description Job Description
<div class="content-intro"><h2>About the AI Security Institute</h2>
<p>The AI Security Institute is the world's largest and best-funded team dedicated to understanding advanced AI risks and translating that knowledge into action. We’re in the heart of the UK government with direct lines to No. 10 (the Prime Minister's office), and we work with frontier developers and governments globally.</p>
<p>We’re here because governments are critical for advanced AI going well, and UK AISI is uniquely positioned to mobilise them. With our resources, unique agility and international influence, this is the best place to shape both AI development and government action.</p></div><h2><strong><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2"></span></span></strong></h2>
<h2><span class="TextRun SCXW212922402 BCX8" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW212922402 BCX8" data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">The deadline for applying to this role is 30</span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW212922402 BCX8" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun Superscript CommentHighlightRest SCXW212922402 BCX8" data-fontsize="12" data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">th</span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW212922402 BCX8" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun CommentHighlightRest SCXW212922402 BCX8" data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2"> September 2026</span><span class="NormalTextRun CommentHighlightPipeRest SCXW212922402 BCX8" data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">, end of day, anywhere on Earth.</span></span><span class="EOP Selected SCXW212922402 BCX8" data-ccp-props="{"134245418":true,"134245529":true,"335557856":16777215,"335559738":0,"335559739":0}"> </span></h2>
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<h2><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">Team Description </span></span><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2"> </span></span><span data-ccp-props="{"134245418":true,"134245529":true,"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></h2>
<p><span data-contrast="none">Interventions that secure a system from abuse by bad actors or misaligned AI systems will grow in importance as AI systems become more capable, autonomous, and integrated into society.</span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></p>
<p><span class="TextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">The Misuse Red Team is a specialised </span><span class="NormalTextRun SpellingErrorV2Themed SCXW184290838 BCX0">subteam</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0"> within AISI's wider Red Team. W</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">e </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">red</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">-</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">team </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">frontier AI safeguards</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0"> </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">for dangerous capabilities</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">, </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">research </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">novel attack vectors</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">, and develop advanced automated attack tooling</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">. We share our findings with frontier AI companies</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0"> (including </span></span><a class="Hyperlink SCXW184290838 BCX0" href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/strengthening-our-safeguards-through-collaboration-with-us-caisi-and-uk-aisi?subjects=societal-impacts" target="_blank"><span class="TextRun Underlined SCXW184290838 BCX0" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0" data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">Anthropic</span></span></a><span class="TextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">, </span></span><a class="Hyperlink SCXW184290838 BCX0" href="https://openai.com/index/us-caisi-uk-aisi-ai-update/" target="_blank"><span class="TextRun Underlined SCXW184290838 BCX0" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0" data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">OpenAI</span></span></a><span class="TextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">, </span></span><a class="Hyperlink SCXW184290838 BCX0" href="https://deepmind.google/blog/deepening-our-partnership-with-the-uk-ai-security-institute/" target="_blank"><span class="TextRun Underlined SCXW184290838 BCX0" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0" data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">DeepMind</span></span></a><span class="TextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0" lang="EN-GB" data-contrast="none"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">)</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">, key UK officials, and other governments </span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">to</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0"> inform their respective deployment, research, and policy decision-making</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW184290838 BCX0">.</span></span> </p>
