Senior Software Engineer, Chem-Bio
About the AI Security Institute
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.
About the Team
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.
Role Responsibilities
We are building a dedicated engineering function within the CB team — a small team that owns the shared platform, tooling, and infrastructure that our research projects depend on. This role is a senior individual contributor within that function. The successful candidate will:
Design and build reliable systems — architect and deliver core platform components that enable researchers to run experiments and ship results quickly, including LLM-based agent systems, evaluation frameworks, and supporting infrastructure.
Work closely with researchers — translate varied research needs across general agents, science agents, chemical and biological models and other CB workstreams into well-engineered, maintainable systems.
Own and deliver significant engineering work — take responsibility for substantial technical projects and shared components, driving them from design through implementation, iteration, and maintenance.
Write high-quality production code — build scalable, robust, and maintainable software, primarily in Python, with strong engineering discipline around testing, documentation, and observability.
Contribute to engineering standards and practices — help improve code quality, development workflows, and shared engineering approaches within a growing engineering team embedded in a research-heavy environment.
Collaborate across AISI — work with our Core Technology and engineering teams to share tooling, align on infrastructure, and avoid duplication.
Support technical direction — contribute to architectural decisions, identify opportunities to strengthen shared infrastructure, and help make pragmatic technical trade-offs.
Mentor others through technical leadership — support other engineers through collaboration, code review, and knowledge sharing, without formal line-management responsibility.
Role Requirements
We are looking for the following skills, experience and attitudes, but a successful candidate will not necessarily need to meet all these criteria. We can be flexible in shaping the role and salary to your background, expertise, and level of experience.
Significant experience writing production-level Python code that is scalable, robust, and easy to maintain, with a track record of delivering substantial technical work.
Strong infrastructure and platform skills — experience with cloud environments (AWS), container orchestration (Kubernetes), and job scheduling (Slurm or similar).
Experience owning technical projects or major systems as a senior individual contributor. You do not need formal management experience for this role.
Familiarity with the AI/ML ecosystem: OpenAI-compatible APIs, PyTorch, and the tooling around LLM-based systems.
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, implement solutions efficiently and acquire any missing knowledge necessary to get the job done. Motivated to build software with direct policy impact.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to work effectively in a dynamic, multidisciplinary team environment.
Strong candidates may also have:
Experience working in a research environment — you don't need to be a researcher, but you should be comfortable working alongside them and translating ambiguous research requirements into engineering plans.
Familiarity with computational biology tools, workflows, or datasets.
Experience building or maintaining internal developer platforms, shared libraries, or CI/CD systems for technical teams.
Please note that this is a reserved post. We can only consider applications from UK nationals (including dual nationals who hold British citizenship). 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 resident in the UK for the past 5 years. You may 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.
Other core requirements:
You should be able to spend at least 9 days per fortnight working with us.
You should be willing to work from our office in London (Whitehall) at least 3 days/week.
You should be UK-based.
What We Offer
Impact you couldn't have anywhere else
Incredibly talented, mission-driven and supportive colleagues.
Direct influence on how frontier AI is governed and deployed globally.
Work with the Prime Minister’s AI Advisor and leading AI companies.
Opportunity to shape the first & best-resourced public-interest research team focused on AI security.
Resources & access
Pre-release access to multiple frontier models and ample compute.
Extensive operational support so you can focus on research and ship quickly.
Work with experts across national security, policy, AI research and adjacent sciences.
Growth & autonomy
If you’re talented and driven, you’ll own important problems early.
5 days off and annual stipends for learning and development, and funding for conferences and external collaborations.
Freedom to pursue research bets without product pressure.
Opportunities to publish and collaborate externally.
Life & family*
Modern central London office, or where applicable, option to work in similar government offices in Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, Salford or Bristol.
Hybrid working, flexibility for occasional remote work abroad and stipends for work-from-home equipment.
At least 25 days’ annual leave, 8 public holidays, extra team-wide breaks and 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).
On top of your salary, we contribute 28.97% of your base salary to your pension.
Discounts and benefits for cycling to work, donations and retail/gyms.
*These benefits apply to direct employees. Benefits may differ for individuals joining through other employment arrangements such as secondments.
Salary
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:
Level 3: £65,000–£75,000 (Base £40,850 + Technical Allowance £24,150–£34,150)
Level 4: £85,000–£95,000 (Base £48,540 + Technical Allowance £36,460–£46,460)
Level 5: £105,000–£115,000 (Base £63,165 + Technical Allowance £41,835–£51,835)
Level 6: £125,000–£135,000 (Base £76,475 + Technical Allowance £48,525–£58,525)
Level 7: £145,000 (Base £76,475 + Technical Allowance £68,525)
Additional Information
Use of AI in Applications
Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use. Use of AI tools in recruitment We may use AI tools to help our hiring teams review applications, for example by summarising application materials and helping us prioritise applications against the published criteria. People make every decision. AI tools do not decide the outcome of any application. Every decision is made by a member of our hiring team, and we do not make solely automated decisions about candidates. We only use the information you provide in your application. We do not use AI tools to collect information about you from other sources, including the internet. These tools are approved for use within AISI and operate in our secure environment. We process this information in line with our wider recruitment retention policy. You can ask how AI was used in relation to your application, request a human review, or object to AI being used, by contacting the hiring manager. This will not affect how your application is assessed.
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).
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, 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 who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window) . As part of the application process, we monitor statistics on D&I. You can see how we process this data here: Recruitment privacy notice - GOV.UK .