Member of Technical Staff, Safety (Security)
Job Description
- Develop AI security systems to mitigate safety risks arising from both misuse and misalignment
- Work across all stages of the model development pipeline
- Mitigate the potential for catastrophic misuse (e.g. chemical or biological weapons, large-scale cyber attacks)
- Improve adversarial robustness to emerging attack techniques
- Develop new approaches to secure tool use against prompt injection attacks
- Build automated systems to continually red team models and products
- Strong software engineering skills
- Background in post-training or evaluating frontier AI systems
- Equity
- Comprehensive medical coverage
- Vision coverage
- Dental coverage
- Access to a 401(k) retirement plan
- Short-term disability insurance
- Long-term disability insurance
- Life insurance
- Various other discounts and perks
About the Role
xAI is seeking talented engineers to improve the safety of our AI systems and ensure that they are maximally beneficial for society.
In this role, you will develop AI security systems to mitigate safety risks arising from both misuse and misalignment. You will work across all stages of the model development pipeline, from collaborating with legal and product teams to iterate on policy guidelines and quantifying novel safety threats, running human data collection projects, experimenting with novel post-training and reasoning training recipes, and analyzing the usage patterns of millions of users around the world.
Focus
Candidates for this role may focus on one or more of the following:
- Mitigating the potential for catastrophic misuse (e.g. chemical or biological weapons, large-scale cyber attacks)
- Improving adversarial robustness to emerging attack techniques
- Developing new approaches to secure tool use against prompt injection attacks
- Building automated systems to continually red team models and products
Ideal experience
The ideal candidate:
- has strong software engineering skills,
- has a background in post-training or evaluating frontier AI systems,
- is a team player and willing to pick up new skills to get the job done.
Location
- We hire engineers in Palo Alto. Our team usually works from the office 5 days a week but allow work-from-home days when required. Candidates are expected to be located near Palo Alto or open to relocation.
Interview Process
After submitting your application, the team reviews your CV and statement of exceptional work. If your application passes this stage, you will be invited to a 15 minute interview (“phone interview”) during which a member of our team will ask some basic questions. If you clear the initial phone interview, you will enter the main process, which consists of four technical interviews:
1. Coding assessment in a language of your choice.
2. Technical sessions (2): These sessions will be testing your ability to formulate, design and solve concrete problems in real world with LLM.
3. Meet the Team: Present your past exceptional work and your vision with xAI to a small audience.
Our goal is to finish the main process within one week. All interviews will be conducted via Google Meet.
Annual Salary Range
$180,000 - $440,000 USD
Benefits
Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at xAI, which also includes equity, comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short & long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.
xAI is an equal opportunity employer.
