OpenAI Is Hiring Head Of Preparedness, Amid AI Cyberattack Fears

If you’re interested in a high-stress, high-compensation role, where you get to battle the emerging threat of frontier-grade AI systems being used for malicious cyberattacks, OpenAI might have the job for you.

The ChatGPT firm has announced it’s hiring a Head of Preparedness. In a post on X, CEO Sam Altman said the position would work on mitigating the growing threat of AI being used aggressively by bad actors in the world of cybersecurity. He claimed we are now “seeing models get so good at computer security they are beginning to find critical vulnerabilities.”

The CEO’s statements about LLMs posing growing risks to cyberdefenders are backed up by other firms in the industry. Last month, OpenAI rival Anthropic posted a report about how a Chinese state-sponsored group manipulated its Claude Code tool into attempting infiltration of “roughly thirty global targets,” including large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturers, and government agencies, “without substantial human intervention.”

Altman called for candidates who “want to help the world figure out how to enable cybersecurity defenders with cutting-edge capabilities” while still “ensuring attackers can’t use them for harm.” According to the job spec, other major risk areas the successful candidate is set to work on include “biosecurity.” In this context, biosecurity could mean advanced AI systems being used to design bioweapons, a risk more than 100 scientists from universities and organizations across the planet have warned about.

Whoever lands the new role will be expected to keep up with evolving AI risks, and oversee the company’s “preparedness framework as new risks, capabilities, or external expectations emerge.”

Though the compensation package on offer looks generous—north of $500k plus equity—it doesn’t look like a gig for the faint of heart. Altman said it is set to be “a stressful job” that will see the successful candidate “jump into the deep end pretty much immediately.”

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There’s a good chance the CEO isn’t exaggerating when it comes to the position’s stress levels. Reports about burnout at the AI firm have been building for some time, as per reports from publications like Wired. Former technical team executives like Calvin French-Owen have posted first-hand accounts of a secretive, high-pressure environment, with a heavy emphasis on Twitter “vibes”, alongside anecdotal reports of 12-hour days being plentiful on social media.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.