Research Engineer – Human Influence

Role Description

We are looking for a Research Engineer to join the Human Influence team . Successful candidates will be strong researchers and engineers with a track record of carrying out scalable work in LLM post-training and fine-tuning , especially with Reinforcement Learning ; or w ith comparable expertise in engineering and validating large-scale evaluation pipelines.  

Projects the Research Engineer might deliver include:

Designing and building a Reinforcement Learning environment a imed at mitigating a model’s ability to e.g. deceive a user i n a one-to-one conversation or within multi-agent threads.  

Leveraging state-of-the-art interpretability methods to iden tify why models exhi bit con cerning behaviour , and designing mitigations that c an be applied to models irrespective of training regime.  

Building the scalable system architecture underpinning the repeatable delivery and analysis of model evaluations and benchmarks.  

Delivering ambitious, engineering-heavy research projects on Human Influence topics, for instance by leveraging post-training techniques on a large compute cluster.  

Who we're looking for  

This is a multidisciplinary team , and successful candidates come from a wide range of backgrounds.  

Essential

General:

Proven experience de ploy ing a benchmark, evaluation, or product to users, e.g. an evaluations pipeline in an app, an open-source contribution, or similar large-scale contributions to research.  

Clear understanding of the current AI safety literature, and an interest in topics relevant to Human Influence .  

Clear and consistent communication .  

Clear understanding of fundamental Machine Learning c o n c epts.  

Research and engineering:  

Experience fine-tuning or post-training LLMs using standard methods , using common libraries like PyTorch , Keras , JAX, or custom code.  

Comfortable working with RL environments and using RL or other reward-based methods to post-train or finetune an ML model, ideally an LLM .

Writing scalable and maintainable production code in (at least) Python.  

Comfortabl e with serving, scaling, and containerising ML code , e.g. using Docker, Kubernetes, Ray, FastAPI , SLURM, e specially on large compute clusters.  

Desirable

Good understanding of model internals, e.g. for mechanistic interpretability research, or analysing model activations and weights  

Experience shipping an AI safety pipeline to production (e.g. evaluations, monitoring, serving custom models), going beyond research prototypes

Experience using data to answer complex research questions, e.g. by scoping, training, and validating a classifier or finetuned LLM  

Experience with frontend and node.js deployments  

We will review applications as they come in, so would encourage you to apply early.  If you are interested in this role and have engineering leadership experience, you may also want to consider our open Engineering Lead position.  

What We Offer  

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.  

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.  

Growth & autonomy  

If you’re talented and driven, you’ll own important problems early.  

5 days off and 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.  

Life & family*  

Modern central London office, or where applicable, 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.    

*These benefits apply to direct employees. Benefits may differ for individuals joining through other employment arrangements such as secondments.  

Salary

Annual salary is benchmarked to role scope and relevant experience. Most offers land between £65,000 and £145,000 made up of a base salary plus a technical allowance (take-home salary = base + technical allowance). An additional 28.97% employer pension contribution is paid on the base salary.  

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.  

The full range of salaries are available below:  

Level 3:  £65,000–£75,000 (Base £39,850 + Technical Allowance £25,150–£35,150)

Level 4:  £85,000–£95,000 (Base £47,355 + Technical Allowance £37,645–£47,645)

Level 5:  £105,000–£115,000 (Base £61,620 + Technical Allowance £43,380–£53,380)

Level 6:  £125,000–£135,000 (Base £74,605 + Technical Allowance £50,395–£60,395)

Level 7:  £145,000 (Base £74,605 + Technical Allowance £70,395)

 

Additional Information

Use of AI in Applications

Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our  candidate guidance  for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

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. 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) . As part of the application process, we monitor statistics on D&I. You can see how we process this data here: Recruitment privacy notice - GOV.UK .

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