BioTrust
Our mission

BioTrust is building the trusted-access layer between frontier AI labs, AI-bio tool developers, gene synthesis providers, and the researchers who use them. We verify once and let researchers be trusted across providers, reducing friction for legitimate science while creating a defensible screening layer against catastrophic misuse. We bring the experience of alumni of the UK AI Security Institute, Microsoft, Asana, the FBI, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Oxford.

Credentialing Lead

Closed

A founding credentialing role owning BioTrust's vetting pipeline and shaping how high-stakes access decisions get made.

We're hiring a Credentialing Lead to own our vetting pipeline and shape its methodology. This is a founding seat. You do the work yourself now. As we grow, you'll build out the rubrics and, if volume demands, the team that let it scale.

You will be part of an ambitious, high-velocity, mission-focused team directly mitigating AI misuse. From this vantage point, you will build the infrastructure for sustainably preventing AI and biosecurity risks.

What you'll do

  • Review and make decisions on organizations applying for access. For each one, you'll work through the organization and its people, the use case, evidence of scientific credibility, and signals on security posture and trust, to reach a clear, defensible recommendation.
  • Build out the methodology. As you review cases, you'll iteratively improve our process and build the rubrics that allow it to scale.
  • Do the manual research that complements and validates our automated tooling: careful open-source digging on the people and organizations behind each application.
  • Lead on interactions with applicants, including interviews to gather more information and resolve key uncertainties.

What this job actually looks like

Most cases look like grantmaking: assessing a use case and the credibility of the team behind it. You should enjoy that detailed work.

But the harder part of the job is judgment: making the call on whether a use case belongs in a trusted access program, catching the minority of applicants who aren't what they claim, and improving our methodology from what the cases teach you.

What we're looking for

  • Life sciences judgment. Graduate-level training or equivalent depth in the life sciences is essential. You should be able to read a research proposal and independently assess two things: whether the science is legitimate, and its safety and security risks. You will often be the one making the final call.
  • Excellent judgment under messiness. You can look at a conflicting set of findings, see what matters and what's noise, and reach a clear, defensible call.
  • Able to switch from reviewer to investigator. Most applications are legitimate and the job is to say yes efficiently. A minority are not, and the same person has to notice when a story doesn't hold up, and then dig and ask the hard questions until the uncertainty is resolved.
  • Detail without losing pace. A large fraction of this role is methodical review work, and you should find that satisfying. We will also have real volume, so you need to move through cases efficiently.
  • Strong, clear writing. Your output is a recommendation someone relies on to grant or deny access. It has to be readable and defensible.

Nice to have

  • A strong biosecurity or dual-use background. Beyond the life sciences training above, this means direct experience thinking about misuse risk.
  • Experience in intelligence, investigations, due diligence, or security-clearance work.
  • Grantmaking or research-review experience: assessing projects for scientific merit, safety, or security.