Sam Altman: ‘Stressful’ OpenAI Job Pays $555,000 Annually

Generative AI has become powerful enough to create a brand-new kind of problem… and OpenAI is willing to pay handsomely for someone brave enough to deal with it.

That role is OpenAI’s new “head of preparedness,” a job that comes with enormous responsibility, immediate pressure, and a reported annual salary of $555,000. CEO Sam Altman framed the position as a mission-critical effort to empower cybersecurity defenders while preventing attackers from weaponizing the same cutting-edge capabilities.

In a Dec. 27 post on X, Altman didn’t sugarcoat the assignment. He closed his post with a warning that sounds more like a stress test than a perk:

“This will be a stressful job and you’ll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately.”

What is the head of preparedness?

Generally speaking, the role is meant to mitigate some of the negative connotations surrounding generative AI platforms today. According to the full job posting, the incoming head of preparedness will have several key responsibilities, including:

• Owning the company’s end-to-end preparedness strategy by designing threat models and coordinating mitigation efforts.
• Leading the development of frontier capability evaluations to ensure precision and scalability.
• Overseeing threat mitigation and safeguard design across all major risk areas.
• Leading the interpretation of evaluation results for use in decision- and policy-making initiatives.
• Refining and optimizing OpenAI’s preparedness framework to address emerging threats and support new breakthroughs.
• Collaborate with internal teammates and partners as necessary.

According to Business Insider, the job comes with an annual salary of $555,000 for anyone who can successfully fill the position at OpenAI’s San Francisco office.

Interested parties can click here to read the original job description and apply for the role.

Repairing their own reputation

The new head of preparedness will likely be tasked with rehabbing OpenAI’s own reputation, too.

Many mid- and senior-level employees left the company in 2024 and 2025, with some of them suggesting that OpenAI had lost sight of its original mission. Whether this is true remains to be seen, but their recent job posting suggests at least some concern on their end.

Whoever takes on the head of preparedness role won’t be the first to fill it at OpenAI.

Aleksander Madry, who previously held that distinction, was among those who left the company in 2024. With him out of the picture for good, Sam Altman and OpenAI are preparing for the future with a brand-new addition to their team.

Stay sharp on AI risks with eWeek’s breakdown of OpenAI’s Atlas browser security upgrades and the prompt injection attacks that keep engineers up at night.

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