Senior Research Scientist

Faculty; London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI consultancy seeks a Senior Research Scientist to conduct groundbreaking research in AI safety. You will lead projects, mentor junior researchers, and contribute to a collaborative team focused on innovative AI solutions. Ideal candidates are experienced in machine learning, AI safety, and have strong communication skills.

Qualifications

• Track record with high-impact AI research evidenced by academic publications.
• Deep domain knowledge in language models and AI safety.
• Advanced programming and mathematical skills.

Responsibilities

• Drive high-impact AI safety research and development.
• Mentor junior researchers and support team collaboration.
• Lead technical projects and deliver evaluations in high-risk domains.

Skills

AI Safety

Machine Learning

Data Science

Programming (Python)

Communication

Education

PhD or equivalent experience

Tools

Python Data Science Stack

Job description

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About Faculty

At Faculty, we transform organisational performance through safe, impactful and human-centric AI.

With more than a decade of experience, we provide over 350 global customers with software, bespoke AI consultancy, and Fellows from our award winning Fellowship programme.

Our expert team brings together leaders from across government, academia and global tech giants to solve the biggest challenges in applied AI.

Should you join us, you'll have the chance to work with, and learn from, some of the brilliant minds who are bringing Frontier AI to the frontlines of the world.

Faculty conducts critical red teaming and builds evaluations for misuse capabilities in sensitive areas, such as CBRN, cybersecurity and international security, for several leading frontier model developers and national safety institutes; notably, our work has been featured in OpenAI's system card for o1.

Our commitment also extends to conducting fundamental technical research on mitigation strategies, with our findings published in peer-reviewed conferences and delivered to national security institutes. Complementing this, we design evaluations for model developers across broader safety-relevant fields, including the societal impacts of increasingly capable frontier models, showcasing our expertise across the safety landscape.

About the role

As a Senior Research Scientist at Faculty you will contribute to Faculty's success by performing novel scientific research in the area of AI safety that progresses scientific understanding though external publications and Faculty's commercial ambition to build safe AI systems.

This is a great opportunity to join a small, high agency team of machine learning researchers and practitioners applying data science and machine learning to business problems in the real world.

What you'll be doing

Your role will evolve alongside business needs, but you can expect your key responsibilities to include:
Research Leadership:

• Own and drive forward themes and areas of interest demonstrated by high-impact AI research.
• Contribute to the wider vision for Faculty's research effort in AI safety through team contributions to the research agenda.
• Support Faculty's positioning as a leader in AI safety through thought leadership and stakeholder engagement.

Research Agenda Development:

• Shape our research agenda by identifying impactful research opportunities and balancing scientific and practical priorities.
• Interface with the wider business to ensure alignment between the R&D team's research efforts and the company's long term goals with a specific focus in the AI safety and commercial projects in the space.

Team Management and Mentorship

• Guide and mentor junior researchers in the team, fostering a collaborative and innovative culture across a wide-range of AI Safety-relevant research topics

Technical Contributions:

• Lead technical research within the AI Safety space; some examples of AI safety research we've worked on include developing novel attacks against models, fine-tuning models for additional safety (e.g. knowledge unlearning), increasing self-consistency of language models and uncertainty estimation.
• Support the delivery of evaluations and red-teaming projects in high-risk domains, such as CBRN and cybersecurity, with a focus on government and commercial partners.Who we are looking for

• A track record working with high-impact AI research, evidenced by top-tier academic publications (ideally in top machine learning or NLP conferences ACL/Neurips, ICML, ICLR, AAAI) or equivalent experience (e.g. within model providers labs).
• Deep domain knowledge in language models and AI safety, with the ability to contribute well-informed views about the differential value, and tractability, of different parts of the traditional AI Safety research agenda, or other areas of machine learning (e.g. explainability)
• Practical experience of machine learning, with a focus on areas such as robustness, explainability, or uncertainty estimation.
• Advanced programming and mathematical skills with Python and an experience with the standard Python data science stack (NumPy, pandas, Scikit-learn etc.)
• The ability to conduct and oversee complex technical research projects.
• A passion for leading and developing technical teams; adopting a caring attitude towards the personal and professional development of others.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

The following would be a bonus, but are by no means required:

• Commercial experience applying AI safety principles in practical or high-stakes contexts.
• Background in red-teaming, evaluations, or safety testing for government or industry applications.
• We welcome applicants who have academic research experience in a STEM or related subject. A PhD is great, but certainly not necessary

What we can offer you:

The Faculty team is diverse and distinctive, and we all come from different personal, professional and organisational backgrounds. We all have one thing in common: we are driven by a deep intellectual curiosity that powers us forward each day.

Faculty is the professional challenge of a lifetime. You'll be surrounded by an impressive group of brilliant minds working to achieve our collective goals.

Our consultants, product developers, business development specialists, operations professionals and more all bring something unique to Faculty, and you'll learn something new from everyone you meet.