---
title: 'Oath Technologies  - Research Engineer, Tools & Infrastructure at Convergent Research'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/oath-technologies-research-engineer-tools-infrastructure-convergent-research-93qbk9v0nk50'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Oath Technologies  - Research Engineer, Tools & Infrastructure at Convergent Research

- **Company:** Convergent Research
- **Location:** Berkeley, CA
- **Compensation:** $250k–$385k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-09
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch/a2e56f3e-09b0-402e-9566-6c7b235759d0

## Job description

## About Oath Technologies

Oath Technologies is a new research organization building tools for oversight of advanced AIs. As AIs become more powerful, it will become more difficult to understand and monitor their behavior. Oath is building oversight tools based on formal verification: rather than monitor AIs directly, humans define unambiguous rules, and AIs must provide trustworthy mathematical evidence of compliance. In this way, Oath will help keep humans safe and in control as AI advances.

Oath is a Focused Research Organization (FRO) incubated and fiscally sponsored by Convergent Research. Convergent has incubated 12 FROs spanning mathematics, astrophysics, neuroscience, climate, biology, and AI, including the Lean FRO (formal mathematics and verification) and E11 Bio (whole-brain circuit mapping). Oath is led by CEO Dr. Mike Dodds, and is based in Berkeley, CA.

## Role Summary

Oath's research engineers will build novel formal methods tools and apply them at scale to AI oversight problems. To do this, we are hiring both formal methods specialists and engineers with skills such as developer tools, scalable testing, agent development, AI/ML, and others that complement Oath's mission. Engineers may have skills in one or several areas, and our team will be tightly integrated, with both categories working together.

Oath will target very difficult verification and oversight problems, far beyond previous formal verification projects in scale and complexity. Oath's research team will work iteratively, building tools, testing them on our flagship problems, identifying failures, and then feeding those back into our tool designs.

We plan to build an Oath team of around six people by the end of year one, growing to a steady state of around twelve people by year three. Oath's roadmap runs for five years, and we’ll set more ambitious targets as the outcomes of our work and changes in the profile of AI risk evolve. This is a strong fit for people who want to tackle complex, high-stakes challenges in a nimble, collaborative organization.

Oath's current plan is to build tools across three families: **design** (authoring new specifications), **lifting** (extracting specifications from existing systems that have none), and **audit** (stress-testing specifications for gaps or adversarial manipulation). We're applying these to a first flagship target, verified agent containment: proving that an AI agent can't escape the permissions and sandboxing meant to bound it, from the OCI container runtime down to Linux kernel isolation primitives. Most of this work will be done in Lean or adjacent formal-verification infrastructure, with AI agents doing much of the day-to-day drafting and proving under close review.

Primary Responsibilities

- Contribute directly to Oath's research goals: building tools, applying them to real systems, and iterating based on what works.

- Help scale Oath's tools to large, long-running experiments intended to map the frontiers of AI oversight capabilities.

- Take deep ownership of problems, from framing the question, to overcoming obstacles, to delivering a working solution.

- Collaborate closely with a small, high-context team, including significant use of AI agents as part of the day-to-day workflow.

- Help set technical direction as the team and its workstreams grow, not just execute someone else's plan.

- Document your work and reasoning so it doesn't stay trapped in one person's head.

## Qualifications

Required:

- Experience building tools engineers actually adopt: IDE integrations, language servers, CLI tooling, build-system integration.

- Experience with AI-assisted developer workflows, agent scaffolding, or applied AI/ML engineering.

- Comfort picking up formal methods concepts on the job, even without prior depth in the area.

- Experience working in research and/or engineering teams delivering ambitious results.

- An ability to learn quickly, build quickly, and pivot when necessary.

Helpful, but not required:

- Experience using coding agents or other AI tools for ambitious technical projects.

- Knowledge of AI risks generally, and alignment with Oath's mission to counter AI risks.

- A broad enthusiasm for deeply technical topics, and a passion for ideas.

Our Benefits Include: Health, vision, and dental insurance Generous time off + paid holidays Company-paid life and AD&D, with voluntary supplemental options Company 401(k) match up to 6%

We are committed to creating an inclusive and diverse workplace where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. We believe in hiring individuals based on their unique talents—not on race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law or our company policies. We are more than a proud Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Our goal is to foster a healthy, safe, and respectful environment where all employees are valued and treated with dignity. Harassment of any kind is not tolerated here.

