Applied Scientist, Product Policy

OpenAI • San Francisco, CA

1d • $207,000 - $230,000

About The Position

The Applied Scientist will help design, execute, and analyze large-scale longitudinal research on AI use and well-being. Working closely with research leads, the role translates scientific questions into rigorous studies by combining survey responses with behavioral data to understand how people’s experiences with AI evolve over time.

This hands-on role spans applied analysis, research methods, and study execution. The Applied Scientist will build reproducible analytical workflows, assess data quality and representativeness, and help establish reliable infrastructure for ongoing panel research. The work supports research involving teens and adults, including studies of AI companionship, and turns findings into useful evidence for product, policy, and safety partners.

Requirements

• Experience conducting applied quantitative research in social science, behavioral science, human-computer interaction, statistics, or a related field.
• Strong foundations in survey research and statistical analysis, with experience working on panel studies, longitudinal datasets, or human-subjects research.
• Comfort using SQL and Python or R to prepare data, implement analyses, validate results, and create visualizations.
• Understanding of how recruitment, missing data, participant attrition, and measurement choices can affect the interpretation and generalizability of findings.
• Ability to move between analytical work and practical execution, managing multiple timelines and collaborators while maintaining scientific rigor.
• Clear communication skills, including leading with key takeaways and connecting methodological choices and findings to the decisions they inform.
• Sound judgment when working with sensitive data and research involving minors.
• Enjoyment of building structure in ambiguous environments and collaborating across disciplines.

Nice To Haves

• 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 vendors, survey platforms, 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.

Responsibilities

• 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 data, including evaluating selection and response bias, account-linkage 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Education Level: No Education Listed