Senior Testing Product and Strategy Lead
About the AI Security Institute
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, and we work with frontier developers and governments globally.
We’re here because governments are critical for advanced AI going well, and AISI is uniquely positioned to mobilize them. With our resources and the UK government's unique agility and international influence, this is the best place to shape both AI development and government action.
Senior Testing Product and Strategy Lead
Role Summary
We are looking for a senior, high-agency technical product leader to own the long-term technical vision and strategy for AISI’s frontier AI security testing programme, along with driving improvements to technical reliability, efficiency, and scalability of the programme.
You will report to the head of AISI’s Testing Team and collaborate closely with researchers and engineers from our evaluations teams and infrastructure team, as well as policy and delivery teams.
The Testing Team sits within the Research Unit, which is responsible for advancing our work on frontier AI evaluations and impact assessments, safeguards and interventions, risk modelling, and foundational AI safety research. The testing team is responsible for our overall testing strategy, and the end-to-end preparation and delivery of individual testing exercises. In particular, the Testing Team is responsible for:
- Ensuring the UK government, international partners and the public have high
quality, accurate information about frontier AI system capabilities and how these are developing over time.
- Providing an independent source of information to frontier AI developers about
system capabilities and safety, enabling iterative improvements to the safety of their overall systems.
Responsibilities
The role offers the opportunity to progress both strategy and technical work at the frontier of AI safety and governance and explore new opportunities for impact. You will:
- Own and continuously refine our testing vision and strategy across pre-deployment and post-deployment capability and safeguard robustness testing, along with deeper research collaborations with frontier AI developers. Given our research ambitions, operational constraints and policy uncertainties we will need to refine our theories of impact and iteratively discover “product market fit”.
- Translate the vision into a roadmap for systematic improvements to the technical reliability, efficiency, and scalability of testing exercises, that balances ambition, risk, and available research and engineering capacity. This will involve turning high-level requirements into concrete, technically grounded specs in partnership with our Platform and Evaluation teams.
- Drive improvements across testing exercises by creating and maintaining success and health metrics, and feedback loops with the researchers, engineers and delivery managers involved in testing exercises, to discover gaps, bottlenecks and emerging needs.
- Drive alignment with the research teams by acting as the connective tissue between researchers, engineers, and policy leads—keeping goals, scope, and timelines for systematic improvements clear for everyone. A key partner will also be the Science of Evaluations team, which is responsible for providing internal quality assurance on our empirical results and driving adoption of best practices across testing exercises.
What we are looking for
To set you up for success, we are looking for some of the following skills, experience and attitudes, but we are flexible in shaping the role to your background and expertise.
Technical depth
- 5+ years of experience in industry, startups, or academia and a deep familiarity with technical (frontier) AI and safety research and its implications for the policy and governance.
- Knowledge of training, fine-tuning, scaffolding, prompting, deploying, and/or evaluating current cutting-edge machine learning systems such as large language models.
- Ability to engage with researchers and engineer, ask the right technical questions and make sound judgements and trade-offs on feasibility vs. impact.
Product leadership
- Proven track record of designing and executing ambitious, high-impact strategies.
- Significant experience leading technical product management / programme management, tech strategy or equivalent, shipping complex software or ML infrastructure.
- Excellent project management skills, with experience defining milestones, managing dependencies, navigating shifting requirements or tight deadlines, while motivating people across multiple teams.
Collaboration & communication
- Track record of building trust and alignment with world-class multi-disciplinary teams, including scientists, engineers, and senior stakeholders across industry and government.
- Excellent verbal and written communication—able to distil complex topics into crisp narratives and actionable recommendations.
Mindset
- Ability to work autonomously and in a self-directed way with high agency, thriving in a constantly changing environment, while navigating broad, ambiguous problems in a pragmatic way.
- Ability to think in terms of systems, spots patterns, design processes and continuously improve them.
Core requirements
- You should be able to spend at least 4 days per week on working with us.
- You should be able to join us for at least 24 months.
- You should be able work from our office in London (Whitehall) for parts of the week, but we provide flexibility for remote work.
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
This role sits outside of the DDaT pay framework given the scope of this role requires in depth technical expertise in frontier AI safety, machine learning, and empirical research experience.
There are a range of pension options available which can be found through the Civil Service website.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:
- A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
- A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
- An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
- Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.
- The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.
Selection Process
In accordance with the Civil Service Commission rules, the following list contains all selection criteria for the interview process.
The interview process may vary candidate to candidate, however, you should expect a typical process to include some technical proficiency tests, discussions with a cross-section of our team at AISI (including non-technical staff), conversations with your team lead. The process will culminate in a conversation with members of the senior team here at AISI.
Candidates should expect to go through some or all of the following stages once an application has been submitted:
- Initial interview
- Technical take home test
- Second interview and review of take home test
- Third interview
- Final interview with members of the senior team
Nationality Requirements
If you do not meet the standard nationality requirements as detailed below, then we would still encourage you to submit an application. We may be able to explore other options such as seconding you in from either your current employer or a third party organisation. Not meeting the nationality rules set out below should not be seen as an automatic barrier to applying for this role.
Further Information
Existing Civil Servants and applicants from accredited NDPBs are eligible to apply, and can be considered on loan basis (Civil Servants) or secondment (accredited NDPBs). Prior agreement to be released on a loan basis must be obtained before commencing the application process. In the case of Civil Servants, the terms of the loan will be agreed between the home and host department and the Civil Servant. This includes grade on return.
Reasonable Adjustment
We are proud to be a disability confident leader and we welcome applications from disabled candidates and candidates with long-term conditions.
We fully support adjustments throughout our recruitment process and we encourage candidates to discuss their adjustment needs by emailing the job contact which can be found under the contact point for applicants section.
We do not have an exhaustive list of adjustments that we support but just some examples include additional time to complete your application form, behaviour questions up to 72 hours prior to interview and having extra time at interview.
If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.
If successful and transferring from another Government Department a criminal record check may be carried out.
New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.
A location based reserve list of successful candidates will be kept for 12 months. Should another role become available within that period you may be offered this position.
Please note terms and conditions are attached. Please take time to read the document to determine how these may affect you.
Any move to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk
DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).
DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign.
DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.
In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service on your behalf.
However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct. If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk stating the job reference number in the subject heading.
Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment.
A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5 year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.
Feedback
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on 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).
Apply and further information
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name :active.campaigns@dsit.gov.uk
- Email :active.campaigns@dsit.gov.uk
Further information
Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the recruitment principles, and wish to make a complaint, then you should contact in the first instance DSITrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk . If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: Click here to visit Civil Service Commission/Complaints
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
Diversity and Inclusion
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