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Greater London, England, United Kingdom
Hybrid
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.
We’re here because governments are critical for advanced AI going well, and UK AISI is uniquely positioned to mobilise them. With our resources, unique agility and international influence, this is the best place to shape both AI development and government action.
AISI's Technical Standards and Best Practice team identifies what best practice is needed to manage the most serious risks from frontier AI development and leverages AISI’s position to get it adopted.
AI capabilities are advancing faster than the science and practices used to manage their risks. Risks now emerge earlier, during training, internal deployment and evaluation, not just at public release, and evaluation methods are struggling to keep pace. Yet there is no consensus on the set of practices needed to safely use and develop the most capable AI systems, and high-level principles are not enough to manage these risks. What's needed is concrete technical guidance that developers agree is necessary.
AISI is uniquely placed to lead on parts of this industry-wide effort to establish best practice. We house researchers with state-of-the-art technical insight on keeping AI secure during internal use, hold existing relationships with industry and other frontier AI organisations, and offer a neutral third-party home to establish best practice collaboratively. This role directly delivers on part of the Prime Minister’s September 2026 commitment that the UK will work towards principles and standards that ensure the most capable AI systems are developed securely and with appropriate transparency. It builds directly on our October 2026 publication Towards technical best practice for frontier AI development, setting out our view of the most urgent priorities.
This is a new, growing team with high ambitions. It is a cross AISI initiative that draws on and collaborates with researchers and engineers from across AISI's research teams, as well as our Communications, International and Strategy teams. We're now building a dedicated core team and expect it to grow as the work does.
AISI is uniquely placed to shape this guidance, and this team is how we'll do it:
We're not seeking to mandate requirements. We want to contribute our expertise to an industry-wide effort to develop technical best practice that could later inform formal standards.
Examples of our first priority areas include:
Primary objective: Lead AISI's work to define the technical best practice needed to manage the most serious risks from frontier AI development, and to get it adopted.
You'll work with AISI leadership to set the direction for this work and be accountable for delivering it. You'll lead a diverse team of technical experts and policy specialists who turn AISI's research into best practice, and take it into the forums where it can shape what frontier AI developers do.
You'll report to a Deputy Director and line manage the core team. We're looking for a long-term lead: as the team grows, so will the role’s remit.
We're flexible on the exact profile and expect successful candidates will meet many, but not necessarily all, of the criteria below. Depending on experience, we will consider candidates at Level 5 or Level 6, and exceptional candidates at Level 4.
Candidates should expect to go through some or all of the following stages once an application has been submitted:
Impact you couldn't have anywhere else
Resources & access
Growth & autonomy
Life & family*
*These benefits apply to direct employees. Benefits may differ for individuals joining through other employment arrangements such as secondments.
Annual salary is benchmarked to role scope and relevant experience. Most offers land between £65,000 and £145,000 made up of a base salary plus a technical allowance (take-home salary = base + technical allowance). An additional 28.97% employer pension contribution is paid on the base salary.
This role sits outside of the DDaT pay framework given the scope of this role requires in depth technical expertise in frontier AI safety, robustness and advanced AI architectures.
The full range of salaries are available below:
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Use of AI tools in recruitment
We may use AI tools to help our hiring team review applications, for example by summarising application materials and helping us prioritise them against the published criteria. We do not use AI tools to find information about you from other sources, including online. People make every decision. We do not make solely automated decisions about candidates. Find out more, including your rights, in our recruitment privacy notice: https://www.aisi.gov.uk/careers/privacy-policy.
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