Member of Technical Staff — Robotics Biosecurity Evals (Automated Wet Lab)

Your day-to-day will look like:

• Designing AI safety evaluations for frontier models in automated biology labs.
• Measuring AI uplift on biological capabilities relevant to engineered-pandemic risk.
• Testing whether safeguards prevent AI agents from enabling biological misuse.
• Running evaluations of frontier AI models on laboratory robots.
• Working with lab automation (e.g. liquid handlers, robotic arms, cloud labs).
• Evaluating agents' ability to run experiments, interpret results, and troubleshoot failures.
• Measuring how much human assistance agents need to complete lab workflows.
• Working with biologists and biosecurity experts to design tasks.

• In person at our office in San Francisco
• Experience in biology (e.g. wet-lab research, Master's/PhD)
• Exceptional software engineering skills with agentic tools (e.g. Claude Code, Codex)
• Exceptional communication skills
• Willingness to learn and move fast

Not required, but a plus:

• Experience in biosecurity or biological capability evaluations
• Experience in AI evaluations (e.g. Inspect AI/published benchmarks)
• Experience in lab automation or robotics (e.g. Opentrons, Hamilton, Tecan)
• Context on AI safety and the future trajectory of AI (e.g. BlueDot fellowship, ARENA, SPAR, MARS, PIBBSS, Pivotal, LASR Labs, CBAI, ERA, Anthropic Fellows Program, MATS, Astra)

Aside from technical skills, we find that strong candidates have these personal qualities:

• Reasoning transparency. Arriving at conclusions through verbalized/written reasoning instead of relying on unexamined hunches.
• Overcommunication over undercommunication.
• Prioritizing what is important. Research directions follow a power law on their impact.
• Gives honest feedback to teammates and implements honest feedback from teammates.
• Strong team player.

• Annual salary of $170k–$300k.
• For very experienced and exceptional candidates, we are open to exploring paying much higher than this stated range.
• Generous equity as an early employee.

• Comprehensive healthcare insurance (medical, dental, vision).
• Unlimited PTO.
• Unlimited sick leave to prioritize your well-being.
• All work travel paid, covering flights, hotels, and expenses.
• Team retreats twice a year.

Please apply through the application form. We give rolling offers and prioritize candidates who can start as soon as possible.

Refer a candidate. $5k for successful referrals.

Robocurve evaluates frontier AI robotics systems and informs the public about physical automation (i.e. “METR/Epoch for robots”). We develop benchmarks and open-source tooling (e.g. Inspect Robots) to evaluate AI on robots. Robocurve is a YC-backed Public Benefit Corporation. We work closely with academic groups and frontier AI labs.