Research Scientist/Engineer, Biological and Chemical Models

Research Scientist/Engineer Biological and Chemical Models AI Security Institute

London UK

About the AI Security Institute

The AI Security Institute (AISI) launched at the 2023 Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit is the worlds first statebacked organisation dedicated to advancing AI security for the public interest. Our mission is to assess and mitigate risks from frontier AI systems including cyber attacks on critical infrastructure AIenhanced chemical and biological threats largescale societal disruptions and potential loss of control over increasingly powerful AI. In just one year weve assembled one of the largest and most respected research teams featuring renowned scientists and senior researchers from leading AI labs such as Anthropic DeepMind and OpenAI.

At AISI were building the premier institution for impacting both technical AI safety and AI governance. We conduct cuttingedge research develop novel evaluation tools and provide crucial insights to governments companies and international partners. By joining us youll 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 youre a researcher engineer or policy expert at AISI youre not just advancing your career youre positioned to have significant impact in the age of artificial intelligence.

RESEARCH SCIENTIST/ENGINEER BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL MODELS

We are looking for an experienced Research Scientist/Engineer who specialises in AI/ML applied to engineering biology/chemistry.

You will be part of a crosscutting team within the ChemBio work stream at the AI Security Institute. Our role is to advance the security science of advanced AI models including LLMs and more specialised AI models within biology and chemistry and to inform the wider policy environment.

You will join a team researching specialised models within Biology and Chemistry with a goal to evaluate the capabilities of frontier biological models and develop evaluations benchmarks and technical safeguards for these is a technical role ideally suited for someone with a strong machine learning background and experience in computational scientific research.

The workstream is situated within the AISI Research Unit and will report to the ChemBio workstream lead. This post requires Developed Vetting (DV) and any continued employment will be conditional on earning and maintaining this level of clearance. This is a UK Nationals only post as it is a reserved position. More detail on Security Clearances can be found on the UK Government website.

ROLE SUMMARY

• Join a small talentdriven multidisciplinary team evaluating stateoftheart machine learning models for engineering biology.

• Setup and deploy frontier models and evaluate these models in line with AISIs research objectives.

• Write code to assess capabilities of frontier models in fields such as protein design structure prediction and biological foundation models.

• Explore research questions at the intersection of AI and biosecurity and help communicate results to inform wider crossGovernment efforts.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

We strongly encourage you to apply even if you feel you only meet some of the criteria listed here.

Essential Criteria

• Background in machine learning having worked directly on training tuning or evaluating machine learning models using PyTorch or similar.

• Experience working on biological (frontier) AI models such as protein or genomic language models structure prediction (AlphaFold) or protein design models (RFDiffusion)

• Proficient at coding in Python

Desirable Criteria

• A background in computational biology with understanding of the provenance and limitations of omics data and the challenges of building predictive models using these data types.

• Strong background in biology or chemistry with an understanding of protein biochemistry and experimental assays used to validate protein design.

• Good scientific research experience and a motivation to follow research best practices to solve open questions at the intersection of AI and biosecurity.

• Experience writing productionlevel code that is scalable robust and easy to maintain ideally in Python.

• Experience working in small crossfunctional teams including both scientists and engineers.
• Experience in communicating technical work to a mixture of technical and nontechnical audiences.

Clearance Criteria

Whilst AISI often encourages applications from individuals of any nationality due to the unique nature of this role and the elevated security clearances that would be required once in post we can only accept individuals capable of meeting DV criteria which is largely restricted to UK nationals. Therefore this statement supersedes our general nationality rules policy as described in the footnote of this post. For further vetting clarification please visit the listed below:
National security vetting: clearance levels

Salary & Benefits

We are hiring individuals at all ranges of seniority and experience within this research unit and this advert allows you to apply for any of the roles within this range. Your dedicated talent partner will work with you as you move through our assessment process to explain our internal benchmarking process. The full range of salaries are available below salaries comprise of a base salary technical allowance plusadditional benefitsas detailed on this page.

• Level 3 Total Packageinclusiveof a base salary 35720 plus additional technical talent allowance of between
• Level 4 Total Packageinclusiveof a base salary 42495 plus additional technical talent allowance of between
• Level 5 Total Packageinclusiveof a base salary 55805 plus additional technical talent allowance of between
• Level 6 Total Packageinclusiveof a base salary 68770 plus additional technical talent allowance of between
• Level 7 Total Package 145000inclusiveof a base salary 68770 plus additional technical talent allowance of 76230

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.

There are a range of pension options available which can be found through the Civil Service website.

Key Words: computational protein design structural biology