Research Scientist, AI Controls and Monitoring

About the role

Scale Labs is launching a new team focused on policy research to bridge the gap between AI research and global policymakers. This team will tackle the hardest problems in agent robustness, AI control protocols, and AI risk evaluations to help governments, industry, and the public understand and mitigate AI risk while maximizing AI adoption.

Responsibilities

• Design methods, systems, and experiments to ensure advanced AI models and agents remain aligned with intended goals, even in high-stakes or adversarial environments.
• Develop monitoring techniques and observability methods that track AI behavior in real time to identify and flag deviations, emergent capabilities, or anomalous outputs.
• Research mechanisms for layered control, including fail-safes, oversight protocols, and intervention methods that can halt or redirect AI systems when risks are detected.
• Collaborate with policymakers, engineers, and other researchers to establish standards and benchmarks for AI monitoring and escalation.

Requirements

• Commitment to our mission of promoting safe, secure, and trustworthy AI deployments in the industry as frontier AI capabilities continue to advance.
• Practical experience conducting technical research collaboratively. Comfortable designing control and monitoring experiments for AI systems, building prototype systems, and quickly turning new ideas from the research literature into working prototypes.
• A track record of published research in machine learning, particularly in generative AI.
• At least three years of experience addressing sophisticated ML problems, whether in a research setting or in product development.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to operate in a cross-functional team.

Nice to have

• Experience with runtime monitoring, anomaly detection, or observability for ML systems.
• Familiarity with AI control or alignment research (e.g., scalable oversight, interpretability, debate).
• Experience with post-training and RL techniques such as RLHF, DPO, GRPO, and similar approaches.

Benefits

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

Pay

The base salary range for this full-time position in the locations of San Francisco, New York, Seattle is $216,000 - $270,000 USD.