Research Scientist

About the Team

The Strategic Deployment team makes frontier models more capable, reliable, and aligned to transform high-impact domains. On one hand, this involves deploying models in real-world, high-stakes settings to drive AI-driven transformation and elicit insights—training data, evaluation methods, and techniques—to shape our frontier model development. On the other hand, we leverage these learnings to build the science and engineering of impactful frontier model deployment.

As a key element of this effort, OpenAI for Science aims to harness AI to accelerate the process of scientific research. This involves building models and an AI-powered platform that speeds up discovery and helps researchers everywhere do more, faster.

About the Role

As a Research Scientist focused on the mathematical sciences, you will help build models, tools, and workflows that move theoretical research—in fields such as mathematics, theoretical physics, and theoretical computer science—forward. You’ll design domain-specific data and signals, shape training and evaluation, guide how to wire models to scientific tools, and work with the academic community to speed up adoption and impact.

We’re looking for people who…

• Hold a current or recent academic position in mathematical sciences (mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science) or a related field

• Regularly use frontier models in their own research

• Move easily between theory and code, and are eager to contribute technically as well as academically

• Either know or are eager to learn modern AI and run AI experiments end-to-end

• Are strong scientific communicators

• Care about rigor and reproducibility in scientific results

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will

• Assist in designing and building frontier AI models that are great at solving frontier mathematical sciences problems

• Build high-quality scientific datasets and synthetic data pipelines (symbolic, numeric, and simulator-based)

• Design reinforcement and grading signals for mathematical sciences and run reinforcement learning/optimization loops to improve model reasoning

• Define and run evals for scientific reasoning, derivations, simulations, and literature grounding; track progress over time

• Partner with research labs and the academic community

• Drive adoption of frontier AI within the scientific community

• Uphold high standards for safety, data governance, and reproducibility

You might thrive in this role if you

• Are passionate about pushing the boundaries of your field using AI

• Have used ChatGPT to do calculations and prove or improve lemmas in your field of study

• Communicate clearly to both scientists and AI engineers; you like collaborating across teams and with academia

Nice to have

• Open-source contributions to mathematical science or AI tooling

• Experience building or curating domain datasets and benchmarks

• Experience engaging a research community (teaching, workshops, tutorials, standards)

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.

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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