Applied Scientist, Product Policy

Product Policy - San Francisco

About the Team

The Product Policy research team studies how people use and experience AI product, policy, and safety decisions. We partner with researchers, data scientists, engineers, and cross-functional teams to understand AI’s effects on people’s lives, including well-being, youth experiences, and social and emotional use.

About the Role

We’re looking for an Applied Scientist to help design, execute, and analyze large-scale longitudinal research on AI use and well-being. You’ll work closely with research leads to translate scientific questions into rigorous studies, combining survey responses with behavioral data to understand how people’s experiences with AI evolve over time.

This is a hands-on role spanning applied analysis, research methods, and study execution. You’ll build reproducible analytical workflows, assess data quality and representativeness, and help establish reliable infrastructure for ongoing panel research.

Your work will support research involving teens and adults, including studies of AI companionship, and help turn findings into useful evidence for product, policy, and safety partners.

In this role, you will:

• Partner with research leads to develop study designs, survey measures, and analysis plans for longitudinal research on AI use and well-being.
• Conduct statistical analyses of survey and behavioral dataage patterns, and sample representativeness.
• Prepare and validate analysis-ready datasets, implement analysis plans, and produce clear summaries and visualizations using reproducible workflows.
• Develop quality checks across survey programming, fieldwork, data delivery, and repeated study waves to identify inconsistencies and improve research reliability.
• Own day-to-day study execution, coordinating timelines, vendors, and cross-functional dependencies to deliver high-quality research on schedule.
• Collaborate with data engineering and privacy partners on responsible account linkage, data flows, logging, and retention.
• Support human-subjects research review, including Institutional Review Board (IRB) documentation, protocol amendments, and consent and assent processes.
• Maintain clear documentation of methods, measures, assumptions, and protocol changes, and contribute analysis and methodological materials for research readouts, publications, and peer review.
• Communicate findings, limitations, and practical recommendations to technical and nontechnical partners, and build reusable tools and processes that improve future studies.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have experience conducting applied quantitative research in social science, behavioral science, human-computer interaction, statistics, or a related field.
• Bring strong foundations in survey research and statistical analysis, with experience working on panel studies, longitudinal datasets, or human-subjects research.
• Are comfortable using SQL and Python or R to prepare data, implement analyses, validate results, and create visualizations.
• Understand how recruitment, missing data, participant attrition, and measurement choices can affect the interpretation and generalizability of findings.
• Can move between analytical work and practical execution, managing multiple timelines and collaborators while maintaining scientific rigor.
• Communicate clearly.
• Exercise sound judgment when working with sensitive data and research involving minors.
• Enjoy building structure in ambiguous environments and collaborating across disciplines.

Nice to Have

• Experience combining survey responses with behavioral or product data.
• Familiarity with preregistration, measure validation, reproducible research, and academic publication or peer-review processes.
• Experience working with research vendorss, or IRB and ethics-review partners.
• Research experience related to AI-human interaction, digital well-being, youth development, or social and emotional uses of technology.

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 the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employeration, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable lawation technology systems and related data security obligations.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation

$207K – $230K + Offers Equity

The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factorsance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
• Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
• Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
• Relocation support for eligible employees
• Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.

More details about our benefits are available to candidates during the hiring process.

This role is at-will and OpenAI reserves the right to modify base pay and other compensation components at any time based on individual performance, team or company results, or market conditions.