Job Description
Job Location: San Francisco - SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103
Position Type: Full Time
Salary Range: $122,500.00 - $145,500.00 Salary/yearDirector, Youth Voice & Engagement
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- - - Common Sense Media
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- - - Department/Program
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- - - Youth AI Safety Institute
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- - - Reports To
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- - - Head of AI & Digital Assessments
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- - - Full-time, Exempt
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- - - $122,500–$145,500
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POSITION OVERVIEW
Launched in May 2026, the Youth AI Safety Institute is Common Sense Media’s newest addition to its programmatic pillar. The Institute establishes safety standards, builds open-source evaluations that AI developers can run against their models, independently tests AI products, and publishes the results to provide transparency and accountability. It is an independent research and testing ground dedicated to ensuring the AI that children use is safe and developmentally appropriate.
The Director of Youth Voice & Engagement ensures that young people are not just the subject of the Institute’s work, but active participants in shaping it. This role builds and leads the methodologies and infrastructure for youth participation in AI safety evaluations and standards, including ensuring simulated youth personas used in testing and evaluation are realistic and representative of a diverse range of young people; designing and running the mechanisms — advisory boards, participatory design workshops, focus groups — through which real youth shape the Institute’s standards; building the external partnerships that bring youth-led organizations into the Institute’s work; and publishing what the Institute learns so the broader AI safety and evaluation field can benefit from it.
The Director will build the Institute’s youth engagement methodology largely from the ground up, helping set the strategy to meaningfully involve minors in sensitive research. This role operates under the direction of the Head of AI & Digital Assessments, with independence in how the youth voice strategy is designed and executed; works closely with the Standards Program to ensure youth input is reflected in the standards and convenings they own; and works closely with the Common Sense Media Research team to collaborate on qualitative research topics.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Simulation Accuracy & Representativeness
- Partner with internal evaluation and simulation researchers and external partners to assess whether the youth personas used in the Institute’s testing and evaluations realistically reflect how real young people communicate and behave, including on sensitive topics such as self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders.
- Review simulated transcripts, rubrics, and scoring criteria for realism gaps, and translate findings into concrete revisions to personas, prompts, and evaluation protocols.
- Ensure youth simulations represent a range of young people across necessary demographic criteria rather than a narrow or stereotyped profile.
- Ensure youth-centered evaluation frameworks distinguish between lived-experience relevance, clinical appropriateness, developmental appropriateness, and safety risk.
- Work with Standards Analysts and technical evaluators to ensure realism findings are incorporated into the Institute’s published evaluation rubrics and protocols.
- Study how young people actually communicate with AI (e.g., through transcript review, youth interviews, or focus group findings) to inform ongoing realism assessment.
Youth Engagement Strategy & Participatory Design
- Forge and evolve the Institute’s youth engagement strategy, ensuring AI safety standards are grounded in young people’s lived experience and developed in ethical, meaningful, and empowering ways.
- Recruit, onboard, and manage a Youth Advisory Board of 8-10 teens (ages 13-22) that provides ongoing feedback on both content and process across the Institute’s workstreams, including setting and maintaining a regular meeting cadence.
- Support Youth Advisory Board members in leading small-group workshops with peers in school settings to surface additional youth perspectives on AI safety.
- Design and facilitate participatory design workshops with youth ages 13-18 on sensitive content areas (such as coded-language and trigger-related standards sections), including transcript annotation exercises, test-prompt writing, and structured feedback on draft principles.
- Ensure youth recruitment for advisory boards and workshops reflects demographic diversity and other dimensions of lived experience, partnering with youth research vendors as needed.
- Coordinate with youth-led organizations to involve them in convenings and gather their feedback throughout standards development.
- Partner with the Common Sense Media Research team to embed youth-relevant questions into existing research questionnaires and collaborate on qualitative research involving young people.
Youth Voice Partnerships
- Build and steward both formal and informal partnerships with youth voice and youth-serving organizations to broaden the range of youth perspective informing the Institute’s work.
- Serve as the Institute’s primary relationship holder for youth voice partners: scoping collaborations, managing any formal agreements in partnership with the Institute’s program teams, and ensuring partnerships are mutually beneficial.
- Identify and evaluate new youth voice partnership opportunities aligned with the Institute’s standards-development priorities.
- Track partnership health and status, and report regularly to the Head of AI & Digital Assessments on progress and emerging opportunities or risks.
Field-Facing Publication & Knowledge Sharing
- Translate the Institute’s youth engagement methodology, findings, and lessons learned into published materials that help the broader AI safety and evaluation field learn from Common Sense Media’s approach to youth voice, such that Common Sense Media becomes a leader in youth-participatory AI safety evaluation and standards development.
- Partner with Institute leadership and communications staff to determine appropriate publication formats (e.g., methodology write-ups, case studies, field briefings) and audiences.
- Ensure published materials protect the privacy, safety, and dignity of youth participants while faithfully representing their input and perspectives.
- Represent the Institute’s youth engagement approach externally at conferences, field convenings, and partner briefings as appropriate.
QUALIFICATIONS
Required
- Education: Advanced degree in a relevant field such as youth/adolescent development, human-centered design, public health, or education preferred.
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Experience: 8+ years of experience in youth engagement, participatory research or design, adolescent development, or a closely related field.
- Youth Participatory Methods: Demonstrated experience designing and running youth advisory boards, participatory design processes, or comparable youth-engagement methodologies, including with minors on sensitive topics.
- Research & Evaluation Fluency: Experience evaluating research instruments, simulations, or user interactions for realism and representativeness, sufficient to partner credibly with technical evaluators.
- Partnership Management: Proven ability to build and manage external partnerships with mission-driven, youth-serving, or research organizations.
- Safeguarding & Ethics: Working knowledge of ethical standards for engaging minors in research, including consent, safeguarding, and trauma-informed practice.
- Communication: Excellent written communication skills, with experience producing field-facing publications for external audiences.
Preferred
- Background in adolescent mental health, developmental psychology, or child safety.
- Experience with human-centered or participatory design methodologies specifically involving youth populations.
- Familiarity with AI safety, red-teaming, or evaluation methodology.
- Experience partnering with youth research or recruitment vendors.
- Existing relationships within the youth voice, youth advocacy, or adolescent research ecosystem.
- Experience working in mission-driven or nonprofit organizations.
Core Competencies
- Youth-Centered Design: Centers young people’s voice and agency, and designs processes that are ethical, safe, and empowering for youth participants.
- Methodological Rigor: Brings a critical, evidence-based eye to whether simulations, rubrics, and research instruments truly represent the diversity of youth experience.
- Relationship & Partnership Management: Builds durable, trust-based relationships with external youth voice organizations and research vendors.
- Facilitation: Skilled at designing and running participatory workshops and advisory board sessions with teen participants.
- Field-Facing Communication: Translates sensitive, complex work into clear publications for external audiences without compromising participant privacy.
- Independent Judgment: Exercises strong independent judgment building a new function while operating under the strategic direction of the Head of AI & Digital Assessments.
WHAT WE OFFER
- The opportunity to really make a difference in the lives of kids and families!
- A mission-driven team with a 23-year track record of impact for families and children.
- Competitive nonprofit compensation and comprehensive benefits.
- A collaborative, flexible work environment with meaningful leadership access and visibility.
ABOUT COMMON SENSE MEDIA
Common Sense Media is the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the research-backed information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the age of apps, algorithms, and AI. We rate, educate, and advocate for policies to protect and prepare kids online. Our ratings, research, and resources reach more than 150 million users globally, over 1.4 million educators, and more than 100,000 schools worldwide every year. Learn more at commonsense.org.
