About Security Level 5
Security Level 5 is a Bay Area AI security nonprofit working with AI labs and US intelligence agencies to defend frontier models from priority nation-state-level threats. We move fast, and we're tripling headcount this year.
The Mission
We're hiring for what's plausibly the most difficult, urgent, and interesting challenge in AI security engineering this decade (for humans, at least): designing and building the first datacenter purpose-built to Security Level 5, the standard for defending frontier AI labs against attackers with the resources of a nation-state and billion-dollar budgets. We're working on the first SL5 components this year and aiming for an at-scale SL5 datacenter build in 2027.
We wrote the first version of the standard with input from CISOs and senior security staff at the frontier labs, and US security and intelligence officials. Now we're designing the SL5 architectures purpose-built for frontier AI workloads, and standing up the reference tech stack to guide labs' buildouts. This stack has to hold against nation-states, not destroy researchers' productivity, not cost more than labs can pay, and ship in 2-3 years.
What you’d work on
Building up AI Security Fieldbuilding programs in our premises in SF, centered around increasing awareness, coordination and short term action on key issues in SL5, verification & surrounding AI Security topics
Coordinating, curating & running custom workshops, panel discussions & conferences in our SL5 space, including in partnership with affiliated organisations or facilitating them hosting events in our spaces.
From the ground up building an SL5 fellowship program to transition senior experts in security into impactful AI Security roles at frontier AI labs, SL5’s team, Lucid Computing, and other strongly endorsed security or verification third party organisations. The fellowship should run a first iteration in Q4 of this year. An additional focus could be training extremely high potential generalist engineers (eg. who might be especially strong at leveraging AI on security problems) to be AI Security specialists.
Hosting our quarterly SL5 Happy Hours & expanding the curated invite list
Developing a community engagement strategy to make the SL5 SF Offices a thriving community hub, that has both high operational security and large reach to leading specialists across the Bay Area & Globally (eg. implementing ideas like collaborator lunches on specific days, hosting visitors for research stays, etc)
You would be a program lead for the fellowship, conferences & community events and own content, branding, invites, network building. You would receive input from the CEO on some initiatives and operational support from the SL5 ops team and events manager on executing these events.
You’d be a fit if you
You have a Bachelors or Equivalent experience in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Math or another SL5-related field.
You are a high agency individual, able to spot emergent project needs and grow to fill them
Have run competitive fellowship programs before, that ran multiple iterations & had 10+ fellows per cohort.
Have successfully recruited multiple people at the tier of “could get offers at AI Labs to work on Security”
Are highly operationally skilled at running complex programs
Have the right interpersonal skills and feel to navigate community health topics with the appropriate professionalism, nuance & mindfulness
You actively enjoy doing proactive outreach and interacting with many types of individuals across cultures, specialities, ages, etc. You’re good at making people feel welcome, included and contentwise engaged at events.
Bonus
You have run an international conference or industry-leading workshop
Logistics
Bay Area, in-person. This role's base salary range is $150,000 - $220,000 USD per year. We may be open to paying exceptional and/or highly experienced employees more than this. We also provide full benefits, including healthcare, dental, vision, 401k match, and more.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Math, or related field
- Experience running competitive fellowship programs with multiple iterations and 10+ fellows per cohort
- Proven success recruiting senior-tier candidates who could receive offers from AI labs to work on security
- Strong operational skills running complex programs and events
- High interpersonal skill and demonstrated ability to manage community health with professionalism and nuance
- Proactive outreach and engagement experience with diverse individuals across cultures and specialties
- Ability to work Bay Area, in-person (San Francisco)
- Experience running an international conference or industry-leading workshop
What We Do
Security Level 5 is a Bay Area 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on protecting frontier AI models from priority nation-state threats. It develops the technical roadmap, security standard, architectures, and reference stack for “SL5”—defenses spanning machine, physical, network, personnel, and supply-chain security. The organization convenes AI labs, national-security leaders, engineers, data-center operators, chip providers, researchers, and government participants to make high-assurance AI infrastructure deployable.
