Lead Research Scientist - Control Team

Our team's focus is on ensuring that even if frontier AI systems are misaligned, they can be effectively controlled . To achieve this, we are attempting to advance the state of conceptual research into control protocols and corresponding safety cases. Additionally, we will conduct realistic empirical research on mock frontier AI development infrastructure, helping to identify flaws in theoretical approaches and refine them accordingly.

As the lead research scientist on Control, you'll lead the conceptual and theoretical research efforts on control. Your team will initially include 3-4 research scientists, including researchers with existing experience in the control agenda and/or experience at frontier labs. Your responsibilities will encompass setting the research direction & agenda, ambitiously advancing the state of control research, as well as managing and developing an exceptional team. The ultimate goal is to make substantial improvements in the robustness of control protocols across major labs, particularly as we progress towards AGI.

The role will involve close collaboration with our research directors, including Geoffrey Irving and Yarin Gal , and work hand-in-hand with the Control empirics team. The empirics team will support your efforts by building realistic control settings that closely mimic the infrastructure and codebases used for frontier AI development, and by helping to develop empirical experiments. Research partnerships and collaborations with many of the leading frontier AI labs will also be a significant part of your role.

From a compute perspective, you will have excellent access to resources from both our research platform team and the UK's Isambard supercomputer (5,000 H100s).

You may be a good fit if you have some of the following skills, experience and attitudes. Please note that you don't need to meet all of these criteria, and if you're unsure, we encourage you to apply.

• Experience leading a research team or group that has delivered exceptional research in deep learning or a related field.
• Comprehensive understanding of frontier AI development, including key processes involved in research, data collection & generation, pre-training, post-training and safety assessment.
• Proven track record of academic excellence, demonstrated by novel research contributions and spotlight papers at top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR).
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convey complex ideas clearly and effectively to diverse audiences.
• Extensive experience in collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams, including researchers and engineers, and leading high-impact projects.
• A strong desire to improve the global state of AI safety.
• While existing experience working on control is desired, it is not a requirement for this role.

We are hiring individuals at the more senior ranges of the following scale (L5-L7). 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.

• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Level 7 - Total Package £145,000 inclusive of a base salary £68,770 plus additional technical talent allowance of £76,230

There are a range of pension options available which can be found through the Civil Service website.

In accordance with the Civil Service Commission rules, the following list contains all selection criteria for the interview process.

We select based on skills and experience regarding the following areas:

• Research problem selection
• Research science
• Writing code efficiently
• Python
• Frontier model architecture knowledge
• Frontier model training knowledge
• Model evaluations knowledge
• AI safety research knowledge
• Written communication
• Verbal communication
• Teamwork
• Interpersonal skills
• Tackle challenging problems
• Learn through coaching

We additionally may factor in experience with any of the areas that our work-streams specialise in:

• Autonomous systems
• Cyber security
• Chemistry or Biology
• Safeguards
• Safety Cases
• Societal Impacts