Abuse Investigator (AI Self-Improvement Risk)

OpenAI
San Francisco, CA, USA2026-04-15Hybrid

About the job

As an Abuse Investigator focused on AI Self-Autonomy and Agentic Risk on the Intelligence and Investigations team, you will be responsible for identifying and investigating cases where models exhibit autonomous or agentic behavior, including chaining capabilities, acting with increasing independence, or demonstrating patterns that may introduce safety risk. This includes detecting behaviors that are not explicitly intended, understood, or covered by existing safeguards.

Responsibilities

Review leads, investigate model behavior, and identify cases where systems demonstrate agentic or autonomous patterns that that introduce safety risks

Detect and analyze behaviors such as multi-step planning, capability chaining, tool use, persistence, and workaround behavior

Develop signals and tracking strategies to help proactively identify emerging agentic risk patterns across our platform

Identify gaps in existing safeguards, evaluations, or monitoring systems and propose improvements

Communicate investigation findings clearly to technical, policy, and leadership stakeholders

Be someone people enjoy working with and appreciate the opportunity to help others

Qualifications

Minimum

Have deep expertise in investigating complex, adversarial, or emergent system behavior, ideally in AI safety, security, cyber, or trust & safety environments

Have strong familiarity with technical investigations, especially using SQL, Python, or similar tools, in a government, research, or technology setting

Have experience analyzing multi-step systems, automation, or agentic workflows, and understanding how behaviors emerge across interactions

Have at least 6 years of experience conducting investigations, threat analysis, or research in complex and ambiguous domains

Have experience identifying failure modes, unintended behaviors, or system-level risks, particularly in AI or software systems

Have at least two years of experience helping to develop automated or scalable approaches to detection or investigation

Experience presenting analytic work in technical, research, or policy settings

Preferred

Have at least two years of experience helping to develop automated or scalable approaches to detection or investigation

Experience presenting analytic work in technical, research, or policy settings