Research Engineer - Chem-Bio

AI Safety Institute; London; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 115,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking institute as a Research Engineer in the Chem/Bio team, where you'll play a crucial role in evaluating AI capabilities in scientific research. This position offers a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of AI, biology, and chemistry, developing innovative solutions to enhance safety and security. Collaborate with experts and contribute to impactful research that shapes policy recommendations. If you are passionate about AI and its applications in science, this role is perfect for you, providing an environment that fosters growth and learning while tackling real-world challenges.

Benefits

Pension Options

Professional Development Opportunities

Qualifications

• Experience in writing production-level code that is scalable and maintainable.
• Strong quantitative skills and understanding of statistics.

Responsibilities

• Develop and run evaluations for LLMs in biological/chemical tasks.
• Collaborate with team members on code reviews and problem-solving.

Skills

Machine Learning

Python

AI Safety

Statistical Analysis

Technical Writing

Cross-functional Collaboration

Education

Degree in Computer Science, Biology, or related field

Experience in AI or Computational Biology

Tools

Large Language Models

Benchmarking Tools

Job description

About the Chem/Bio Team

The mission of the Chem/Bio team is to equip policymakers with an empirical understanding of safety-relevant AI capabilities, specifically at the intersection of AI with biology and chemistry.

The team studies AI capabilities including (but not limited to) providing detailed instructions and (multimodal) troubleshooting for chemical or biological lab work, designing new or modified biological agents, and autonomously completing tasks on behalf of the user.

The team works closely with other teams within the AI Safety Institute and wider UK government stakeholders, and external experts, to make sure our research has real-world impacts on AI safety and chemical and biological security through policy recommendations.

Role Summary

As a Research Engineer in the LLM evaluations team of the Chem/Bio workstream, you will develop and run evaluations that measure the ability of LLMs to provide detailed end-to-end instructions and troubleshooting advice for biological/chemical tasks and/or automate key steps of the scientific R&D pipeline. You will collaborate closely with other Research Engineers and receive coaching and mentorship from a Research Scientist with a mixed background in machine learning and biology, as well as our workstream lead who is an established expert in biosecurity.

Your day-to-day work may involve:

• Develop and improve pipelines and frameworks to streamline our automated benchmarking capabilities.
• Collaborate closely with other technical team members, performing code review and solving challenging problems alone or in pair programming sessions.
• Design evaluations for multimodal inputs such as images, video or audio data.
• Research and implement state of the art capabilities elicitation techniques.
• Own and execute LLM testing exercises together with your technical colleagues.
• Evaluate LLM agents for their ability to interact with specialist tools for chemical/ biological science.
• Distill and communicate insights from your work to policy makers and other non-technical audiences.
• Attend talks and journal clubs to keep up to date with the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Person specification

You may be a good fit if you have some of the following skills, experience and attitudes:

• Relevant experience in industry, open-source collectives, or academia in a field related to machine learning, AI or computational biology.
• Experience in writing production-level code that is scalable, robust and easy to maintain, ideally in Python.
• Knowledge of scaffolding, prompting and/or evaluating large language models.
• Strong quantitative skills and a solid understanding of statistics.
• Hands-on experience illustrating and writing up empirical research findings, ideally producing a deliverable such as a blog post or paper.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to engage both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience working in cross-functional teams, including both scientists and engineers.
• Motivated to conduct research that solves concrete open questions in governance and policy making.
• Ability to work autonomously and 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.
• 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.

The following are also nice-to-have:

• Subject matter expertise in Biology and Chemistry.
• Experience in benchmarking frontier AI models.
• Open-source software packages or conference contributions.
• Experience with working with Protein Design.

This post requires Security Clearance (SC) as a minimum, and a willingness to undergo Developed Vetting (DV) if required. 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.

If successful at the interview, AISI will sponsor your clearance application, and you will receive a link to fill out a security questionnaire.

Salary & Benefits

We will discuss and calibrate with you as part of the process. The full range of salaries available for this position is as follows:

• L3: £65,000 - £75,000
• L4: £85,000 - £95,000
• L5: £105,000 - £115,000

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.

Required Experience

We select based on skills and experience regarding the following areas:

• Writing production quality code.
• Writing code efficiently.
• Python.
• Frontier model architecture knowledge.
• AI safety or LLM evaluation experience.
• Research problem selection.
• Research science.
• Written communication.
• Verbal communication.
• Teamwork.
• Interpersonal skills.
• Tackle challenging problems.
• Learn through coaching.
• Technical writing experience - either through academic papers or technical blog posts.

Desired Experience

We additionally may factor in experience with any of the areas that our work-streams specialise in:

• Chemistry or Biology.
• Relevant academic publications.

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 organisation. 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. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is Security Check. See our vetting charter. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard checks.

Nationality requirements

UK nationals only.

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles. 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 and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.