## About Convergent Research

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Convergent Research is a nonprofit organization that launches and supports Focused Research Organizations (FROs) to build foundational technologies that unblock scientific progress.
- **Entity Type**: Private Nonprofit (501(c)(3))
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Adam Marblestone, Anastasia Gamick

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Scientific Research and Development Services (NAICS 5417)
- **Target customers**: B2B — scientific researchers, universities, government agencies, and philanthropic funders; operates as a "mission control" launching public-good R&D projects.
- **Mission statement**: “Spectacularly good futures are within reach, but only if we mind the gaps. Scientists need essential technologies to do the groundbreaking research all of us depend on.”

## Products & Services
Convergent Research does not sell commercial products. Instead, it incubates **Focused Research Organizations (FROs)** – time-bound, technically ambitious nonprofit efforts designed to produce high-impact public goods. Current and past FROs/projects include:

- **Cultivarium**: Developing tools for studying novel (previously unculturable) microorganisms.
- **E11 Bio (EVE Bio)**: Brain circuit mapping technologies.
- **Forest Neurotech**: Neural technology and biosensing platforms.
- **Ocean CDR Atlas**: Open-access tool for ocean-based carbon dioxide removal measurement.
- **Fundamental Development Gap Map (v1.0)**: A public web portal identifying bottlenecks holding back science.

Convergent Research provides shared operational support (legal, finance, HR, communications) across all FROs.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (nonprofit).
- **Annual Revenue (FY2024)**: **$72.4 million** (ProPublica IRS filing). Total revenue for FY2024 was $100.1 million.
- **Total Grant Funding Received**: At least $25.1 million from Vanguard Charitable, $9.5 million from Probabilistic Computing Foundation, $8 million from The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation (latest filings).
- **Total Funding Raised**: ~$2 million in disclosed grants (led by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2023); the vast majority comes from additional major philanthropic gifts not categorized as single-investor rounds.
- **Notable Partners/Funders**: Advanced Research and Intervention Agency (ARIA, UK), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation, Vanguard Charitable, Probabilistic Computing Foundation.
- **Growth Signals**: 164 employees (as of latest CauseIQ data, up from ~23 on LinkedIn); headquarter presence in Palo Alto, Cambridge (MA), and Boulder (CO); expanded into the UK via a collaboration with ARIA (“FROST UK”); 15 active job postings with 25% month-over-month posting growth.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Novel institutional model**: Focused Research Organizations (FROs) fill a gap between traditional academia and for-profit startups — targeted, time-boxed, public-good missions.
- **Lean central infrastructure**: Shared operational support lets FRO scientists focus purely on technical breakthroughs, avoiding administrative overhead.
- **High-caliber scientific network**: Leaders include senior scientists from MIT, Caltech, King’s College London, and CMU as grantees/collaborators.
- **Access to major philanthropic capital**: Partners with some of the largest climate and science foundations globally.

## Strategic Focus
- **Geographic expansion**: Formal partnership with ARIA in the UK to launch FROs abroad (“FROST UK”).
- **Gap mapping**: Releasing and refining the Fundamental Development Gap Map to systematically identify the biggest bottlenecks in science.
- **Scaling the FRO model**: Adding new FROs in ocean CDR, neuroscience, and molecular engineering; hiring Founders in Residence to spin up new efforts.
- **Public data as product**: Committed to releasing open datasets and protocols (e.g., drug–target assay data, Lean proof library) as public goods.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven**: Direct, hands-on impact on solving foundational scientific bottlenecks rather than incremental product improvements.
- **Culture**: Described as “mission control” — fast-paced, collaborative, technical. Leadership emphasizes pushing high-risk, high-reward projects.
- **Locations**: On-site positions in Palo Alto (CA), Cambridge/Boston (MA), and Boulder (CO). Some roles are US- or UK-based.
- **Team composition**: Small, senior-heavy centralized team (~20 core staff in Palo Alto) plus larger distributed FRO project teams (~164 total organization-wide). Significant cross-functional work across legal, finance, operations, and science.
- **Typical roles**: Postdoctoral Research Scientists, Research Associates, Biosensing Engineers, Finance/Operations Managers, General Counsel.
- **Compensation transparency (IRS filing)**: CEO Adam Marblestone — $431,025; President Anastasia Gamick — $360,495; competitive nonprofit scientific salaries.
- **Notable perks**: Working with world-class scientists and funders; contributions to genuinely public-good science; tax-deductible donation eligible organization.
- **Remote/hybrid**: Mostly on-site (Boulder, Palo Alto, Cambridge); limited remote possibilities depending on role.

## Sources
1. [convergentresearch.org](https://www.convergentresearch.org/)
2. [jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch](https://jobs.lever.co/convergentresearch)
3. [linkedin.com/company/convergent-research](https://linkedin.com/company/convergent-research)
4. [causeiq.com – Convergent Research](https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/convergent-research,883013217/)
5. [projects.propublica.org – Convergent Research Inc](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/883013217)

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