Data Scientist, Safety

OpenAI

. Measure harmful or abusive behavior across OpenAI’s products .

Posted 5/16/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesMid-LevelSenior💰 $230,000 - $325,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

PythonSQL

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Measure harmful or abusive behavior across OpenAI’s products
Detect fraud, manipulation, coordinated misuse
Evaluate and improve safety classifiers, rules systems, mitigation systems, and human review workflows
Design experiments and causal analyses to understand product, policy, and mitigation impacts
Build prevalence estimators, dashboards, monitoring systems, and executive decision frameworks
Diagnose gaps in safety and integrity systems using behavioral and product data, and help quantify and navigate false positive / false negative tradeoffs
Translate ambiguous safety risks into measurable problems and evidence-based recommendations
Partner with Product, Engineering, Policy, Research, and Operations teams to improve safety outcomes
Build zero-to-one analytical systems in rapidly evolving domains

Requirements

What you’ll need

Strong statistical reasoning and analytical judgment
Experience with experimentation, causal inference, or observational analysis
Strong SQL and Python skills
Experience working with messy, incomplete, or noisy datasets
Ability to structure open-ended business or risk problems
Excellent communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders
High ownership and comfort operating independently
Trust & Safety / Integrity
Fraud & abuse
Security analytics
AI/ML model measurement and evaluation
Alignment and AI safety research
Biosecurity, synthetic biology, infectious diseases, or computational biology

Benefits

Comp & perks

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 (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
Mental health and wellness support
Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
Relocation support for eligible employees
Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

statistical reasoninganalytical judgmentSQLPythonexperimentationcausal inferenceobservational analysisdata analysisbehavioral data analysisAI/ML model measurement

Soft Skills

communicationproblem structuringindependenceownershipcollaborationanalytical thinkingadaptabilitycritical thinkingstakeholder engagementdecision-making