Senior Research Scientist AI Biosecurity Assessments
SecureBio is a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit that develops pandemic-defense capabilities and evaluates and mitigates AI-enabled biological misuse risks.
Funding history
About SecureBio
SecureBio develops pathogen-agnostic early-warning systems for novel pandemic threats and conducts frontier-AI biosecurity evaluations, benchmarks, and targeted safety-mitigation research.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will evaluate frontier AI models for dual-use biological risks before public release. You will run technical assessment pipelines, analyze model behavior against threat models and risk levels, manually assess biological knowledge and willingness, and communicate findings through evaluation reports, technical write-ups, risk summaries, papers, and a public dashboard.
Requirements
- PhD in pathogen biology, microbiology, virology, or a closely related field, or equivalent depth of expertise
- Strategic judgment about biological risk and the effectiveness and limitations of technical safeguards
- Knowledge of safeguards, safeguard failure modes, and contributory biological capabilities
- Ability to communicate complex technical results clearly in writing
- Ability to work through short, intensive project cycles and shifting priorities
Responsibilities
- Conduct capability and safeguard assessments of emerging AI models
- Execute evaluation pipelines and analyze assessment data
- Align results with relevant threat models and risk levels
- Manually assess models for willingness and knowledge across specialized biology domains
- Produce evaluation reports, technical write-ups, and risk summaries
- Contribute to papers, reports, and a public capabilities-trends dashboard
Benefits
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Yearly mental health allowance
- Flexible work hours
- Unlimited paid time off
- Minimum 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave
- Fully paid conference sponsorships
- Yearly development allowance
- Employer 401(k) match up to 4% of total salary
Hiring Process
Written application review; possible short work test; screening interview; further interviews and/or paid trial tasks for high-performing candidates; up to two reference checks.