Standards Analyst

About the role

The Youth AI Safety Institute is a newly launched initiative at Common Sense Media, dedicated to establishing safety standards for AI products and platforms that are safe and developmentally appropriate for children. The Standards Analyst will play a crucial role in developing, refining, and maintaining these standards.

Responsibilities

• Draft, refine, and maintain the Institute's AI safety standards for youth-facing AI products and platforms.
• Translate research, expert input, and evaluation experience into clear, structured, and publicly accessible standards documentation.
• Continually evolve standards in response to new evidence, emerging AI capabilities, expert feedback, and lessons from the Institute's assessment and evaluation work.
• Ensure standards are internally consistent, appropriately scoped, and reflective of the Institute's mission and methodological commitments.
• Participate actively in structured input processes, including expert convenings, working group sessions, and comment processes.
• Synthesize input from a broad range of sources, including perspectives that may be in tension, into coherent standards positions, clearly documenting points of consensus, disagreement, and rationale for decisions made.
• Maintain ongoing familiarity with the perspectives of key experts and organizations in AI safety, child development, education, mental health, and related fields to ensure standards reflect current knowledge and debate.
• Communicate the Institute's standards positions clearly to diverse external audiences, including researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.
• Work closely with technical evaluators to ensure that Institute standards are translated into testable, reproducible rubrics and evaluation protocols.
• Identify gaps between standards as written and what can be operationalized in practice, and work with the Head of AI & Digital Assessments to address them.
• Maintain alignment between the standards documentation and the evaluation work the Institute publishes, such that published assessments are clearly grounded in stated standards.
• Maintain rigorous documentation of the standards development process, including how input was gathered, how decisions were made, and how standards have evolved over time in support of the Institute's commitment to transparency and public accountability.
• Draft and maintain public-facing standards documentation that is accurate, accessible, and suitable for a broad audience, including developers, policymakers, parents and caregivers, and educators.
• Produce process documentation, version histories, and methodology summaries that allow external stakeholders to understand and engage with how the Institute's standards are set.
• Manage timelines, workflows, and deliverables across multiple simultaneous standards development tracks.
• Brief the Head of AI & Digital Assessments regularly on progress, emerging issues, and decisions requiring escalation.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field; advanced degree preferred.
• Candidates with graduate training in developmental psychology, clinical psychology, public health, or a related field are strongly encouraged to apply.
• 4–6 years of experience in policy development, standards-setting, regulatory affairs, research, or a closely related field.
• Standards or policy expertise: Demonstrated experience contributing to formal standards, guidelines, frameworks, or policy documents in a multi-stakeholder environment.
• Synthesis and writing: Exceptional written communication skills, with the ability to distill complex, competing inputs into clear, well-reasoned documentation.
• Stakeholder engagement: Proven ability to engage productively with diverse stakeholder groups (including experts, advocates, and industry representatives) while maintaining organizational independence and integrity.
• Organizational excellence: Strong project management skills, with the ability to manage complex, multi-track workstreams with many moving parts.
• Preferred: Experience in AI safety, technology policy, or emerging technology governance; experience working with or alongside clinical or research professionals in child/adolescent mental health, developmental psychology, or pediatric health settings; familiarity with standards-setting bodies, technical working groups, or multi-stakeholder governance processes (e.g., NIST, IEEE, ISO, or similar); experience translating qualitative standards into operational evaluation criteria or rubrics; knowledge of AI evaluation methodologies, red-teaming practices, or platform safety assessment; experience working in mission-driven organizations navigating complex external relationships.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's degree in a relevant field; advanced degree preferred.
• Experience: 4–6 years of experience in policy development, standards-setting, regulatory affairs, research, or a closely related field.
• Standards or policy expertise: Demonstrated experience contributing to formal standards, guidelines, frameworks, or policy documents in a multi-stakeholder environment.
• Synthesis and writing: Exceptional written communication skills, with the ability to distill complex, competing inputs into clear, well-reasoned documentation.
• Stakeholder engagement: Proven ability to engage productively with diverse stakeholder groups (including experts, advocates, and industry representatives) while maintaining organizational independence and integrity.
• Organizational excellence: Strong project management skills, with the ability to manage complex, multi-track workstreams with many moving parts.
• Preferred: Experience in AI safety, technology policy, or emerging technology governance; experience working with or alongside clinical or research professionals in child/adolescent mental health, developmental psychology, or pediatric health settings; familiarity with standards-setting bodies, technical working groups, or multi-stakeholder governance processes (e.g., NIST, IEEE, ISO, or similar); experience translating qualitative standards into operational evaluation criteria or rubrics; knowledge of AI evaluation methodologies, red-teaming practices, or platform safety assessment; experience working in mission-driven organizations navigating complex external relationships.

Skills

• Initiative and ownership: Proactively drives work forward, anticipates needs, and surfaces issues early, while operating within clear lines of oversight and accountability.
• Analytical rigor: Brings critical thinking and structured reasoning to complex, ambiguous problems without clean answers.
• Independent judgment: Exercises strong professional judgment within defined parameters; knows when to escalate and when to execute.
• Active listening and synthesis: Absorbs complex, sometimes conflicting input from varied sources and translates it into coherent, well-documented positions.
• Clarity under complexity: Translates nuanced, contested, or technically complex material into documentation that is accessible and actionable.
• Adaptability: Comfortable operating in a fast-moving field where the standards themselves are still being defined.

Benefits

The Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media offers a great health and welfare benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, a matching 401(k), and other key benefits. The organization also provides work/life balance and the opportunity to really make a difference in the lives of kids and families.

Pay

$90,000–$110,000

Schedule

Full-time, exempt