# Technical Program Manager, AI Safety & Safeguards

**Company:** [OpenAI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/openai)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Technical Program Management
**Salary:** $257k – $445k/yr
**Skills:** Distributed Systems, Cloud Deployments, APIs, Machine Learning, System Architecture, Model Evaluations, Classifiers, Abuse Detection, Monitoring, Enforcement Workflows, Incident Response, Program Management, Risk Mitigation, ChatGPT
**Posted:** 2026-08-18

> Leads high-stakes technical programs that translate AI safety and product priorities into safeguards, deployment readiness, and measurable outcomes across model, infrastructure, API, and product environments. Requires strong technical judgment, program execution, product judgment, and cross-functional influence.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Partner with product, engineering, research, and design to shape technical roadmaps, long-term platform direction, and safeguards priorities across ChatGPT, API, enterprise, and cloud environments.
- Translate product and safety objectives into execution plans balancing near-term delivery, long-term platform evolution, customer needs, and responsible deployment.
- Lead cross-functional programs end to end, from problem definition and technical design through implementation, launch, iteration, and operational follow-through.
- Own milestones, dependencies, risk mitigation, decision-making, and accountability across engineering, infrastructure, integrity, trust and safety, legal, policy, operations, and go-to-market teams.
- Partner with engineers on system architecture, public and internal APIs, cloud deployment patterns, platform integrations, operational failure modes, and technical tradeoffs.
- Drive the development, integration, or rollout of safeguards including model evaluations, post-training mitigations, classifiers, abuse detection, monitoring, enforcement workflows, human review, and agent-assisted review.
- Coordinate readiness for sensitive or high-impact deployments, including safety coverage, escalation paths, operational controls, and alignment with external cloud or enterprise partners.
- Identify emerging misuse and severe-harm risks and define ownership and response mechanisms across prevention, detection, investigation, enforcement, and continuous improvement.
- Establish metrics for program delivery, deployment readiness, safety effectiveness, operational quality, and user or developer experience.
- Represent customer and developer needs in technical and leadership decisions.
- Communicate program health, risks, recommendations, and consequential tradeoffs to engineering teams, cross-functional partners, and executives.
- Improve delivery and safety outcomes through practical operating mechanisms, scalable tooling, and data- or AI-assisted workflows.

## Requirements
- Track record of delivering high-impact technical programs across product, platform, API, infrastructure, machine learning, or safety domains.
- Strong technical judgment across distributed systems, cloud deployments, public or internal APIs, developer platforms, production machine learning, or scalable product architecture.
- Ability to engage credibly with engineers on system design, implementation tradeoffs, reliability, deployment constraints, and operational risks.
- Experience delivering platforms or developer-facing capabilities and understanding how technical decisions affect customer and developer experience.
- Understanding of safety, integrity, or abuse-prevention systems, including evaluations, model guardrails, classifiers, monitoring, enforcement, investigations, and incident response.
- Strong program management discipline, including coordinating multiple workstreams, resolving complex dependencies, and turning ambiguity into accountable execution.
- Product judgment and ability to balance user and customer needs with model usefulness, safety risk, technical complexity, and business priorities.
- Clear and empathetic communication with engineering teams, executives, policy and legal partners, and external stakeholders.
- Comfort owning high-stakes programs requiring executive presence, cross-organizational influence, and sound decisions under uncertainty.
- Hands-on, curious approach to responsible deployment of increasingly capable AI systems.

## Nice-to-haves
- Experience with sensitive deployments, major cloud providers, or serious-harm domains such as violent misuse, child safety, cybersecurity, or other emerging threats.

## Compensation and Benefits
- Annual salary range: $257,000–$445,000.
- Hybrid work model with 3 days in the office per week.
- Relocation assistance for new employees.

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