Software Engineer - Cyber & Autonomous Systems Team

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 (the Prime Minister's office), and we work with frontier developers and governments globally. We’re here because governments are critical for advanced AI going well, and UK AISI is uniquely positioned to mobilise them. With our resources, unique agility and international influence, this is the best place to shape both AI development and government action.

About the team

AI capabilities in cybersecurity and autonomy are advancing faster than at any point in history. Frontier models can now work through multi-step network intrusions, discover and exploit software vulnerabilities, and carry out long-horizon technical tasks with increasing independence. These are extraordinary tools for scientific and economic progress, but also have the potential for serious harm if misused or deployed without adequate oversight, as seen in the recent cybersecurity incidents.

Our Cyber & Autonomous Systems Team evaluates the capability of both frontier and open-weight AI models in cybersecurity, autonomy and AI R&D, ensuring the UK government and its partners have an accurate view of risks and capabilities. We use realistic cyber ranges and a large CTF suite for our evaluations, run pre-deployment testing of frontier models, and collaborate with our partners across UK government, frontier labs, and NCSC.

Role Description

We are looking for exceptional Software Engineers at all experience levels, from junior through to senior or staff, who want to work at the forefront of frontier AI security. In this role, you’ll work with cutting-edge technologies on research problems with real-world impact, and receive mentorship and coaching from your manager and the technical leads on your team.

Your day-to-day work might include:

• Building state-of-the-art evaluations (e.g., cyber ranges)
• Running pre-deployment testing exercises (e.g., Claude Mythos Preview)
• Validating novel model behaviours (e.g., models cheating in evaluations)
• Answering timely research questions (e.g., the capabilities of open-weight models)

You would be working alongside engineers and researchers who care deeply about the impact of their work, take pride in their craft, and have a high level of autonomy.

Core Responsibilities

• Build evaluation infrastructure: develop systems and code that make cyber and autonomy evaluations possible at scale.
• Develop analysis tooling: turn raw results into insights, including LLM-as-a-judge and other analysis workflows.
• Lead testing exercises: identify key research questions, run evaluations to collect evidence, analyse results, and communicate findings and recommendations.
• Deliver engineering work: own technical projects and shared components from design through implementation, iteration, and maintenance.
• Write production-quality code: build scalable, robust, maintainable Python software with strong testing, documentation, and observability practices.

Example projects

• Onboard a cyber range: deploy a new cyber range on AISI’s evaluation infrastructure (for example, Proxmox) and verify it meets the internal Evaluation Quality Standard.
• Build an image pipeline: create a pipeline that converts infrastructure-as-code into AMIs ready for evaluation.
• Develop a more secure sandbox service: partner with Core Technology to improve AISI’s sandbox platform, representing CAST to ensure the service meets its evaluation requirements.
• Prepare data for publication: collect, validate, and organise evaluation data to support publication of research findings.

Impact

Your work will directly shape the UK government's understanding of AI cyber capabilities, inform safety standards for frontier AI systems, and contribute to the global effort to develop rigorous evaluation methodologies. The evaluations you build will help determine how advanced AI systems are assessed before deployment.

Who we're looking for

We're flexible on the exact profile and expect successful candidates will meet many (but not necessarily all) of the criteria below:

Essential

• Delivering and maintaining production-quality software
• Deep Python experience, with a clear view of what good Python looks like and broad familiarity with the wider ecosystem and tooling
• Designing and evolving software systems or technical architecture
• Strong interest in helping to improve the safety of AI systems
• Take ownership of ambiguous, technically hard problems and follow through
• Communicate clearly and raise engineering standards through feedback and mentoring

Desirable

• Cybersecurity or adversarial-security expertise
• Building, operating, or analysing AI evaluations
• Experience building, deploying, and operating production systems using DevOps practices
• Familiarity with AI misuse and loss-of-control threat models

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.