About the AI Safety Institute
The AI Safety Institute (AISI), launched at the 2023 Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit, is the world's first state-backed organization dedicated to advancing AI safety for the public interest. Our mission is to assess and mitigate risks from frontier AI systems, including cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, AI-enhanced chemical and biological threats, large-scale societal disruptions, and potential loss of control over increasingly powerful AI. In just one year, we've assembled one of the largest and most respected model evaluation teams, featuring renowned scientists and senior researchers from leading AI labs such as Anthropic, DeepMind, and OpenAI.
At AISI, we're building the premier institution for impacting both technical AI safety and AI governance. We conduct cutting-edge research, develop novel evaluation tools, and provide crucial insights to governments, companies, and international partners. By joining us, you'll collaborate with the brightest minds in the field, directly shape global AI policies, and tackle complex challenges at the forefront of technology and ethics. Whether you're a researcher, engineer, or policy expert, at AISI, you're not just advancing your career – you're positioned to have significant impact in the age of artificial intelligence.
Role Description
The AI Safety Institute research unit is looking for exceptionally motivated and talented Research Engineers, to work in one of the following areas:
- Autonomous systems: Studying, evaluating and recommending mitigations for extreme risks from autonomous AI systems. This includes risk models such as auto-replication, iterative self-improvement and large-scale targeted manipulation and deception.
- Chemical/biological: Studying how frontier models, as well as specialised narrow AI systems, are advancing biological and chemical capabilities relating to harmful outcomes. This includes potential uplift to novice actors and future scenarios like design of biological agents.
- Cyber misuse: Studying how LLMs and more specialised AI systems may aid in cyber-criminality and the adequacy of cybersecurity measures against AI systems.
- Safeguards: Evaluating the strength and efficacy of safety and security components of advanced AI systems against diverse threats which could circumvent safeguards.
- Societal impacts: Studying a range of impacts of advanced models that could have widespread implications for our societal fabric (e.g. undermining trust in information, psychological wellbeing, cognitive wellbeing, unequal outcomes).
- Platform: The platform team supports AISI with cross-cutting infrastructure and tooling. From interfacing with corporate services to ensure that the Research Unit are able to work on appropriate physical devices, to managing cloud infrastructure, to writing open-source tooling like Inspect, which is used across all work-streams.
In this role, you’ll receive mentorship and coaching from your manager and the technical leads on your team. You'll also regularly interact with world-famous researchers and other incredible staff (including alumni from Anthropic, DeepMind, OpenAI and ML professors from Oxford and Cambridge).
In addition to Junior roles, Senior, Staff and Principle RE positions are available for candidates with the required seniority and experience.
Person Specification
You may be a good fit if you have some of the following skills, experience and attitudes:
- Writing production quality code.
- Designing, shipping, and maintaining complex tech products.
- Improving technical standards across a team, through mentoring and feedback.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Experience working with a world-class research team comprised of both scientists and engineers (e.g. in a top-3 lab).
- Comprehensive understanding of large language models (e.g. GPT-4). This includes both a broad understanding of the literature, as well as hands-on experience with things like pre-training or fine tuning LLMs.
- Extensive Python experience, including understanding the intricacies of the language, the good vs. bad Pythonic ways of doing things and much of the wider ecosystem/tooling.
Salary & Benefits
We are hiring individuals at all ranges of seniority and experience within the research unit, and this advert allows you to apply for any of the roles within this range. We will discuss and calibrate with you as part of the process. The full range of salaries available is as follows:
- L3: £65,000 - £75,000
- L4: £85,000 - £95,000
- L5: £105,000 - £115,000
- L6: £125,000 - £135,000
- L7: £145,000
There are a range of pension options available which can be found through the Civil Service website.
Selection Process
In accordance with the Civil Service Commission rules, the following list contains all selection criteria for the interview process.
Required Experience
We select based on skills and experience regarding the following areas:
- Writing production quality code
- Writing code efficiently
- Python
- Frontier model architecture knowledge
- Frontier model training knowledge
- Model evaluations knowledge
- AI safety research knowledge
- Research problem selection
- Research science
- Written communication
- Verbal communication
- Teamwork
- Interpersonal skills
- Tackle challenging problems
- Learn through coaching
Desired Experience
We additionally may factor in experience with any of the areas that our work-streams specialise in:
- Autonomous systems
- Cyber security
- Chemistry or Biology
- Safeguards
- Safety Cases
- Societal Impacts
Additional Information
Internal Fraud Database
The Internal Fraud function of the Fraud, Error, Debt and Grants Function at the Cabinet Office processes details of civil servants who have been dismissed for committing internal fraud, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned. The Cabinet Office receives the details from participating government organisations of civil servants who have been dismissed, or who would have been dismissed had they not resigned, for internal fraud. In instances such as this, civil servants are then banned for 5 years from further employment in the civil service. The Cabinet Office then processes this data and discloses a limited dataset back to DLUHC as a participating government organisations. DLUHC then carry out the pre employment checks so as to detect instances where known fraudsters are attempting to reapply for roles in the civil service. In this way, the policy is ensured and the repetition of internal fraud is prevented. For more information please see - Internal Fraud Register.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check and get baseline personnel security standard (BPSS) clearance before they can be appointed. Additionally, there is a strong preference for eligibility for counter-terrorist check (CTC) clearance. Some roles may require higher levels of clearance, and we will state this by exception in the job advertisement. See our vetting charter here.
Nationality requirements
We may be able to offer roles to applicant from any nationality or background. As such we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet the standard nationality requirements (opens in a new window).
