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About the Role

The AI Security Institute is seeking to build a dedicated engineering function within the Chem Bio (CB) team. This role will lead this function, owning the shared platform, tooling, and infrastructure that research projects depend on. The goal is to translate varied research needs into well-engineered, maintainable systems and shape the engineering culture for a growing team.

Responsibilities

• Lead CB's engineering team, setting technical direction, defining engineering standards, and owning the roadmap for shared infrastructure, tools, and components.
• Line-manage a small number of engineers, providing support, feedback, and development guidance.
• Design and build reliable systems, including LLM-based agent systems, evaluation frameworks, and supporting infrastructure.
• Work closely with researchers to translate needs into engineered systems.
• Hire and grow the engineering team, contributing to interview design and candidate assessment.
• Establish ways of working, code quality standards, and development practices for the engineering team.
• Coordinate with Core Technology and other engineering teams to share tooling and align on infrastructure.

Requirements

• Significant experience writing production-level Python code that is scalable, robust, and easy to maintain.
• Track record of leading technical work in a team.
• Strong infrastructure and platform skills, including experience with cloud environments (AWS), container orchestration (Kubernetes), and job scheduling (Slurm or similar).
• Demonstrated experience leading or managing engineers.
• Familiarity with the AI/ML ecosystem: OpenAI-compatible APIs, PyTorch, and LLM-based systems tooling.
• Ability to work across multiple teams, understanding varied research needs and delivering reliable engineering solutions.
• A sense of mission, urgency, and responsibility for success.
• Demonstrated ability to solve challenging problems and implement solutions efficiently.
• Motivated to build software with direct policy impact.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to work effectively in a dynamic, multidisciplinary team environment.
• Experience working in a research environment is a plus.
• Familiarity with computational biology tools, workflows, or datasets is a plus.
• Experience building or maintaining internal developer platforms, shared libraries, or CI/CD systems is a plus.
• Must be a UK national.
• Must be able to spend at least 9 days per fortnight working with the team.
• Must be willing to work from the London office at least 3 days/week.
• Must be UK-based.
• Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check and get baseline personnel security standard (BPSS) clearance.
• Preference for eligibility for counter-terrorist check (CTC) clearance.

Skills

• Python
• AWS
• Kubernetes
• Slurm
• OpenAI-compatible APIs
• PyTorch
• LLM-based systems

Location

• London (Whitehall)
• Birmingham
• Cardiff
• Darlington
• Edinburgh
• Salford
• Bristol

Work Type

• Hybrid working
• Occasional remote work abroad

Experience Level

• Lead
• Senior

Salary/Compensations

• Level 3: £65,000–£75,000
• Level 4: £85,000–£95,000
• Level 5: £105,000–£115,000
• Level 6: £125,000–£135,000
• Level 7: £145,000

Benefits

• Pre-release access to multiple frontier models and ample compute.
• Extensive operational support.
• Work with experts across national security, policy, AI research and adjacent sciences.
• 5 days off and annual stipends for learning and development.
• Funding for conferences and external collaborations.
• Opportunities to publish and collaborate externally.
• Modern central London office (cafes, food court, gym).
• Option to work in similar government offices in Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, Salford or Bristol.
• Stipends for work-from-home equipment.
• At least 25 days’ annual leave.
• 8 public holidays.
• Extra team-wide breaks.
• 3 days off for volunteering.
• Generous paid parental leave (36 weeks of UK statutory leave shared between parents + 3 extra paid weeks + option for additional unpaid time).
• 28.97% employer pension contribution on base salary.
• Discounts and benefits for cycling to work, donations and retail/gyms.

About the Company

• The AI Security Institute is the world's largest and best-funded team dedicated to understanding advanced AI risks and translating that knowledge into action.
• We’re in the heart of the UK government with direct lines to No. 10 (the Prime Minister's office), and we work with frontier developers and governments globally.
• AISI's Chem Bio (CB) team conducts technical research to assess evolving AI capabilities related to science R&D and CB misuse, and the effectiveness of technical safeguards.
• The goal of our research is to inform critical decisions on security, opportunities, policy, and risk mitigation made by governments and AI developers.
• We're an unusually interdisciplinary team made up of researchers and specialists across various fields.

Equal Opportunity

• The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities.
• We run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
• The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy and meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
• The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found.
• As part of the application process, we monitor statistics on D&I.