OpenAI has listed a senior opening for the position of Head of Preparedness within its Safety Systems team in San Francisco. The role comes at a time when the company is expanding work around evaluating and managing risks linked to its most capable artificial intelligence models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has highlighted preparedness as a critical function as AI systems scale in capability and real-world impact.
What OpenAI means by preparedness
Preparedness is a core part of OpenAI’s safety strategy and focuses on tracking and preparing for frontier AI capabilities that could introduce risks of severe harm. According to the company, this work spans multiple generations of advanced models and includes building structured capability evaluations, detailed threat models, and cross-functional mitigations.
OpenAI notes that as model capabilities continue to increase, safeguards are also becoming more complex. Preparedness is intended to ensure that safety standards evolve in parallel with technical progress rather than reacting after deployment.
Responsibilities of the Head of Preparedness
The Head of Preparedness will lead the technical strategy and execution of OpenAI’s Preparedness framework. This includes owning the preparedness programme end to end by building and coordinating capability evaluations, establishing threat models, and overseeing mitigations that together form an operational safety pipeline.
The role also involves leading the development of frontier capability evaluations that are precise, robust, and scalable across rapid product cycles. Another key responsibility is ensuring that evaluation results directly inform model launch decisions, internal policy choices, and formal safety cases. The framework will need to be refined continuously as new risks, capabilities, or external expectations emerge.
Cross-functional leadership and collaboration
OpenAI expects the Head of Preparedness to lead a small, high-impact team while working closely with research, engineering, product, governance, policy, and enforcement teams. Collaboration with external partners may also be required to ensure preparedness practices translate effectively into real-world deployments.
Clear communication and strong technical judgment are emphasised, particularly when making high-stakes decisions under uncertainty.
Skills, experience, and compensation
The role is aimed at candidates with deep technical expertise in machine learning, AI safety, evaluations, security, or related risk domains. Experience with high-rigor evaluations, threat modeling, cybersecurity, biosecurity, or similar frontier-risk areas is listed as a plus.
The San Francisco-based position offers $555,000 in compensation along with equity, reflecting the senior leadership responsibility tied to overseeing OpenAI’s preparedness and safety efforts.
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