Safeguards Technical Governance Researcher
Safeguards Technical Governance Researcher
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Job Description
About the AI Security Institute
The AI Security Institute is the largest team in a government dedicated to understanding AI capabilities and risks in the world.
Our mission is to equip governments with an empirical understanding of the safety of advanced AI systems. We conduct research to understand the capabilities and impacts of advanced AI and develop and test risk mitigations. We focus on risks with security implications including the potential of AI to assist with the development of chemical and biological weapons how it can be used to carry out cyber-attacks enable crimes such as fraud and the possibility of loss of control.
The risks from AI are not sci-fi they are urgent. By combining the agility of a tech start-up with the expertise and mission-driven focus of government were building a unique and innovative organisation to prevent AIs harms from impeding its potential.
Role Description
As AI systems become more capable and integrated into the economy they will increasingly be targeted by adversaries looking to take advantage of their weaknesses.
AISIs Safeguards Analysis team works to understand evaluate and improve the technical measures to address these risks (safeguards). The team has previously performed pre-deployment tests of leading frontier models 1 and published new datasets 2 and attacks 3.
Our research enables us to develop insights on the safety of frontier systems which are most impactful when shared.
As a government body we are well positioned to go beyond technical output and perform research on technical governance relating to safeguards. In this vein we have already published our Principles for Safeguard Evaluations which lays out an approach for effective evaluation of frontier AI system safeguards.
There are many more pieces of technical governance research we think are important such as:
- How can the outputs of safeguard evaluations be made actionable and decision-relevant
- How can risk from fine-tuning API access be managed effectively
- What are effective methods for differential or structured access to advanced AI capabilities
Many of these directions have both a technical component and a governance component and this role would involve working closely with those performing technical work (and potentially performing technical work yourself) to ensure it is focused on producing actionable insights from a governance perspective.
Were excited for a technical governance researcher to drive forward this work. As these projects draw extensively from the teams broader work and are high priority this researcher will work closely with the workstream lead and other researchers to reflect the teams prioritisation and experience.
Your responsibilities will include:
- Ideating developing and drafting technical governance research on safeguards.
- Reading and understanding in detail relevant research from both within and outside AISI to ensure governance research output is technically informed and grounded.
- Delivering compelling and well-written documents that are received well by relevant stakeholders and audiences.
- Managing multiple stakeholders (both technical and non-technical) involved in producing the research outputs.
Person Specification
You may be a good fit if you have some of the following skills experience and attitudes:
- Experience working on machine learning AI or AI security in industry in academia or independently.
- Strong research taste and experience including ideating new research or technical governance products executing independently and effectively on completing those produces and delivering them successfully to achieve high impact.
- Extremely strong written and verbal communication skills both for technical and non-technical communication and audiences.
- Designing delivering and maintaining complex written products while managing diverse stakeholders and audiences
- Red-teaming experience against any sort of system.
- A broad understanding of large language models and the risks surrounding them.
- Ability to work in a self-directed way with high agency thriving in a constantly changing environment and a steadily growing team while figuring out the best and most efficient ways to solve a particular problem.
- Bring your own voice and experience with an eagerness to support your colleagues prioritise the teams success and find new ways of getting things done within government.
- Have a sense of mission urgency and responsibility for success demonstrating problem-solving abilities and preparedness to acquire any missing knowledge necessary to get the job done.
Salary & Benefits
We are hiring individuals at all ranges of seniority and experience. 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 Package 65000 - 75000inclusiveof a base salary 35720 plus additional technical talent allowance of between 29280 - 39280
- Level 4 - Total Package 85000 - 95000inclusiveof a base salary 42495 plus additional technical talent allowance of between 42505 - 52505
- Level 5 - Total Package 105000 - 115000inclusiveof a base salary 55805 plus additional technical talent allowance of between 49195 - 59195
- Level 6 - Total Package 125000 - 135000inclusiveof a base salary 68770 plus additional technical talent allowance of between 56230 - 66230
- 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.
Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework - Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework
There are a range of pension options available which can be found through the Civil Service website.
Selection Process
In accordance with the Civil Service Commission rules the following list contains all selection criteria for the interview process.
Additional Information
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 getbaseline personnel security standard (BPSS)clearancebefore they can be appointed. Additionally there is a strong preference for eligibility forcounter-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
Diversity and Inclusion
Employment Type
Full Time
