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Greater London, England, United Kingdom
Hybrid
Not Available
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 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 that might mitigate risks arising from those capabilities.
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 a close-knit, unusually interdisciplinary team—made up of machine learning researchers and engineers, software engineers, virologists and bacteriologists, behavioural research scientists, biosecurity experts, long-standing CB policy specialists and talented generalists—who work closely with other technical and policy teams across government.
Over the next twelve months CB will hugely scale the range and complexity of the evaluations and research programmes it carries out, and engage more deeply with partners in major AI labs, the wider biotech and pharma ecosystem and security services than it ever has before.
AI capabilities in the life sciences are advancing faster than at any point in history. Foundation models can now design novel proteins and interpret genomic sequences. Specialised biological models can both identify drug targets and design the compound to target them. These are extraordinary tools for scientific progress, but also have the potential for harm if misused.
This role is for a senior technical expert who can bring deep virology and biosecurity judgement to that mission. You will sit directly alongside the CB team’s researchers, helping design and interpret evaluations of how frontier and specialised AI systems perform on biologically relevant tasks, with a particular focus on pathogens and virology-relevant capabilities. You will help translate ambiguous biological risk questions into rigorous empirical evaluations, identify where model outputs are scientifically meaningful versus merely plausible-sounding, and advise on the mitigations, safeguards and evidence standards needed before those results can inform policy. It is a role at the interface of virology, AI evaluation, and biosecurity: shaping what we test, how we test it, and how we explain the significance of our findings to government and external partners.
Strong candidates may also have:
Other core requirements:
Appointment is conditional on successfully completing UK Government SC clearance. Prior clearance is not required—we will sponsor and support you. You should normally have been a resident in the UK for the past 5 years.
You will also be required to undergo Developed Vetting (DV). DV typically requires a longer period of UK residency (around 10 years). Employment is conditional on obtaining and maintaining the required clearance(s). More detail on clearance eligibility can be found on the UK Government website: National security vetting: clearance levels - GOV.UK.
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. We encourage you to apply early.
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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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).
