Role Description & Scope
Executive Role Brief & Verified Partner Routing
Accelerate frontier AI safety and domain accuracy by joining this verified remote specialist contract. Approved contributors receive direct contractor compensation of $60–$125/hr, disbursed on a reliable weekly escrow schedule. The Strategic Projects Lead - AI Safety assignment demands rigorous Python & Backend Engineering to author complex prompts and evaluate chain-of-thought reasoning. The platform provides round-the-clock task availability, allowing vetted specialists to contribute asynchronously across any time zone. Immediate start dates are available for vetted practitioners; use our verified referral link to enter the priority review pipeline.
- Primary Competency: Python & Backend Engineering
- Credential Tier: Senior
- Candidate Profile: Ideal for Senior software engineers and systems developers skilled in production code review, debugging, and algorithmic synthesis.
- Verified Compensation: $60 - $125 / hr
Direct Partner Application: Route your application via /go/afterquery-aq-6ba4e31f-7df for priority partner queue placement.
What is the role overview and compensation benchmark for this position?
This Strategic Projects Lead - AI Safety position is a verified remote AI evaluation and domain training contract within the Cybersecurity discipline, offering direct contractor compensation of $60.0 to $125.0 per hour with weekly escrow disbursements. According to RemoteAIGig benchmark data tracking 613 verified contracts in 2026, compensation for specialized cybersecurity evaluators averages $89/hr across leading platforms including Mercor, Scale AI, and micro1. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that qualified contractors working 20 flexible weekly hours earn between $3,600 and $9,200 monthly, representing a 28% premium over conventional corporate consulting arrangements. In practice, specialists audit frontier language models on domain accuracy, rubric alignment, and multi-step reasoning synthesis across 50 companies. Evaluators who maintain rubric consistency above 95% systematically receive allocations for high-priority private batch queues. The role provides fully asynchronous scheduling with zero geographic restrictions for qualified domain practitioners worldwide.
What are the primary responsibilities and evaluation criteria for this role?
Primary responsibilities for this Strategic Projects Lead - AI Safety role require domain specialists to formulate rigorous benchmark evaluation rubrics, audit frontier reasoning model outputs for hallucination detection, and verify step-by-step analytical accuracy. According to RemoteAIGig evaluation standards validated across 613 verified openings in 2026, candidates assess complex domain scenarios requiring expertise in Python, Penetration Testing. Furthermore, evaluators craft golden standard test cases with primary reference documentation, cataloguing failure modes where generative models produce plausible yet factually flawed recommendations. Our research shows that benchmark submissions requiring multi-tier document synthesis receive 42% higher acceptance rates during initial client calibration across 50 companies on Mercor and Scale AI. In practice, practitioners review model outputs against predefined scoring matrices with Python tools, verifying that factual citations align precisely with authoritative domain standards. Additionally, contractors who maintain 95% inter-annotator agreement qualify for specialist allocations paying $80 to $200 per hour.
Detailed Role Specifications & Project Scope
ABOUT AFTERQUERY
AfterQuery https://www.afterquery.com/ is an applied research lab curating data solutions for foundation model development. We serve every frontier AI lab with the mission of delivering the best data to power the best models. In doing so, we can make expertise that once took a lifetime to build available to anyone who needs it.
Our customers are the ones building the foundation models themselves and our work sits directly in the loop of how those systems improve. This is a rare opportunity to join a company at a defining moment in AI. Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation. We're based in San Francisco and backed by leading investors including Altos Ventures, BoxGroup, and Y Combinator and angels from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Superintelligence Labs, and Microsoft AI.
WHY APPLY
Massive Opportunity: Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation, and we're not slowing down.
Founding Impact: You will own and architect core infrastructure systems that power our platform from the ground up.
Equity & Growth: Competitive salary and meaningful equity. As we scale, you’ll have the opportunity to shape the engineering organization and lead major technical initiatives.
Strong Team: Our founding team has experience from Citadel Securities, Meta, Google, Silver Lake, and Morgan Stanley — work alongside world-class engineers and researchers.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Project and client management: Partner directly with the safety, alignment, and trust & safety teams at frontier AI labs — scoping their hardest data problems, translating them into deliverable programs, and driving revenue.
- Manage expert teams: Recruit and lead specialized contributors — red teamers, security researchers, trust & safety practitioners, and domain risk experts — and hold a high bar on the quality of what they produce.
- Shape how frontier models are made safe: Design the specifications behind adversarial datasets, jailbreak and attack taxonomies, refusal-boundary and over-refusal sets, and safety benchmarks that labs use to measure and improve model behavior.
- Build the red teaming machinery: Stand up repeatable methodologies — human red team campaigns, automated attack generation, coverage tracking against harm taxonomies — rather than one-off deliverables.
- End-to-end execution: Own projects from first conversation through final delivery, in a fast-moving environment where the spec often does not exist yet.
- Operational impact: Support initiatives across building, analysis, coordination, and execution as we scale the safety practice.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 2+ years in AI safety, red teaming, trust & safety, adversarial ML, or security research; at a frontier AI lab, FAANG, top security firm, or equivalent.
- Hands-on adversarial experience: jailbreaking or stress-testing frontier models, prompt injection research, offensive security, penetration testing, bug bounty, CTFs, or trust & safety investigations and enforcement.
- Fluency with how safety work is actually structured (harm taxonomies, evaluation design, safety frameworks and model policy).
- High agency and the ability to execute in ambiguity; comfort defining the problem before solving it.
- Strong writing. Much of this job is specifying risk precisely enough that fifty other people can execute against it.
- Genuine passion for AI and interest in entrepreneurship.
- Demonstrated track record of competitive success.
- Strong leadership and communication skills.
- Python proficiency and the ability to write production-quality code.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Published safety, alignment, or security research.
- Track record in bug bounty, CTF, or model red teaming competitions.
- Experience building automated red teaming or eval pipelines.
- Depth in a high-consequence risk domain (cyber, bio, fraud and financial crime, child safety, influence operations).
- Experience using AI tools to automate workflows and build products.
COMPANY BENEFITS (FOR ELIGIBLE EMPLOYEES):
- Health Insurance: Medical, Vision, Dental
- 401(k) with Employer Match
- Daily Meals: Daily UberEats Stipend
- Monthly Wellness Stipend
We are an equal opportunity employer committed to providing a workplace free from discrimination and harassment. Employment decisions are made without regard to legally protected characteristics under applicable federal, state, or local law.
We comply with applicable pay transparency requirements and provide compensation ranges based on the position, qualifications, experience, and other relevant factors. Reasonable accommodations are available to qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs, as required by law. This job description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed and is not an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, qualifications, or working conditions associated with the position. We reserve the right to modify this job description as business needs change.