Overview
We are looking for a senior, high‑agency technical product leader to own the long‑term technical vision and strategy for AISI's frontier AI security testing programme, along with driving improvements to technical reliability, efficiency, and scalability of the programme. You will report to the head of AISI's Testing Team and collaborate closely with researchers and engineers from our evaluations teams and infrastructure team, as well as policy and delivery teams. The Testing Team sits within the Research Unit, which is responsible for advancing our work on frontier AI evaluations and impact assessments, safeguards and interventions, risk modelling, and foundational AI safety research. The testing team is responsible for our overall testing strategy, and the end‑to‑end preparation and delivery of individual testing exercises.
Responsibilities
* Ensuring the UK government, international partners and the public have high‑quality, accurate information about frontier AI system capabilities and how these are developing over time.
* Providing an independent source of information to frontier AI developers about system capabilities and safety, enabling iterative improvements to the safety of their overall systems.
* Own and continuously refine our testing vision and strategy across pre‑deployment and post‑deployment capability and safeguard robustness testing, along with deeper research collaborations with frontier AI developers.
* Translate the vision into a roadmap for systematic improvements to the technical reliability, efficiency, and scalability of testing exercises, that balances ambition, risk, and available research and engineering capacity. This will involve turning high‑level requirements into concrete, technically grounded specs in partnership with our Platform and Evaluation teams.
* Drive improvements across testing exercises by creating and maintaining success and health metrics, and feedback loops with the researchers, engineers and delivery managers involved in testing exercises, to discover gaps, bottlenecks and emerging needs.
* Drive alignment with the research teams by acting as the connective tissue between researchers, engineers, and policy leads—keeping goals, scope and timelines for systematic improvements clear for everyone. A key partner will also be the Science of Evaluations team, which is responsible for providing internal quality assurance on our empirical results and driving adoption of best practices across testing exercises.
Qualifications
To set you up for success, we are looking for some of the following skills, experience and attitudes, but we are flexible in shaping the role to your background and expertise.
* Technical depth
o 5+ years of experience in industry, startups or academia and a deep familiarity with technical (frontier) AI and safety research and its implications for policy and governance.
o Knowledge of training, fine‑tuning, scaffolding, prompting, deploying and/or evaluating current cutting‑edge machine learning systems such as large‑language models.
o Ability to engage with researchers and engineer, ask the right technical questions and make sound judgments and trade‑offs on feasibility vs. impact.
* Product leadership
o Proven track record of designing and executing ambitious, high‑impact strategies.
o Significant experience leading technical product management / programme management, tech strategy or equivalent, shipping complex software or ML infrastructure.
o Excellent project management skills with experience defining milestones, managing dependencies, navigating shifting requirements or tight deadlines, while motivating people across multiple teams.
* Collaboration & communication
o Track record of building trust and alignment with world‑class multidisciplinary teams, including scientists, engineers and senior stakeholders across industry and government.
o Excellent verbal and written communication—able to distil complex topics into crisp narratives and actionable recommendations.
* Mindset
o Ability to work autonomously and in a self‑directed way with high agency, thriving in a constantly changing environment, while navigating broad, ambiguous problems in a pragmatic way.
o Ability to think in terms of systems, spot patterns, design processes and continuously improve them.
Core requirements
* You should be able to spend at least 4 days per week on working with us.
* 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 parts of the week, but we provide flexibility for remote work.
Additional information
Any move to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare.
DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home). DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign.
Security requirements
* Security: Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (BPSS) checks.
* 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.
* Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre‑employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant's details held on the IFD will be refused employment.
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.
Benefits – 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.
Benefits – 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.
Benefits – Life & family
* Modern central London office (cafes, 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.
Annual salary
Annual salary is benchmarked to role scope and relevant experience. Most offers land between £65,000 and £145,000 (base plus technical allowance), with 28.97% employer pension and other benefits on top.
Salary levels
* 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)
Selection process
In accordance with the Civil Service Commission rules, the following list contains all selection criteria for the 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. Candidates should expect to go through some or all of the following stages once an application has been submitted:
* Initial interview
* Technical take‑home test
* Second interview and review of take‑home test
* Third interview
* Final interview with members of the senior team
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