Product Lead- Strategic Awareness
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.
Strategic Awareness
The mission of our team is to harness technical insights on AI trajectories to inform governmental preparedness for the greatest challenges of transformative AI. To achieve this, we conduct deep dives on critical uncertainties regarding AI trajectories and impacts, track key indicators and warning signals, and produce briefs for key government decision makers. We also provide technical assistance on preparedness and policy development.
Role Summary
As Product Lead, you will be responsible for the team’s rapid briefs for key decision makers. This involves writing products that focus on reporting on the latest developments and analysing their implications for AI trajectories and preparedness work. This also involves making sure that the products produced by the team reach key decision makers and establishing feedback loops so that we continuously make our products more insightful and impactful. You will closely collaborate with the team’s researchers and policy experts with experience in government engagement.
We are looking for candidates who have broad AI expertise, exceptional written communication skills, and a track record of communication strategy. Day-to-day, you might write a fast turnaround reporting product on a new model release and its implications for different policy areas, draw together our research on AI trajectories into a regular product, monitor online sources for new developments to report on, or conduct customer interviews to identify feedback on how to improve our products. You will be working with other colleagues that are focusing on oral briefings and making developments salient.
Person Specification
The ideal candidate will demonstrate broad expertise on AI trajectories and implications, alongside exceptional written communications abilities. They will have a track record of creating technical content on AI for non-specialist audiences. They will have a strong foundation of knowledge of AI and its impacts. They will have strong strategic sense of communicating about key AI developments and risks, tailoring engagements to an audience, and iterating on messaging based on feedback loops.
Our work is fast moving and highly focused on doing work that is relevant for policy making – thus, we are looking for candidates who are happy to work in an agile workplace with fast turnaround times and frequent pivots of focus.
We are open to applications with varying levels of seniority.
Required Experience
We select candidates based on skills and experience in the following areas:
- All-round knowledge on AI trajectories and implications, including frontier AI training, capability trajectories, the AI supply chain, and implications, such as labour market impacts, societal impacts, geopolitical impacts, and loss of control risks.
- Strong track-record of exceptional written communication skills
- Science communication
- Interpersonal skills
Desired Experience
You may be a good fit if you have some of the following skills, experience, and attitudes:
- Policy or government experience
- Journalistic reporting experience, or experience writing successful newsletters or blogs
- AI safety research knowledge, model evaluations knowledge, or forecasting and foresight experience
- Masters/Bachelor’s degree in an AI/ML discipline (Ph.D. not necessary) or equivalent professional experience.
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, robustness and advanced AI architectures.
There are a range of pension options available which can be found through the Civil Service website.
Selection Process
In accordance with the Civil Service Commission rules, the following list contains all selection criteria for the interview process.
This post requires Security Clearance (SC), which requires at least 2 years of UK residency, and a willingness to undergo Developed Vetting (DV) if required. More detail on clearance eligibility can be found on the UK Government website.
National security vetting: clearance levels - GOV.UK
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
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