer a referral bonus of up to $5,500 to individuals who refer successful candidates for this position:

To receive these bonuses, we must reasonably believe that you were responsible for referring the candidate to us (e.g.due to you introducing them to us when we didn’t previously know them, or them mentioning you on their application as the reason they heard about the position).

• If you refer a candidate that we invite to an in-person work trial, you will receive $1,100;
• If the candidate accepts a job offer from us, you will receive a further $4,400, for a total of $5,500.