Security Researcher, Agentic AI Threats
OpenAI · San Francisco, CA · Safety Systems
About this role
OpenAI is hiring a mid-level Security Analyst based in San Francisco, CA. The posting calls out experience with Cloud Computing, Docker, CI/CD, Distributed Systems. Compensation is listed at $293,000–$405,000 per year.
- Role
- Security Analyst
- Function
- security
- Level
- mid
- Track
- Individual contributor
- Employment
- Full-time
- Location
- San Francisco, CA
- Department
- Safety Systems
- Posted
- May 18, 2026
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Job description
from OpenAI careersAbout the team
Preparedness is a critical Safety Research team at OpenAI, which is focused on mitigating AI threats to global security that could scale to an extreme level of severity.
Our work involves:
Measurement. Monitoring and predicting the evolving capabilities of frontier AI systems.
Mitigation. Keeping misuse safeguards, alignment tools, and security measures on track to adequately address extreme threats that might arise in the future.
Coordination. Setting mitigation targets by maintaining OpenAI’s preparedness framework, and partnering with other staff to achieve these targets.
This is urgent, fast-paced work that has far-reaching implications for the company and for society.
About the role
As AI agents become more capable at software engineering, and automate more of our internal work, they could become a dangerous cyber threat. People in this role will help OpenAI prepare for security threats from advanced AI agent insiders.
In this role, you will:
Identify paths by which capable future internal AI agents could compromise OpenAI.
Design security controls - focusing on measures with long lead times that benefit from advanced preparation.
Stress-test defenses with AI agent evaluations and penetration tests
You might thrive in this role if you:
Are deeply technical across security and modern infrastructure, and are comfortable digging into the details of operating systems, cloud, containers, CI/CD, or distributed systems.
This is an excerpt. Read the full job description on OpenAI careers →