<p><span data-contrast="none">We have published on several topics, including novel automated attack algorithms (</span><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.15001"><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">Boundary Point Jailbreaking</span></span></a><span data-contrast="none">), </span><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07192"><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">poisoning attacks</span><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">,</span></span></a><span data-contrast="none"> </span><a href="https://www.aisi.gov.uk/work/making-safeguard-evaluations-actionable"><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">safeguards safety cases</span><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">,</span></span></a><span data-contrast="none"> </span><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.14828"><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">defending finetuning APIs,</span></span></a><span data-contrast="none"> </span><a href="https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2025/01/technical-blog-strengthening-ai-agent-hijacking-evaluations"><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">third-party attacks on agents,</span></span></a><span data-contrast="auto"> </span><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.09024"><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">agent misuse</span></span></a><span data-contrast="none">, and </span><a href="https://www.aisi.gov.uk/research"><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">pre-training data filtering</span></span></a><span data-contrast="auto">.</span><span data-contrast="none"> Some example impact cases have been advancing the benchmarking of agent misuse, identifying novel vulnerabilities and collaborating with frontier labs to mitigate them, and producing insights into the feasibility and effectiveness of attacks and defences in </span><span data-contrast="auto">data poisoning </span><span data-contrast="none">and fine-tuning APIs. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></p>
<h2><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2">Role Description </span></span><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 2"> </span></span><span data-ccp-props="{"134245418":true,"134245529":true,"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></h2>
<p><span data-contrast="none">We’re looking for research scientists and research engineers for our misuse sub-team with expertise developing and analysing attacks and protections for systems based on large language models or who have broader experience with frontier LLM research and development. An ideal candidate would have a strong track record of performing and publishing novel and impactful research in these or other areas of LLM research. We’re looking for:</span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></p>
<ul>
<li><strong><span data-contrast="none">Research Scientists</span></strong><span data-contrast="none">, who</span><span data-contrast="none"> typically lead </span><em><span data-contrast="none">technical direction </span></em><span data-contrast="none">– picking the questions, designing the experiments, and owning the conclusions (typically evidenced by a strong publication record).</span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559685":720,"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></li>
<li><strong><span data-contrast="none">Research Engineers</span></strong><span data-contrast="none">, who</span><span data-contrast="none"> typically lead </span><em><span data-contrast="none">execution</span></em><span data-contrast="none"> – building the systems and code that make those experiments possible at scale, and owning reliability, speed, and reproducibility.</span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559685":720,"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></li>
</ul>
<p><span data-contrast="none">In practice, we can support staff’s work spanning or alternating between research and engineering. </span><strong><span data-contrast="none">If you have a preference, please specify this in your application.</span></strong><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></p>
<p><span data-contrast="none">The team is currently led by </span><a href="https://www.aisi.gov.uk/people/eric-winsor"><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">Eric Winsor</span></span></a><span data-contrast="none"> and </span><a href="https://x.com/alxndrdavies?lang=en"><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-charstyle="Hyperlink">Xander Davies</span></span></a><span data-contrast="none">. You’ll work with incredible technical staff across AISI, including alumni from Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepMind, and top universities. You may also collaborate with external teams from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gray Swan. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></p>
<p><span data-contrast="none">We are open to hires at junior, senior, staff and principal research scientist levels. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></p>
<h3><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 3">Representative projects you might work on </span></span><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 3"> </span></span><span data-ccp-props="{"134245418":true,"134245529":true,"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></h3>
<ul>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1"><span data-contrast="none">Designing, building, running and evaluating methods to automatically attack and evaluate safeguards, such as LLM-automated attacking and direct optimisation approaches. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559739":0}"> </span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1"><span data-contrast="none">Building a benchmark for asynchronous monitoring for signs of misuse and jailbreak development across multiple model interactions. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559739":0}"> </span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="3" data-aria-level="1"><span data-contrast="none">Investigating novel attacks and defences for data poisoning LLMs with backdoors or other attacker goals. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559739":0}"> </span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="2" data-list-defn-props="{"335552541":1,"335559685":720,"335559991":360,"469769226":"Symbol","469769242":[8226],"469777803":"left","469777804":"","469777815":"hybridMultilevel"}" data-aria-posinset="4" data-aria-level="1"><span data-contrast="none">Performing adversarial testing of frontier AI system safeguards and producing reports that are impactful and action-guiding for safeguard developers. </span><span data-ccp-props="{"335559739":0}"> </span></li>
</ul>
<h2><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 3">What </span><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 3">we’re</span><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 3"> looking for </span></span><span data-contrast="none"><span data-ccp-parastyle="heading 3"> </span></span><span data-ccp-props="{"134245418":true,"134245529":true,"335559738":240,"335559739":240}"> </span></h2>
<p><span data-contrast="none">The experiences listed below should be interpreted a