> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt.

# AI Behavior Engineer

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/064476c718d3c08f

Transluce posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA, at $310,000–$500,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. AI Behavior Engineer developing and deploying behavioral evaluations of frontier AI systems for government, civil society, and frontier-lab partners. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [Transluce](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/transluce)

Posted Apr 28, 2026 by Transluce · open on Gem as of Nov 8, 2026

**$310,000–$500,000** San Francisco, CA On-site Full-time

AI Behavior Engineer developing and deploying behavioral evaluations of frontier AI systems for government, civil society, and frontier-lab partners.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F064476c718d3c08f&placement=top)
- [View posting at Transluce](https://jobs.gem.com/transluce/am9icG9zdDoPcMZtBLP6V4VXFRxnm65P)

Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so.

## At a glance

### Posted base pay

$310K–$500K Above the median

Midpoint $405K · median $190K

This job $310K to $500K. Senior FDE postings, 1,864 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K.

### The work

Builds what the customer runs

Balance **Mostly building**

Project stages

1. Pre-sales (not covered)
2. Proof of concept
3. Implementation
4. Operations (not covered)

- **Coding**: Writes production code

- **Builds for**: External customers

- **Level**: Senior

- **Role**: Individual contributor

### What they ask for

Visa

- **Sponsors visas**

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The posting reads as a senior role. What level are you at now?

The job is in San Francisco, CA. Could you work there?

Which of these have you used in production?

Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent.

[What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths)

## Conditions

- **Location**: San Francisco, CA

- **Work arrangement**: On-site

- **Employment type**: Full-time

- **Visa sponsorship**: Available

- **Pay**:

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## The job description from Transluce

Posted by Transluce on Apr 28, 2026

**Salary range: **$310,000 - $500,000/year + benefits

**Description: **Transluce is a fast-moving nonprofit research lab building the public tech stack for scalable AI evaluation and oversight. We specialize in behavioral evaluations of frontier AI systems, assessing how models actually behave in deployment, not just how they perform on benchmarks. We are an independent non-profit with a mission to steer the development of AI for the public good.

**About the role:** We're looking for an engineer to work on measuring and shaping AI model behaviors, someone who thrives on turning hard questions into evidence fast. Think of this as a forward-deployed engineering role working directly with policymakers, civil society partners, and frontier labs to rapidly answer key questions about why AI systems act the way they do, and when and why they fail.

You'll build relationships with external domain experts, adapt our methods to new contexts, and help ensure our work is both technically credible and immediately useful to the people making consequential AI governance decisions.

This is a high-autonomy role with direct exposure to senior stakeholders and a clear line of sight from your work to real-world impact.

**Core responsibility: **Build and extend Transluce’s AI evaluation methods for measuring important evolving AI model behaviors. This includes:

- Scope, prototype, and run behavioral evaluations in response to emerging policy and oversight needs, including rapid-turnaround work for government and civil society partners.
- Execute on Transluce's contracts with government evaluators, including building evaluations for harmful manipulation with the EU AI Office.
- Design and run privileged-access evaluations and external oversight exercises with frontier labs.
- Work with civil society organizations and domain experts to adapt our behavioral evaluation pipelines to their contexts (e.g., mental health, persuasion, evaluation awareness).

### Qualities of a strong candidate

- Hands-on experience designing and running AI evaluations, particularly behavioral or interactive evaluations (multi-turn, agentic, or red-teaming contexts)
- Strong engineering instincts and good judgment about when "good enough to ship" is actually good enough.
- Experience in customer-facing, consulting, or forward-deployed roles translating ambiguous stakeholder needs into concrete deliverables.
- Experience running evaluations at scale or in a production context.
- Ability to understand and balance between the needs of AI researchers and domain experts, as well as between researchers and senior decision makers.
- Strong communication skills, low ego, openness to giving and receiving feedback.

We are located in San Francisco and enthusiastic to work together in-person. We are open to sponsoring international visas.

[View posting at Transluce](https://jobs.gem.com/transluce/am9icG9zdDoPcMZtBLP6V4VXFRxnm65P)

## About Transluce

Nonprofit lab building open tools and research to interpret, monitor, and evaluate frontier AI systems for labs, evaluators, governments, and civil society.

Bootstrapped · 10–50 people

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