Cognitive Scientist - Alignment

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.

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 deadline for applying this role is 15 June 2025, end of day, anywhere on Earth.

AISI's alignment team examines ways to prevent models from autonomously attempting to cause harm. The team's research is led by Geoffrey Irving, AISI's Chief Scientist - a research agenda can be found here.

This exciting new team is part of AISI's Solutions Group, which will also examine ways to prevent misuse risks (our Safeguards team) and ways to prevent models from causing harm, even if they are autonomously attempting to do so (our Control team).

ROLE SUMMARY

As a Cognitive Scientist working on alignment, you will:

• Develop and publish a research agenda carefully specifying the areas of cognitive science most relevant to alignment, leaning on safety case sketches written by yourself and/or the wider alignment team to ensure that research areas are clearly relevant and important.

• Carefully design experiments and human studies that precisely target the most important open problems in alignment.

• Supervise external research. We will fund the studies you design; you will need to supervise this research in a 'PI'-type role.

Person Specification

We are interested in hiring individuals at a range of seniority and experience within this team, including in Senior Cognitive Scientist positions. Calibration on final title, seniority and pay will take place as part of the recruitment process. We encourage all candidates who would be interested in joining to apply.

You may be a good fit if you have some of the following skills, experience and attitudes:

• Relevant cognitive science research experience in industry or academia (e.g. PhD in a relevant field and/or spotlight papers at relevant conferences).

• Broad knowledge of existing approaches to alignment (T-shaped: some deep knowledge, lots of shallow knowledge).

• Strong writing ability.

• Ability to work autonomously and in a self-directed way with high agency, thriving in a constantly changing environment and a steadily growing team, while figuring out the best and most efficient ways to solve a particular problem.

• Bring your own voice and experience but also an eagerness to support your colleagues together with a willingness to do whatever is necessary for the team's success and find new ways of getting things done within government.

• Have a sense of mission, urgency, and responsibility for success, problem-solving abilities and preparedness to acquire any missing knowledge necessary to get the job done.

• Comprehensive understanding of large language models (e.g. Claude 3.5). This might include both a broad understanding of the literature, as well as hands-on experience with things like pre-training or fine tuning LLMs.

• Experience working with world-class multi-disciplinary teams, including both scientists and engineers (e.g. in a top-3 AI lab).

Salary & Benefits

We are hiring individuals at all ranges of seniority and experience within this research unit, and this advert allows you to apply for any of the roles within this range. 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

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 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. We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). 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).