About the job
NOTE: If you have previously submitted your application for any of our Research Engineer/Scientist, Machine Learning Research Engineer/Scientist, or Research Stream Lead positions, there is no need to reapply. We are consolidating all incoming applications for research roles into this single listing.
About METR
METR is a pioneering nonprofit research organization dedicated to developing scientific methodologies that assess AI capabilities, risks, and mitigation strategies, particularly focusing on the threats posed by autonomy, AI R&D automation, and alignment.
We believe that it is fundamentally beneficial for society to gain a clearer understanding of the potential dangers of AI systems, and we are eager to welcome passionate and talented individuals to our team to address one of the most pressing challenges of our time.
Candidate evaluations primarily occur through practical work assessments. While we typically conduct in-person trials, we can offer flexibility in this regard.
Position Overview
At METR, we have three core research streams:
- Capabilities: We focus on accurately measuring the performance of frontier models on threat-relevant tasks (such as autonomy and AI R&D automation) and predicting future capabilities. Our work involves developing and maintaining benchmarks, diverse evidence-gathering techniques, and metrics to monitor capability trends and identify critical safety thresholds.
- Monitorability: Our aim is to understand how effectively frontier models can perform subversive or unwanted actions despite established monitoring and control protocols. We build the necessary research infrastructure—novel metrics, control evaluations, and elicitation methods—to enhance global understanding of how current and future models may evade oversight.
- Alignment/Propensity: We investigate whether models capable of causing catastrophic harm in their deployment contexts would likely do so in high-stakes scenarios. Our goal is to advance the science of propensity evaluations and explore conditions that may lead to significant catastrophic misalignment.
The Capabilities and Monitorability streams are currently looking to hire Research Individual Contributors (ICs), while the Alignment/Propensity stream is seeking a Research Stream Lead, with plans to hire additional Research ICs in the future. The stream you join will be determined by a combination of your skills, interests, and fit within our team.