Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This National Security Cyber Evaluation Lead role sits at a distinctive intersection of SaaS-adjacent AI deployment, cybersecurity evaluation, and government engagement. Within a company building and shipping advanced AI systems, the work emphasizes how technical capabilities are translated into credible testing and benchmarking programs with public-sector partners, a growing area as regulators and agencies formalize expectations for model evaluation and risk management.
For a SaaS career, the role offers durable experience in turning ambiguous technical findings into decisions that influence product priorities, mitigations, and external commitments. It also builds fluency in cross-functional operating models common to mature SaaS organizations, where policy, security, and engineering leaders share ownership of outcomes, and where evaluation frameworks become repeatable mechanisms for governance and trust.
The position is best suited to professionals who prefer high-accountability, relationship-heavy work grounded in technical curiosity. It will appeal to those who enjoy coordinating across specialized teams, navigating sensitive stakeholders, and creating structure around novel assessment problems, particularly where cybersecurity, adversarial testing, and emerging AI capabilities overlap.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the Team
OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. The Global Affairs team builds authentic, collaborative relationships with policymakers, public officials, and the broader AI policy community so that external insights inform our work and OpenAI can contribute to effective policy, industry standards, and the safe and beneficial development of AI. Within Global Affairs, the National Security Policy team works at the intersection of advanced AI, government, and the highest-consequence security challenges.
About the Role
In response to recent government actions directing the federal government to establish additional national security testing and classified benchmarking for advanced AI capabilities, we are looking for an experienced leader to oversee OpenAI’s engagement with relevant U.S. government partners. Reporting to the Head of National Security Policy, you will define OpenAI’s policy and engagement strategy for cyber-focused testing and evaluation and own the political, policy, and institutional relationships around that work. You will collaborate closely with technical leaders in Safety Systems and Security, who will often own the substantive design, execution, and interpretation of evaluations, and serve as a close counterpart to OpenAI’s National Security Risk Mitigation Lead to keep the cyber portfolio aligned with broader national security risk-mitigation work.
This position requires deep judgment, technical curiosity, and creativity in translating novel cyber capabilities into useful government-industry evaluation programs. This is not a generalist national security role. It is best suited for someone with specialized experience in cyber operations, cybersecurity research, adversarial testing, or AI evaluations; fluency with the constraints of sensitive government partnerships; and the ability to translate between technical teams, policy leaders, and operational stakeholders. Experience in the technology sector and a strong technical understanding of generative AI are highly desirable.
This role is based in Washington, D.C. or the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and may involve regular travel to meet with government and technical stakeholders.
In this role, you will:
Define OpenAI’s policy and engagement strategy for cyber-focused testing and evaluation, and own the political, policy, and institutional relationships with relevant U.S. government national security partners.
Partner closely with technical leads in Safety Systems and Security—who will often own the substantive design, execution, and interpretation of evaluations—to translate technical priorities into effective government engagements and align scope, access, information-sharing, timelines, governance, and communication of findings.
Coordinate across policy and technical teams to ensure external commitments reflect sound technical judgment and that evaluation findings inform mitigations, preparedness decisions, research and product priorities, and OpenAI’s broader government engagement strategy.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Possess a TS/SCI security clearance.
Are an experienced leader with strong credibility among national security and cyber stakeholders and have the judgment to manage sensitive government partnerships.
Bring substantial expertise in cyber operations, cybersecurity research, adversarial testing, or cyber capability evaluation, together with a strong understanding of emerging AI technologies.
Can translate between technical evidence, operational cyber concerns, and policy implications, and can turn ambiguous findings into clear decisions and next steps.
Excel at coalition-building and complex cross-functional execution, while remaining comfortable owning the details and driving initiatives independently as an accountable individual contributor.
Are excited by the potential of advanced AI, thoughtful about its risks, and comfortable operating amid ambiguity and rapidly shifting technical and organizational needs.
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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