Human Rights & Responsible Deployment Lead (National Security)

About the Team

OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. Achieving this goal requires not only building cutting-edge technology, but ensuring it is deployed responsibly in real-world contexts—including the most sensitive national security environments.

OpenAI for Government partners with U.S. and allied government institutions to support the responsible adoption of AI across defense, intelligence, and civilian agencies. We work at the intersection of technology, policy, and operations to ensure that our tools are deployed in ways that are effective, aligned with democratic values, and grounded in real-world consequences.

About the Role

As OpenAI’s Human Rights & Responsible Deployment Lead (National Security), you will play a critical role in ensuring that OpenAI’s technologies are deployed in ways that respect human rights while enabling responsible national security use.

This role sits at the center of OpenAI’s most complex and high-stakes decisions. You will help translate human rights principles into operational frameworks that guide how we evaluate, approve, and monitor sensitive uses of AI.

You will collaborate closely with teams across OpenAI for Government, Global Affairs, research, policy, and product, and engage extensively with external stakeholders including human rights organizations, policymakers, and expert communities.

Key Responsibilities

Governance, Risk Assessment, and Decision-Making

• Operationalize OpenAI for Government’s significant role in the policy and governance process for evaluating high-risk national security use cases, including defense and intelligence applications.

• Develop clear criteria and frameworks to guide decision-making, ensuring consistency and reducing reliance on ad hoc or case-by-case judgments.

• Partner with internal teams to assess risks associated with proposed deployments and identify appropriate mitigation strategies.

• Support leadership in making informed decisions that balance mission impact, safety, and human rights considerations.

Human Rights Integration into AI Development

• Collaborate with research and product teams to integrate human rights considerations into model design, evaluation, and deployment.

• Help identify and characterize patterns of human rights risk—including those beyond traditional areas such as surveillance and privacy.

• Support development of systems and safeguards that enable models to recognize and appropriately respond to high-risk or rights-sensitive use cases.

• Contribute to efforts exploring how AI can be used to reduce harm, including applications that improve civilian protection in conflict.

Red Teaming and Expert Engagement

• Expand OpenAI’s red teaming efforts to include robust human rights expertise.

• Convene external experts across domains such as armed conflict, civilian protection, transnational repression, and vulnerable populations.

• Use these inputs to stress test both model capabilities and real-world deployment scenarios.

Engagement with External Stakeholders (in partnership with Global Affairs)

• Build and maintain relationships with human rights organizations, multilateral institutions, and expert communities.

• Represent OpenAI in external engagements related to human rights and responsible AI deployment.

• Facilitate dialogue with stakeholders to understand concerns and expectations and incorporate those insights into OpenAI’s work.

Internal Enablement and Leadership Support

• Serve as a resource to leadership and cross-functional teams on human rights considerations in high-stakes contexts.

• Support development of internal materials, training, and guidance to build company-wide fluency on human rights issues.

• Provide input on key external communications, publications, and policy positions to ensure alignment with human rights principles.

Post-Deployment Monitoring and Incident Response

• Help establish frameworks for monitoring the real-world human rights impacts of deployed systems.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to respond to and investigate incidents or concerns.

• Ensure lessons learned are incorporated into future governance, product, and policy decisions.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in human rights, national security, conflict, or related policy fields.

• Deep expertise in human rights standards and how they apply in complex, real-world operational contexts.

• Experience working with or within government, military, intelligence, or international institutions preferred.

• Demonstrated ability to build or influence governance frameworks and decision-making processes.

• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage effectively across technical, policy, and external stakeholder groups.

• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, high-stakes environments.

• Commitment to OpenAI’s mission of ensuring AI benefits all of humanity.

Preferred Experience

• Experience engaging directly with defense, intelligence, or security sector actors on human rights or civilian protection issues.

• Experience bridging perspectives between governments and civil society organizations.

• Familiarity with emerging AI technologies and their potential risks and benefits.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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