Cybersecurity Researcher

AI Security Institute; City of Westminster; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 115,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading cybersecurity organization in the UK is seeking a Cybersecurity Engineer to design and build environments for evaluating AI capabilities in cybersecurity. You'll collaborate with engineers and researchers to create realistic testing scenarios. Strong Python skills and experience in penetration testing are essential. This position offers the chance to influence national security strategy and comes with a competitive salary between £65,000 to £115,000, along with extensive benefits and flexible working arrangements.

Benefits

Extensive leave policies

Generous parental leave

Contribution to pension fund

Qualifications

• Strong experience in cybersecurity red-teaming areas.
• Active interest in improving AI safety.
• Familiarity with virtualization technologies.

Responsibilities

• Design cyber ranges for evaluating AI on cybersecurity tasks.
• Work with engineers to develop scalable evaluation environments.
• Write reports to communicate findings to stakeholders.

Skills

Strong Python skills for automation or tooling

Experience in penetration testing

Knowledge of cybersecurity tools

Education

Relevant degree or equivalent experience

Tools

Network packet capture utilities

Penetration testing frameworks

Reverse engineering tools

Job description

Overview

This is a cybersecurity engineer position focused on building environments and challenges to benchmark the cyber capabilities of AI systems. You'll design cyber ranges, CTF-style tasks, and evaluation infrastructure that allows us to rigorously measure how well frontier AI models perform on real-world cybersecurity tasks. This work belongs inside UK government because understanding AI cyber capabilities is critical to national security, and robust empirical testing requires coordination across government, industry, and international partners to inform policy decisions on AI safety. You'll work closely with research engineers, infrastructure engineers, and machine learning researchers across AISI. As a small, fast-moving team building first-of-its-kind evaluation infrastructure, you'll be able to influence research directions, own whole pieces of work, and bring your ideas to the table.

Core Responsibilities

• Evaluation Design & Development (60%)
  • Design cyber ranges and CTF-style challenges for automatically grading AI system performance on cybersecurity tasks.
  • Build agentic scaffolding to evaluate frontier models, equipping them with tools such as network packet capture utilities, penetration testing frameworks, and reverse engineering/disassembly tools.
  • Design metrics and interpret results of cyber capability evaluations.
• Infrastructure engineering (30%)
  • Work alongside other engineers to ensure evaluation environments are robust and scalable.
• Research & Communication (10%)
  • Write reports, research papers and blog posts to share findings with stakeholders.
  • Keep up to date with related research taking place in other organisations.
  • Contribute to AISI's broader understanding of AI cyber risks.

Example Projects

• Onboard and integrate new cyber ranges into our evaluation pipeline.
• Conduct agent research to improve the cyber capabilities of our agents.
• Improve grading and scoring methodologies for automated evaluation tasks.
• Integrate defensive telemetry and simulated users into ranges to increase their realism.
• Collaborate with government partners on joint research publications.

Interview Process

The interview process may vary candidate to candidate, however, you should expect a typical process to include some technical proficiency tests, discussions with a cross-section of our team at AISI (including non‑technical staff), conversations with your team lead. The process will culminate in a conversation with members of the senior team here at AISI.

• Initial interview
• Technical take‑home test
• Second interview and review of take‑home test
• Third interview
• Final interview with members of the senior team

Required Skills & Experience

• Strong Python skills with experience writing scripts for automation or security tooling.
• Proven experience in at least one of the following areas of cybersecurity red‑teaming:
• Penetration testing
• Cyber range design
• Competing in or designing CTFs
• Developing automated security testing tools
• Bug bounties, vulnerability research, or exploit discovery and patching
• Strong interest in helping improve the safety of AI systems.

Preferred

• Familiarity with virtualisation technologies such as Proxmox VE and infrastructure‑as‑code approaches to enable reproducible test environments to be rapidly spun up for testing.
• Ability to communicate the outcomes of cybersecurity research to a range of technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Familiarity with cybersecurity tools such as network packet capture utilities, penetration testing frameworks, and reverse engineering/disassembly tools.
• Active in the cybersecurity community with a track record of keeping up to date with new research.
• Previous experience building or measuring the impact of automation tools on cyber red‑teaming workflows.

Example Backgrounds

• Penetration tester with 1+ years experience; has designed CTF challenges or cyber ranges; strong Python skills; interested in AI safety.
• Content engineer at a cybersecurity training platform; experienced in building vulnerable machines, CTF challenges, and automated deployment infrastructure.
• Security researcher with experience in vulnerability research or bug bounties; familiar with penetration testing frameworks and reverse engineering tools; has communicated findings to mixed audiences.

Work Expectations

• You should be able to join us for at least 24 months.
• You should be able to work from our office in London (Whitehall) for several days each week, but we provide flexibility for remote work.
• We would like candidates to be able to start in Q2 2026.

Benefits

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 learning and development, 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 (cafés, food court, gym) or 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.

Salary

• Level 3: £65,000‑£75,000 (Base £35,720 + Technical Allowance £29,280‑£39,280)
• Level 4: £85,000‑£95,000 (Base £42,495 + Technical Allowance £42,505‑£52,505)
• Level 5: £105,000‑£115,000 (Base £55,805 + Technical Allowance £49,195‑£59,195)
• Level 6: £125,000‑£135,000 (Base £68,770 + Technical Allowance £56,230‑£66,230)
• Level 7: £145,000 (Base £68,770 + Technical Allowance £76,230)