Systems Administrator

METR’s current priority is to develop evaluations for AI R&D capabilities. We want to provide an early warning before AI agents might dramatically improve themselves and kick off an ‘explosion’ of dangerous capabilities.

Job Summary

We're seeking a skilled Systems Administrator to optimize our technical operations and user support processes. In this role, you'll be instrumental in maintaining our systems, improving our internal processes, and ensuring smooth operations for our technical teams. This position offers a unique opportunity to shape and enhance our processes while supporting a diverse range of technical initiatives. It is perfect for someone who enjoys creating efficient systems, clearing roadblocks from users, and working in a dynamic, technical environment.

Key Responsibilities

Manage user access and permissions across multiple platforms (AWS, Google Workspace, GitHub, Tailscale, Auth0)

Streamline new hire onboarding and access management processes

Serve as the primary point of contact for technical support, building playbooks to resolve common issues, and escalating to other internal teams or external support where needed.

Develop and maintain comprehensive documentation for systems, processes, and troubleshooting procedures

Oversee and optimize SaaS platforms, including user administration, cost management, and integration improvements

Collaborate with security consultants and internal teams to maintain and enhance security protocolsLead server maintenance and infrastructure support, including troubleshooting and implementing systematic improvements

Required Qualifications

- Proven experience in systems administration, with strong knowledge of user administration on Linux systems (user creation, SSH access, etc.)

- Experience managing and integrating various SaaS platforms and identity management systems

- Strong problem-solving skills and ability to design efficient processes and workflows in collaboration with users

- Excellent communication skills and ability to support technical users effectively

- Detailed experience with Linux server administration: software updates, network troubleshooting, etc.

- Demonstrated expertise with AWS services, especially IAM and simple EC2 use cases

Nice-to-Haves

- Background in process automation and integration between different platforms

- Experience supporting development teams and understanding their unique needs

- Knowledge of security best practices and compliance requirements

- Experience with other AWS services such as RDS, S3, and more complex VPC topologies

- Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools and practices

About METR

METR is a non-profit that conducts empirical research to determine whether frontier AI models pose a significant threat to humanity. It is robustly good for civilization to have a clear understanding of what types of danger AI systems pose, and know how high the risk is. You can learn more about our goals from our published talks (overall goals, recent update).

Some highlights of our work so far:

- Establishing autonomous replication evals: Thanks to our work, it’s now taken for granted that autonomous replication (the ability for a model to independently copy itself to different servers, obtain more GPUs, etc) should be tested for. For example, labs pledged to evaluate for this capability as part of the White House commitments.

- Pre-release evaluations: We’ve worked with OpenAI and Anthropic to evaluate their models pre-release, and our research has been widely cited by policymakers, AI labs, and within government.

- Inspiring lab evaluation efforts: Multiple leading AI companies are building their own internal evaluation teams, inspired by our work.

- Early commitments from labs: Anthropic credited us for their recent Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP), and OpenAI recently committed to releasing a Risk-Informed Development Policy (RDP). These fit under the category of “evals-based governance”, wherein AI labs can commit to things like, “If we hit capability threshold X, we won’t train a larger model until we’ve hit safety threshold Y”.

We have been mentioned by the UK government, Time Magazine, and others. We’re sufficiently connected to relevant parties (labs, governments, and academia) that any good work we do or insights we uncover can quickly be leveraged.

Apply for this job

We encourage you to apply even if your background may not seem like the perfect fit! We would rather review a larger pool of applications than risk missing out on a promising candidate for the position. If you lack US work authorization, we can likely sponsor a cap-exempt H-1B visa for this role.

We are committed to diversity and equal opportunity in all aspects of our hiring process. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We welcome and encourage all qualified candidates to apply for our open positions.