The Turing has recently been awarded a £1m EPSRC research grant to develop AI methods that can support and enhance intelligence analysis for national security and defence. For this project, the Turing will lead an interdisciplinary consortium that also includes Warwick, Southampton, Heriot-Watt and Cardiff Universities, working closely with UK government defence and national security partners. The project, entitled “AI Intelligence Triage & Acquisition Support for Human-centred Analysis” (AiTASHA), aims to improve the speed and confidence of intelligence analysts’ assessments by building new AI tools that can work alongside human analysts. Intelligence analysts are routinely required to make high-consequence, defensible assessments from vast, complex and uncertain datasets, to identify indicators and warnings of hostile or malicious activities.
We are seeking a highly skilled Senior Research Associate to conduct internationally leading research in machine learning, with applications to intelligence analysis. This role will involve investigating and developing methods that will allow deep learning models to encode or represent the same context or mental model as the human analyst, including leveraging and enhancing cutting‑edge embedding models, as well as building on existing methods in ML explainability, interpretability, and uncertainty quantification. The research will focus predominantly on vision, language and multimodal models, and on integration of these models with graph‑based statistical methods that have been previously developed by members of the project team to support national security use.
This role will be part of the Defence and National Security (D&NS) Programme and will report directly to the PI for the AiTASHA project. Within the Turing, this role will sit primarily within the Defence Artificial Intelligence Research (DARe) centre, which encompasses diverse AI research spanning future sensing, space systems, human‑machine teaming, synthetic environments, and edge AI, but there will also be opportunities to engage with researchers from across the D&NS Programme, including from policy and engineering teams.
How you will make an impact
* Play a leading role in undertaking high‑quality research, actively contributing to, and steering the broader research aims of the Defence & National Security Grand Challenge.
* Provide technical leadership for research projects, ensuring successful outcomes, including that research outcomes meet our government partners’ requirements and can be deployed in the real world.
* Contribute to, and lead where required, interdisciplinary research teams spanning multiple partner organisations.
* Contribute to software development including planning, execution and package release and management.
* Be a point of contact, supporting the PI in engaging with stakeholders regarding projects and deputising for the PI in meetings where necessary.
* Take the lead on writing up findings as they emerge, producing and developing reports and publications in peer‑reviewed journals, in collaboration with the research team.
* Present, disseminate and explain our work at meetings/events and contribute to both the internal and external visibility of the Institute.
* Supervise the work of early‑career researchers in the team and provide guidance as required with line management of direct reports if required.
Please see our portal for a full breakdown of the role.
Closing date for applications: Sunday 14 June 2026 at 23:59 (London, UK, BST)
Terms and conditions
This full‑time post is offered on a fixed‑term basis for 2 years from the start date. The annual salary is £56,840–£58,482 plus excellent benefits, including flexible working and family‑friendly policies, Employee‑only benefits guide | The Alan Turing Institute
The successful candidate must be in place by 01 August 2026.
Eligibility for Security Check (SC) clearance is a requirement for this role. Eligibility criteria and further information on the process can be found on the UK Government security vetting website. Successful candidates will be subject to a Dstl research workers form check at the offer stage.
Application procedure
If you are interested in this opportunity, please click the apply button to be redirected to The Alan Turing Institute jobs portal, where you can find more information and a full job description for this role. You will need to register on the applicant portal and complete the application form including your CV and covering letter.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
The Alan Turing Institute is committed to creating an environment where diversity is valued and everyone is treated fairly. We value diversity of background, experience and perspective, and are proud to be an inclusive employer. We warmly encourage applications from all backgrounds, particularly from groups currently under‑represented in our sector. If you feel passionate about this role but don’t meet every single requirement, please apply – we recognise that great candidates may bring strengths beyond the criteria listed.
We are committed to making sure our recruitment process is accessible and inclusive. This includes making reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability or long‑term condition. Please contact us at recruitment@turing.ac.uk to find out how we can assist you.
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