Software Engineer - Platform

AI Security Institute; London; On-site; GBP 35,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading organization is seeking talented Software Engineers for research-oriented roles in AI Security. Candidates from all experience levels will work on innovative technologies while collaborating with top researchers. In this dynamic environment, you will build tools to address real-world AI challenges, gaining mentorship and valuable experience in the rapidly evolving AI field.

Qualifications

• Experience writing production-quality code.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience working with world-class research teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain critical research-oriented software and infrastructure.
• Collaborate with the open-source community.
• Support research teams with custom infrastructure for projects.

Skills

Python

Teamwork

Written communication

Verbal communication

Tools

AWS

Terraform

Docker

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.

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, we’re building a unique and innovative organisation to prevent AI’s harms from impeding its potential.

Role Description

The AI Security Institute's Research Unit is looking for motivated and talented Software Engineers to join AISI's Platform group. We are looking for exceptional candidates at all experience levels, from junior through to senior or staff, to work in small teams on a range of critical research-oriented software and infrastructure.

In this role, you’ll work with cutting-edge technologies on research problems with real-world impact, and receive mentorship and coaching from your manager and the technical leads on your team. You'll also regularly interact with world-famous researchers and other incredible staff (including alumni from Anthropic, DeepMind, OpenAI, Google, Apple, and professors from Oxford and Cambridge).

About AISI Platform

AISI Platform comprises several teams building tools and infrastructure used across all of our research work. This includes projects like Inspect (our open-source evaluation framework), systems for running evaluations at scale, and hosting frontier open-weights models for evaluations or human studies.

As a software engineer on one of AISI's Platform teams, you might:

• Add a feature to one of our “sandbox plugins” for Inspect, supporting advanced agentic evals with safe mechanisms to let models write and execute arbitrary code
• Implement support for a new class of open-weights model on our model hosting platform
• Support a research team with designing custom infrastructure for a new research project
• Collaborate with the open-source community on a feature in Inspect or Inspect's plugin ecosystem
• Assist with an evaluation testing exercise of a frontier AI model, debugging issues that appear in Inspect from API changes in the lab's latest SDK
  
  

Person Specification

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

• Writing production quality code at fast pace.
• Designing, shipping, and maintaining complex tech products.
• Improving technical standards across a team, through mentoring and feedback.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience working with a world-class research team comprised of both scientists and engineers (e.g. in a top-3 lab).
• Python experience, including understanding the intricacies of the language, the good vs. bad Pythonic ways of doing things and much of the wider ecosystem/tooling.
• Experience building and maintaining systems on AWS or other cloud providers using infrastructure-as-code.
  
  

Motivated candidates are encouraged to apply even if you don't meet all the above criteria.

Required Experience

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

• Writing production quality code
• Writing code efficiently
• Python
• Written communication
• Verbal communication
• Teamwork
• Interpersonal skills
• Tackling challenging problems
  
  

Desired Experience

We additionally may factor in experience with particular areas like:

• Expertise in Cloud Infrastructure or Dev Ops (AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, CDK, Docker, etc.)
• Cybersecurity expertise
• ML Ops (vLLM, agent frameworks, fine-tuning, RAG systems, etc.)
  
  

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 plus additional benefits as detailed on this page.

• Level 3 - Total Package £65,000 - £75,000 inclusive of a base salary £35,720 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £29,280 - £39,280
• Level 4 - Total Package £85,000 - £95,000 inclusive of a base salary £42,495 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £42,505 - £52,505
• Level 5 - Total Package £105,000 - £115,000 inclusive of a base salary £55,805 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £49,195 - £59,195
• Level 6 - Total Package £125,000 - £135,000 inclusive of a base salary £68,770 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £56,230 - £66,230
• Level 7 - Total Package £145,000 inclusive of a base salary £68,770 plus additional technical talent allowance of £76,230
  
  

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

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

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 get baseline personnel security standard (BPSS) clearance before they can be appointed. Additionally, there is a strong preference for eligibility for counter-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

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) 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 (opens in a new window). 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 (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Entry level

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Engineering and Information Technology

• Industries

  Government Administration

Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at AI Security Institute by 2x

Get notified about new Software Engineer jobs in London, England, United Kingdom.

London, England, United Kingdom 4 days ago

London, England, United Kingdom £50,000 - £60,000 1 month ago

London, England, United Kingdom 22 hours ago

London, England, United Kingdom 1 month ago

London, England, United Kingdom 4 months ago

London, England, United Kingdom 4 weeks ago

London, England, United Kingdom 7 months ago

London, England, United Kingdom 1 month ago

Greater London, England, United Kingdom 1 month ago

London, England, United Kingdom 6 days ago

London, England, United Kingdom 6 days ago

London, England, United Kingdom 3 days ago

London, England, United Kingdom 5 months ago

London, England, United Kingdom 1 week ago

We’re unlocking community knowledge in a new way. Experts add insights directly into each article, started with the help of AI.