Policy Design Manager, Conventional Weapons
Owns conventional weapons policy for AI safeguards, translating weapons-systems expertise into threat models, evaluations, guardrails, detection systems, and enforcement practices. The role requires deep applied weapons expertise, policy-writing ability, legal understanding, and cross-functional communication.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Own and maintain the conventional weapons policy, defining which activities models should and should not support.
- Build threat models and evaluations for model contributions to weapons development, including software and autonomy components.
- Partner with engineering to translate policy into model guardrails, detection systems, and enforcement tooling.
- Serve as the subject-matter expert for conventional weapons escalations and respond rapidly to emerging risks.
- Communicate policy reasoning to technical and non-technical audiences across product, engineering, legal, and leadership.
- Engage external experts, government, and industry partners to strengthen policy and enforcement.
Requirements
- Deep, applied expertise in weapons systems and the ability to translate technical evidence into policy judgments.
- Experience in a service research laboratory, defense research or innovation agency, or weapons-system company.
- Ability to write clear, operationally precise policy and explain complex technical topics to non-specialists.
- Understanding of legal frameworks governing weapons and their transfer across jurisdictions.
- Ability to conduct rigorous open-source technical analysis of weapons systems.
- Comfort with ambiguity and preventing misuse without obstructing legitimate research and engineering.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
Nice-to-haves
- Understanding of machine learning and large language model fundamentals.
- Engineering experience in systems engineering, robotics and autonomy, guidance/navigation/control, sensors and signal processing, aerospace or mechanical engineering, materials and energetics, or embedded software.
- Experience with arms export controls such as ITAR/EAR or international arms-control regimes.
- Experience building or evaluating classifiers, including LLM-based classifiers, and analyzing precision and recall for rare, high-consequence categories.
- Trust & safety or product policy experience at a technology platform.
Compensation and Benefits
- Annual salary range: $245,000–$285,000 USD.
- Competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and office collaboration space.
- Hybrid policy: staff are generally expected to work from an office at least 25% of the time; some roles may require more office time.
- Visa sponsorship may be available.
Skills
Weapons Systems, Threat Modeling, Policy Development, Machine Learning, LLMs, Robotics, Autonomy, Guidance Navigation And Control, Signal Processing, Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Embedded Software, Itar, Ear, Classifier Evaluation
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