{"id":4054150,"url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-policy-researcher","title":"Policy Researcher","company":{"id":14382,"name":"Thinking Machines Lab","domain":"thinkingmachines.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/thinking-machines-lab","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":19,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":29,"computed_at":"2026-11-12T10:38:37Z"}},"role":"Public Policy","role_family":"Public Policy","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":240000,"max":360000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":360000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":true,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-11T01:36:31Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-11","last_verified_at":"2026-11-12T11:08:43Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":1,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":1},"description":"About Thinking Machines\nThe mission of Thinking Machines is to build AI that extends human will and judgment. We are training frontier models with Inkling, developing Tinker to let people make models their own, and crafting interfaces that broaden human-AI communication. We believe the future worth building is human, and we're hiring people who want to build it.\nAbout the Role\nAt Thinking Machines, we believe the future worth building is human. Achieving this is both a technical and governance question. We’re looking for policy researchers to help us understand what policies might be required to build this future as AI advances.\nMany AI policy research to date assumes a centralized technical paradigm with humans out of the loop. Our approach may require novel policy thinking; research in this direction is nascent, and we intend to lead it.\nIn this role, you’ll help create our policy research agenda, understand the novel impacts and challenges of our technical direction, and turn promising ideas into concrete policy frameworks and experiments that can be used by our technical teams and the industry more broadly. You’ll work closely with the broader policy research ecosystem to understand the implications of our vision for the future of AI and to research proposals that enable our mission.\nThis may be a good fit if you are a researcher who thinks across technology, policy, economics, and safety, and can generate novel proposals that span them.\nWhat You’ll Do\nDevelop our policy research agenda in collaboration with leadership and technical teams. This will include a focus on open-weight models, customization, and human-AI collaboration.\n\nHelp set our views proactively on a variety of policy topics, including long-term safety, societal impacts, and future legislation.\n\nAnalyze existing AI policy proposals to identify the gaps we are best positioned to fill.\n\nProduce internal and public-facing policy research that introduces new frameworks and gives others a foundation to build on.\n\nBuild relationships with think tanks, policy organizations, and academic AI governance communities.\n\nDesign external research partnerships, including commissioned research, grants programs, or convenings.\n\nSkills and Qualifications\nMinimum qualifications:\nExperience conducting original research on AI governance, technology policy, economics, political economy, emerging technology, or another field relevant to the societal impacts of AI.\n\nAbility to work with technical researchers and translate between technical details, societal impacts, and policy design.\n\nA degree in history, politics, economics, international affairs, artificial intelligence, or a related discipline.\n\nClarity in communication, with an ability to explain complex governance topics to audiences with low context.\n\nComfort operating under uncertainty and developing views on questions where there may be little established literature or consensus.\n\nPreferred qualifications - we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all preferred qualifications:\nAuthored independent publications (e.g. magazines, Substacks) that generated significant discourse in the AI governance community.\n\nA deep technical understanding of AI, which informs your governance thinking.\n\nAbility to run experiments with quantitative components, e.g. economic models.\n\nExperience collaborating across academic, industry, and nonprofit policy communities.\n\nWorked on open weights safety or policy.\n\nLogistics\nLocation: This role is based in San Francisco, California.\n\nCompensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $240,000 - $360,000 USD.\n\nVisa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.\n\nBenefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.\n\nAs set forth in Thinking Machines' Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4177,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Parental leave","Unlimited PTO"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Multimodal AI","Foundation Models","AI Research Labs","AI Development Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-11T03:43:02Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"adverts_offering_sponsorship_24m":53,"sanctioned_now":false,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 30","filings_12m":30,"filings_prev_12m":8,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":192500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-11-12T07:36:15+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","Alion: sponsorship offered in the employer's own job adverts (24 months)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":63,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.632,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:4","stale_co","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-12T10:38:37Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":360000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-policy-researcher","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/thinking-machines-lab-policy-researcher.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-12T12:11:17Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":25092,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-13T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":14382},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=14382"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-policy-researcher"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-policy-researcher"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-policy-researcher"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/thinking-machines-lab-policy-researcher\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fthinking-machines-lab-policy-researcher"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4054150}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"thinkingmachines.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4054150},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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