Director of AI Policy

Location: Flexible location within the UK, with the expectation of attending our central London office at least two days a week, including Mondays.

Start date: We are aiming to complete this hiring round by mid‑September with the chosen candidate starting as soon as possible after receiving an offer. Applications for this role have now closed.

The Centre for Long‑Term Resilience (CLTR) is a UK‑based, non‑profit and independent think tank with a mission to transform global resilience to extreme risks. We work with governments and institutions, offering targeted, evidence‑based advice designed to enhance understanding, decision‑making and governance – with a particular emphasis on advising the UK government.

At CLTR, we focus on three prioritised policy areas that, when addressed effectively, can substantially reduce both present and prospective global threats:

• biosecurity
• artificial intelligence
• improving how governments manage extreme risks, particularly those from loss of control over powerful and misaligned AI systems, disruption to critical infrastructure, AI‑enabled pandemics, and AI’s involvement in military escalation.

You would be joining a passionate and committed team with diverse experiences spanning academia, healthcare, government, non‑profit organisations, and the private sector. We place immense value on enabling our experts to do their best work and on fostering a positive team culture that supports staff wellbeing and growth. CLTR’s approach is anchored in our three core values:

• integrity
• people first
• targeted real‑world impact.

AI Policy at CLTR

Our AI Policy unit works to develop and advocate for policy recommendations that could mitigate extreme risks from AI development and deployment. We work primarily with the UK government, with an eye to how the UK can influence international norms, best practices, and regulations. The extreme risks from AI we focus on include:

• Risks arising from the deployment of AI in high‑stakes contexts, such as defence or critical infrastructure;
• Risks arising from the misuse of AI capabilities, such as to manipulate elections or develop novel weapons;
• Risks arising from the development of certain advanced AI capabilities, such as deceptive or power‑seeking behaviour.

Some of our recent work includes:

• Convening workshops with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and civil society on the impacts of geopolitical changes on UK’s approach to AI legislation.
• Providing proposals for improving preparedness for advanced AI and AGI to the AI Security Institute (AISI).
• Advocating for frontier AI regulation in a roundtable with the DSIT Secretary of State.

What You’ll Do

To be successful in this role, our new Director of AI Policy will:

• Chart a clear vision and strategy for the unit’s impact;
• Inspire and enable the unit to effectively execute on this vision;
• Expertly represent the unit in key stakeholder engagement and public policy discussions.

AI Unit Leadership (approximately 30% of the role):

• Setting and communicating the overall strategic direction of the AI unit.
• Setting and overseeing priorities for the unit.
• Overseeing and ensuring delivery of high‑quality projects.
• Managing and supporting team members to do their best work.
• Building and managing a great team of contractors and future hires with any additional specialist expertise needed.

AI Policy Development (approximately 20% of the role):

• Identifying high‑impact policy areas within the AI unit’s strategic priorities that require further policy development and/or advocacy.
• Scoping short‑term projects to develop robust and evidence‑based policy recommendations within those policy areas, and advocating for them effectively.
• Informing your work and the wider unit’s understanding by employing a range of research methods, including interviewing experts, hosting workshops, conducting literature reviews and summarising research.
• Delivering research or policy analysis in response to high‑value requests from government stakeholders, where and when these align with our strategic priorities.

Stakeholder Engagement (approximately 30% of the role):

• Representing CLTR at AI conferences, meetings and other public and private events.
• Building new key relationships with senior government stakeholders, including planning, attending and leading meetings with government officials.
• Together with our Director of Communications & Advocacy, maintaining our relationships with current government stakeholders while actively strengthening our network, including by learning how CLTR can be most helpful.
• Ensuring CLTR continues liaising and coordinating closely with relevant collaborators in the extreme AI risk and policy space, and enabling unit team members to strengthen and draw on strong networks in the space.
• Connecting government stakeholders to leading subject matter experts.
• Promoting our policy recommendations to government audiences through private and public engagement and coordination, sometimes including media outreach.

CLTR Teamwork (approximately 20% of the role):

• Contributing to proactive and reactive fundraising work.
• Playing an active role as part of CLTR’s Leadership Team.
• Providing constructive feedback to colleagues and reciprocating with support for team inputs.
• Collaborating on cross‑unit projects, uniting our policy areas and workstreams under the CLTR mission.

Who You Are

We are looking for someone with a proven track record of leadership, impact, and experience in AI policy.

• Exceptional ability to steer a course for impact in the extreme AI risk policy space, with excellent analytical ability and clarity of communication.
• Excellent general understanding of extreme AI risk and policy, including how CLTR fits into the extreme AI risk ecosystem, and which recommendations to make.
• Confidently and successfully act as a representative of the unit to external stakeholders, to position CLTR as the top authority on extreme AI risk and raise extreme AI risk as a priority by taking an active part in public policy discussion.
• Either a well‑established network in the UK government emerging tech space, or a strong network in the extreme AI risk policy space.
• Demonstrably strong organisational skills.
• Able to lead the AI unit in effectively executing on the strategy and producing top quality work, through oversight and quality assurance, while enabling team members to confidently and independently scope and execute their work.
• Alignment with, and ability to role‑model, our values and mission.

As an employer, we encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply and do not discriminate based on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. We also warmly welcome applicants returning to work after career breaks.

Salary and benefits: £100k+, alongside generous benefits. In addition to your salary, CLTR offers a generous benefits package which includes:

• 30 days annual leave, plus public holidays.
• £5,000 (before tax) annual wellbeing budget for you to spend at your discretion on items such as gym membership, therapy, meditation, etc.
• £3,000 annual learning and development budget, plus up to five days paid work time.
• £2,000 onboarding grant for equipment and supplies.
• A pension contribution scheme (up to 7% employer‑matched contribution).
• Private health insurance.
• Group life insurance.
• Generous parental leave benefits.
• Paid office lunches twice a week.

Working with CLTR also comes with a commitment to caring deeply about your wellbeing, career development and overall experience working with our team, and to respect your preferred working patterns, including flexible working hours as agreed with line managers, wherever possible.

Location and travel requirements: Flexible location within the UK, with the expectation of attending our central London office at least twice a week, including Mondays. We may be open to exploring remote working arrangements in exceptional circumstances for a limited period of time. We may be able to sponsor visas for this role, so please do not let this keep you from applying.