Head of Biology

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Design and oversee adversarial evaluations of cutting-edge LLMs to assess risks related to biological misuse, including agent acquisition, pathogen characterization and enhancement, biosecurity screening evasion, and emerging biotechnological capabilities across text, agentic, and multimodal systems.

• Collaborate with machine learning engineers and AI researchers to convert biological knowledge into technical specifications for scalable evaluation datasets, classifiers, guardrails, benchmarks, fine-tuned models, and automated red-teaming.

• Create and sustain the B in Gray Swan's CBRN harm classification system.

• Generate technical risk assessments and provide actionable recommendations for frontier AI laboratories, enterprise clients, policymakers, and internal stakeholders.

• Assemble, mentor, and lead a team of biology subject matter experts while establishing evaluation standards, quality assurance processes, and scalable safety infrastructure.

• Serve as Gray Swan’s biology safety authority through collaborations with AI laboratories, biosecurity organizations, government partners, and the wider AI safety research community.

⛳️ Requirements

• PhD in biology, with a focus on microbiology, virology, synthetic biology, protein engineering, or a closely related field, accompanied by postdoctoral or equivalent research experience.

• Profound understanding of biological misuse risks, dual-use research, pathogen biology, synthetic biology, or biosecurity.

• Experience in conducting adversarial evaluations, biological risk assessments, AI safety research, or creating safety datasets for advanced AI systems.

• Knowledge of international biosecurity frameworks, dual-use governance, responsible biotechnology practices, and developing AI safety standards.

• Comfort in navigating the intersection of advanced biology, machine learning, and AI security.

• Ability to thrive in dynamic, fast-paced environments where you will define strategies while constructing new systems from scratch.

• A proactive builder who enjoys establishing teams, processes, and technical infrastructure rather than merely maintaining existing programs.

• Experience in developing machine learning systems, biological safety classifiers, or evaluation pipelines for high-risk biological capabilities.

• Practical experience with evaluations of advanced AI models, red-teaming, prompt engineering, or benchmarking AI capabilities.

• Experience collaborating with government biosecurity organizations, leading AI labs, or entities focused on catastrophic biological risks.

• Publications or significant contributions in areas such as AI safety, biosecurity, synthetic biology, or dual-use governance.

• Strong programming or data science skills (Python, ML tools, biological data analysis).

• Legally authorized to work in the United States.

🏝️ Benefits

• 401k with up to 4% matching.

• 28 days of annual leave (including vacation and holidays).

• Health, dental, and vision insurance coverage.

• Catered lunches available at the Pittsburgh office.

• Flexible working arrangements.

• Visa sponsorship offered for exceptional candidates.

• Performance-based bonuses.

• Meaningful equity package.