Societal Resilience Data Scientist / Research Scientist

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.

Societal Resilience Data Scientist / Research Scientist

The AI Safety Institute research unit is looking for exceptionally motivated and talented Research Scientists and Data Scientists to join our Societal Resilience team.

Societal Resilience

The goal of the Societal Resilience team is to develop an empirical understanding of the harms that could arise when AI is deployed and used in the real world. It seeks to ensure that society is prepared for, and resilient to, large-scale and high-stakes adoption. To this end, the team will establish systems for collecting and analysing big data relating AI adoption, usage and incidents. We will track how businesses, organisations, communities and individuals are using AI, with a focus on emerging large-scale risks. With an empirical understanding of these trends are developing over time, this team will advise policymakers on risks and invest in mitigations that support societal resilience in the UK.

We are looking for research and data scientists who will help design and execute novel research that furthers this goal. They will be responsible for identifying relevant sources of data, designing methods for collecting and aggregating datasets, creating analytic tools for processing and understanding the data, and disseminating results through reports, publications, and other vehicles.

The Societal Resilience team is a strongly collaborative technical research team, led by the Societal Impacts Research Director, Professor Christopher Summerfield. You'll also have the opportunity to regularly interact with our highly talented and experienced staff across the Institute (including alumni from Anthropic, DeepMind, OpenAI and ML professors from Oxford and Cambridge), as well as with other partners across government.

Person specification

Successful candidates will help us design research and analyze data relating to how AI is being deployed in the real world. This will include consumer AI usage data, measurements of societal uptake and adoption, and AI incident monitoring. This role requires someone who can be strategic, creative and ambitious. They will be adept at identifying valuable sources of information, thinking creatively about data, and have excellent communication skills. We would be particularly excited to hear from people who have some or all of the following:

1. Experience of researching the uptake, adoption and usage of AI in the real world (in both individual and enterprise contexts)
2. Excellent quantitative and coding skills
3. Significant experience of doing technical analysis, especially in SQL and Python.
4. Experience in trust and safety and/or have worked closely with policy, enforcement, and engineering teams
5. Experience with data engineering, such as building core tables or writing data pipelines (not expected to build infrastructure or write production code)
6. Have experience scaling and automating processes, especially with language models
7. Demonstrable record of answering complex questions by bringing together multiple sources of data
8. Independent thinker, willing to challenge accepted orthodoxies
9. Great team spirit
10. Evidence of delivery and dissemination, including presenting data in compelling ways to senior decision makers

Salary & Benefits

We are hiring individuals at all ranges of seniority and experience. 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.

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. Level 7 - Total Package £145,000 inclusive of a base salary £68,770 plus additional technical talent allowance of £76,230

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.

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.

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 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 applicants from any nationality or background. As such we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet the standard nationality requirements.

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.