OpenAI is creating one of the most closely watched jobs in the AI industry, a senior role dedicated to anticipating what could go wrong as its systems grow more powerful. The company is hiring a new head of preparedness to own its strategy for evaluating extreme risks, from biological misuse to destabilizing cyberattacks, and to turn that strategy into day‑to‑day operational discipline. The move signals that frontier AI development is now inseparable from a permanent, executive‑level focus on safety and crisis planning.
At a time when advanced models are being woven into everything from customer service to national security workflows, the decision to elevate preparedness into a standalone leadership position is not just an internal reorg. It is a public statement that the company expects its own technology to create novel hazards, and that it is willing to pay top‑tier executive compensation to someone whose primary mandate is to say “no” or “not yet” when the risks are not fully understood.
Why OpenAI is elevating preparedness now
The core rationale for this role is straightforward: OpenAI’s models are improving fast enough that traditional product risk reviews no longer suffice. As systems gain the ability to write code, generate persuasive text at scale, and assist with complex scientific workflows, the downside scenarios move from embarrassing chatbots to potential real‑world harm. The company is effectively acknowledging that preparedness is not a side function of security or policy, but a strategic capability that must sit near the top of the org chart.
Chief executive Sam Altman framed the opening as a “critical role at an important time,” tying it directly to the pace at which the company’s models are improving and the need to keep risk management in lockstep with that progress. In a public call for candidates, he described the position as a Head of Preparedness who can keep up with rapidly advancing capabilities and ensure that safety practices evolve just as quickly.
A high‑stakes job with executive‑level pay
OpenAI is not shy about signaling how demanding this job will be, and the compensation reflects that. The company has listed “Compensation for the” role as $555,000 in base pay, plus equity, putting it squarely in the range of senior executives at high‑growth tech firms. That figure alone tells potential applicants that they will be expected to make decisions with company‑wide impact, not just write memos from the sidelines.
Altman has also been candid that the job will be stressful, describing it as a role where “You will be the directly responsible leader” for some of the most sensitive questions the company faces. The description emphasizes that You will be the directly responsible leader for building and coordinating capability evaluations, threat models, and other core elements of the preparedness program, underscoring that this is not a ceremonial safety title but a position with clear accountability when things go wrong.
What “preparedness” means inside OpenAI
Preparedness, in OpenAI’s framing, is not just about writing contingency plans for hypothetical disasters. It is about building a systematic way to predict and mitigate harms before they reach users, regulators, or adversaries. That includes designing and running rigorous tests on new models, mapping out how they might be misused, and deciding what guardrails or deployment limits are necessary to keep those risks within acceptable bounds.
The job description spells this out in operational terms, stating that the new leader will own the company’s preparedness strategy “end‑to‑end” by building and coordinating capability evaluations and threat models. According to one summary of the posting, responsibilities include owning OpenAI’s preparedness strategy end‑to‑end by building these processes and ensuring that models behave as intended in real‑world settings, with compensation listed as According to the job description, $5,55,000 plus equity.
From mental health to biosecurity: the risk portfolio
One of the most striking aspects of the role is the breadth of harms it is expected to cover. OpenAI is not limiting preparedness to technical failures or narrow security bugs. The new leader will be tasked with addressing AI risks that span mental health, cybersecurity, and biological misuse, reflecting how deeply large models are starting to touch sensitive domains. That portfolio suggests the company expects its systems to be used in contexts where emotional well‑being, critical infrastructure, and lab‑grade research may all be in play.
Altman has said that the new Head of Preparedness will lead efforts to address AI risks including mental health, cybersecurity, and biological threats, and that the role comes with $555,000 plus equity. That combination of domains is unusual in a single job description, and it reflects a view that the same underlying models can influence everything from a teenager’s mood to a lab’s ability to design new pathogens.
Biological risks and self‑improving systems
The biological component of the job is particularly sensitive. As language models become better at synthesizing scientific literature and proposing experimental steps, the risk that they could lower the barrier to dangerous biological work becomes a central concern. Preparedness in this area means understanding how models might inadvertently help with tasks like optimizing viral constructs or bypassing safety protocols, and then designing both technical and policy constraints to prevent that.
OpenAI’s own community has highlighted that the company is hiring a Head of Preparedness for biological risks, cybersecurity, and “running systems that can self‑improve,” language that points directly at concerns about models that can iteratively enhance their own capabilities. That phrase suggests the role will need to grapple not only with today’s misuse scenarios but with future architectures where AI systems help design and train their successors, a dynamic that could accelerate both benefits and hazards.
Evaluation, threat modeling, and the new safety toolkit
At the heart of the job is a set of research methods that have moved from academic papers into the core of commercial AI deployment. Evaluation, in this context, means systematically probing models to see how they behave under stress: asking them to produce disallowed content, testing whether they can be coaxed into revealing sensitive information, or measuring how reliably they follow safety instructions. Threat modeling, by contrast, is about mapping out who might want to misuse the system, what capabilities they would need, and how the model could help them if left unchecked.
The job description makes clear that the new leader will be responsible for building and coordinating these processes, stating that “You will be the directly responsible leader for building and coordinating capability evaluations, threat models, and” other core elements of the preparedness program. That language, highlighted in one evaluation of the posting, shows that OpenAI sees these tools not as optional research extras but as the backbone of how it decides when and how to release new AI systems.
How the role fits into OpenAI’s broader safety ecosystem
The head of preparedness will not be working in a vacuum. OpenAI has built out a network of teams focused on safety, policy, and security, and this role is meant to coordinate across them rather than replace them. Preparedness sits at the intersection of technical safety research, red‑teaming, incident response, and external engagement with regulators and civil society, which means the person in this job will need to translate between engineers, lawyers, and policymakers on a daily basis.
External observers who track impactful career paths in AI safety have noted that Open roles at OpenAI in safety, policy, and security are among the most leveraged positions for shaping how advanced AI is deployed. The head of preparedness is poised to sit near the top of that stack, turning research insights and policy commitments into concrete go‑or‑no‑go decisions on model launches and new features.
What this signals for the wider AI industry
By carving out preparedness as a standalone leadership role with a clear mandate and a $555,000 salary, OpenAI is setting a benchmark that other AI labs and large tech companies will struggle to ignore. If one of the most prominent developers of frontier models believes it needs a dedicated executive to think about worst‑case scenarios, it becomes harder for competitors to argue that such concerns can be handled ad hoc by product managers or security teams. The role effectively raises the bar for what “responsible AI” looks like in practice.
There is also a signaling effect for regulators and policymakers who are debating how tightly to oversee advanced AI systems. When a company publicly advertises a Compensation for the head of preparedness role that rivals senior engineering leadership, it is implicitly acknowledging that safety and risk management are core to its business model, not just compliance checkboxes. That acknowledgment could shape how lawmakers think about mandating similar functions across the industry, from smaller startups to cloud providers that host AI workloads.
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