Research Stream Lead

Referral Bonus

We are offering a $21k referral bonus for this role. You can refer people through our form, and it lists the terms of this bonus.

About METR

We are a nonprofit research organization that develops scientific methods to assess AI capabilities, risks and mitigations, with a specific focus on threats related to autonomy, AI R&D automation, and alignment.

We believe it is robustly good for civilization to have a clearer understanding of what dangers AI systems pose, and we are extremely excited to find ambitious, excellent people to join our team and tackle one of the most important challenges of our time.

We evaluate candidates primarily through (paid) work tests. We usually do an in-person trial as well but can be flexible about this.

Role Mission : Lead a team and own one of the key areas needed to understand the level of risk from future models

Example research areas :

• How can we tell models aren’t undermining our evaluations by sandbagging or alignment faking?
• How much cognition can models do without revealing it in their reasoning traces?
• How close are models to being able to sabotage research at AI companies or at METR?
• How reliable are safety claims made by AI developers based on new techniques, e.g. activation steering?
• What egregiously misaligned behaviors do models display? How good are monitors at picking up on this, or do they tend to collude with (or get exploited by) the agents?
• Build model organisms or red-teaming approaches to test the robustness of METR’s or external evaluations and safety measures

What the job involves

The ideal candidate has experience leading high-performing research teams working with frontier ML systems, such as alignment, post-training, interpretability, or frontier evaluations. Other promising candidate profiles

Salary range : $250,000 - $450,000 a year (base)

Benefits

Our Culture

METR is a mission-driven organization. We believe our work can meaningfully shape humanity's future for the better, and we want to be the best people in the world doing this work. We have a tight-knit, collaborative research culture rooted in truth-seeking and integrity. We're fiercely committed to producing high-quality, trustworthy science. We're honest and transparent about our results, especially when they may go against the grain. We've earned trust as reliable partners who handle confidential information with care. We maintain a low-ego, drama-free environment focused on what matters.

Hybrid Requirements

Our technical team members are in our office in Berkeley 3-5 days / week. Please let us know in your application if this is a constraint. If you lack US work authorization and would like to work in-person (strongly preferred), we can likely sponsor a cap-exempt H-1B visa for this role.

We encourage you to apply even if your background may not seem like the perfect fit! We would rather review a larger pool of applications than risk missing out on a promising candidate for the position.

We are committed to diversity and equal opportunity in all aspects of our hiring process. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We welcome and encourage all qualified candidates to apply for our open positions.

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