Description
Data Scientist, Strategic Intelligence & Risk
Location
San Francisco
Employment Type
Full time
Department
Intelligence & Investigations
Compensation
- $230K – $325K • Offers Equity
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. If the role is non-exempt, overtime pay will be provided consistent with applicable laws. In addition to the salary range listed above, total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.
Benefits
- 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.
About the Team
The Intelligence and Investigations team seeks to rapidly identify and mitigate abuse and strategic risks to ensure a safe online ecosystem. We are dedicated to identifying emerging abuse trends, analyzing risks, and working with our internal and external partners to implement effective mitigation strategies to protect against misuse. Our efforts contribute to OpenAI's overarching goal of developing AI that benefits humanity.
About the Role
As a Data Scientist, you will lead econometric and experimental analysis to understand how risk changes in complex human–AI systems. Your work will focus on measuring the magnitude and impact of risk shifts in a fast-paced, rapidly evolving operational environment. You will design experiments and observational studies to identify causal drivers and analyze changes in risk across a wide range of surfaces and sources. Your analyses will directly inform prioritization and strategic risk management across the company.
In this role, you will:
- Own the design and execution of experimental and observational analyses used to assess strategic risk
- Develop econometric approaches to estimate the impact of product, policy, and external developments on key risk vectors
- Translate strategic risk questions into testable hypotheses and sound study designs
- Design and deploy A/B tests, as well as pseudo-experimental studies, to measure changes in risks and understand underlying mechanisms
- Identify, test, and explain product-driven, event-driven, or signal-driven changes in risk
- Establish baselines and statistical confidence around core metrics to size these problems
- Partner across teams to track strategic risks, identify opportunities for intervention, and develop analyses to evaluate those interventions
You might thrive in this role if you:
- Have 3–6+ years in econometrics, causal inference, or experimental research
- Are comfortable owning ambiguous analyses with large-scale influence
- Are strong in experimental design, observational methods, and statistical reasoning
- Write solid Python and SQL
- Experience delivering zero-to-one analyses and scaling them from concept through deployment
- Communicate data-driven findings clearly, including uncertainty and trade-offs, to non-technical partners and leadership
- Nice to have: experience in trust and safety, integrity, operational security, intelligence analysis or other quantitative risk-focused domains
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.