Research Engineer, Agentic Critical-Systems Cyber-Security

Company Description: Named in honour of Alan Turing, the Institute is a place for inspiring, exciting work and we need passionate, sharp, and innovative people who want to use their skills to contribute to our mission to make great leaps in data science and AI research to change the world for the better.

Position: Building on the successes of AI for Cyber Defence (AICD) Research Centre, the Defence & National Security (D&NS) Grand Challenge at the Alan Turing Institute is developing an ambitious programme of research to deliver a fundamental shift in Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) cyber‑resilience using AI. The focus of this new programme is the cyber resilience of CNI, including legacy operational technology (OT) and end‑of‑life operating systems; both of which underpin critical sectors from energy and water to data operations, but that cannot be patched, upgraded, or modified without risking operational disruption or invalidating safety certification.

Working alongside a team of talented researchers and engineers at the intersection of machine‑learning and cyber security, you will advance the research and engineering needed to:

• Build and support the development of LLM‑based, agentic systems that can autonomously assess and harden hosts which have reached end‑of‑life status but are necessary for critical infrastructure.
• In the context of networks that include legacy / cyber‑physical hosts, you will build and evaluate autonomous systems capable of discovery, vulnerability assessment, firewall policy generation, traffic monitoring, and defensive response.
• Build and refine simulation environments that are representative of genuine CNI use cases, including legacy operating systems running industrial software communicating over OT protocols.
• Research novel methods to guarantee the operational properties of systems are unharmed by agentic monitoring and hardening interventions.
• Contribute to high‑quality research publications and open source code repositories supporting the overall project aims.

As a team we aim for high‑impact research and innovation that delivers value for our stakeholders and the wider scientific, industrial, and government communities. Day to day, we collaborate with technical and subject matter experts from our partner organisations as well as academics, software engineers, and data scientists from across the Turing's research community. We present our work to a range of audiences including research colleagues, senior decision makers and non‑technical stakeholders. We are a cross‑disciplinary team and encourage applications from computer and information security researchers, cyber security practitioners, software engineers, computer scientists, machine learning scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, data scientists, and data engineers. The team practices an agile, experiment‑driven approach and values a positive, supportive and collaborative environment in which 'radical candour' and 'lifelong learning' are encouraged. We embrace failure as a learning opportunity and necessary precursor to success. We are empowered to take ownership of our work and operate with a high level of autonomy in our roles, to deliver measurable impact to our partners.

Role Purpose: This role will sit within the Defence and National Security Grand Challenge and will focus on advancing resilience of CNI by designing, building, and evaluating LLM‑driven agentic systems for the autonomous hardening of legacy operational technology and industrial control systems.

Eligibility for Security Check (SC) Clearance: Eligibility for Security Check (SC) clearance is a requirement for this role. Eligibility criteria and further information on the process can be found on the UK Government security vetting website.

How You Will Make an Impact:

• Collaboratively design, build and maintain agentic, AI systems and evaluation suites that support CNI cyber resilience and legacy software hardening against known vulnerabilities.
• Develop virtualisation based digital twin environments and implement techniques for assuring operational continuity in the context of CNI.
• Develop realistic virtualised environments with legacy OT/ICS hosts, including legacy operating system instances running OT/ICS control software and with representative OT protocol traffic.
• Contribute to high‑quality collaborative research as part of the Turing's CNI resilience mission.
• Develop CNI‑relevant scenarios with clear threat models, operational continuity criteria, and defensible assumptions; document limitations and known failure modes explicitly.
• Implement reproducible evaluation pipelines: configuration‑driven runs, dataset/version management, baseline implementations and auditable reporting outputs.
• Develop and validate metrics and scoring methods.
• Carry out analysis that supports credible interpretation of results (failure case analysis, ablations and sensitivity checks).

Requirements:

• A Master's degree (or equivalent experience and/or qualifications) in cyber/information security, AI, machine learning, computer science, engineering, or a related discipline.
• Experience integrating with LLM APIs and building agentic or tool‑calling pipelines, for example using LangGraph, LangChain, AutoGen or a comparable framework to implement multi‑step reasoning workflows.
• Able to demonstrate an understanding of network security principles including at least one of: defensive/offensive security techniques, network traffic analysis, or cyber‑physical systems security.
• Prior experience developing software in a scientific computing context, ideally in Python.
• Experience in frameworks such as NumPy, Tensorflow, PyTorch, Ray/RLLib, Stable Baselines.
• Experience in development suites, systems and versioning products (e.g., Git, IDEs, Linux).
• Track record of delivering working research software or applied engineering artefacts with measurable outcomes.
• Experience of working in a team and interact professionally within a team of engineers, researchers and students.
• Evidence of high‑quality publication(s) in a relevant field commensurate with your career stage.

Other Information:

Application Procedure: If you are interested in this opportunity, please click the apply button below. You will need to register on the applicant portal and complete the application form including your CV and covering letter. Your covering letter should focus on the following:

• Your motivation for applying for this role
• An overview of your experience developing software in a scientific computing context
• Publication list (if not covered in CV)

If you have questions about the role or would like to apply using a different format, please contact us at recruitment@turing.ac.uk.

Closing Date for Applications: SUNDAY 12 APRIL 2026 23:59 (LONDON, UK BST)

Terms and Conditions: This post is offered on a full time, fixed‑term basis until 31 March 2027. The annual salary is £45,505 - £51,241 plus excellent benefits, including flexible working and family friendly policies.

The Alan Turing Institute is based at the British Library, in the heart of London's Knowledge Quarter. We expect staff to come to our office at least 4 days per month. Some roles may require more days in the office; the hiring manager will be able to confirm this during the interview.

Security Clearance: The successful candidate may be required to undergo a pre‑screening check prior to an offer being made. This check will be carried out by HMG Defence and Security Partners. Please be advised, by submitting your application you are consenting to this check, and your personal details (full name, date of birth and home address) to be passed onto our HMG Defence and Security Partners to carry out this check.

Many roles in the Defence and National Security Programme require higher levels of National Security Vetting where applicants must typically have 5 to 10 years of continuous residency in the UK or a NATO country depending on the vetting level required for the role, to allow for meaningful security vetting checks, amongst other factors. These roles are subject to security restrictions by Turing's partners.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: We value diversity of background, experience, and perspective, and are proud to be an inclusive employer. We warmly encourage applications from all backgrounds, particularly from groups currently under‑represented in our sector. If you feel passionate about this role but don't meet every single requirement, please apply - we recognise that great candidates may bring strengths beyond the criteria listed. We are committed to making sure our recruitment process is accessible and inclusive. This includes making reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability or long‑term condition. Please contact us at recruitment@turing.ac.uk to advise us how we can assist you.

Please note all offers of employment are subject to obtaining and retaining the right to work in the UK and satisfactory pre‑employment security screening which includes a DBS Check. Full details on the pre‑employment screening process can be requested from employee@turing.ac.uk.