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Researcher, Alignment CoT Monitorability

OpenAI· Research
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San Francisco$295k - $500kFull-timePosted 3mo ago

About the role

Researcher role focused on empirical ML studies of chain-of-thought monitorability, exploring how training interventions affect model reasoning visibility and scalable oversight, with emphasis on alignment, interpretability, and monitoring methods.

Responsibilities

  • Design and run empirical studies of chain-of-thought monitorability across frontier reasoning models and training settings.
  • Build evaluations that measure whether monitors can reliably predict properties of interest, including high-stakes forms of misbehavior.
  • Investigate how pre-training, synthetic data, mid-training, post-training, reinforcement learning, and other interventions improve or degrade monitorability.
  • Analyze model behavior and turn observations from monitoring into hypotheses, experiments, and recommendations.
  • Translate research findings into practical monitoring and oversight approaches that can inform real training runs.
  • Collaborate with researchers and engineers across model training, alignment evaluations, monitoring, and frontier-risk work.
  • Produce externally publishable research when results advance the broader science of alignment.

Qualifications

  • Strong hands-on experience training, evaluating, or debugging large ML models, especially LLMs.
  • Deep curiosity, interest in alignment, and high agency.
  • Depth in alignment, interpretability, model behavior, empirical ML, or adjacent research.
  • Excitement to investigate chain-of-thought monitorability, monitoring methods, and scalable oversight.
  • Ability to turn ambiguous research questions into measurable experiments and follow the evidence when results are subtle or noisy.
  • Comfort moving between research ideation and engineering execution.
  • Curiosity about multiple approaches to understanding model behavior; not committed to a single methodological lens.
  • Independent work style with collaboration across research and engineering teams.
  • Commitment to making AI systems more monitorable, trustworthy, and safe.

Skills

Required:Empirical ML research
Nice to have:Chain-of-thought monitoring

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
  • Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
  • 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
  • Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
  • Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
  • 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time
  • Mental health and wellness support
  • Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
  • Annual learning and development stipend
  • Daily meals in offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
  • Relocation support for eligible employees
  • Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends
Last updated Sep 3, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About OpenAI

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