![Department for Science, Innovation & Technology](https://patchworkhub.org/uploads/0000/770/2024/05/31/screenshot-2024-05-31-144711.png)
Senior Software Engineer (AI Safety Institute)
- Public sector
- 15/07/2024
- £65,000.00 - £135,000.00 /yearly
- Fixed Term Contract
Job Type
Salary
Date Posted:
Expiration date:
Job ID
About the AI Safety Institute
The AI Safety Institute is the first state-backed organisation focused on advancing AI safety for the public interest. We launched at the Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit in 2023 because we believe taking responsible action on this extraordinary technology requires a capable and empowered group of technical experts within government.
We have ambitious goals and need to move fast.
Our staff includes senior alumni from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, start-ups and the UK government, and ML professors from leading universities. We are now calling on the worlds top technical talent to join us. This is a truly unique opportunity to help shape AI safety at an international level.
As more powerful models are expected to hit the market over the course of 2024, AISIs mission to push for safe and responsible development and deployment of AI is more important than ever.
What we value:
The AI Safety Institute is seeking skilled Senior Software Engineers to build the evaluations for next-generation frontier AI systems. Our Sr. SWEs work on a wide range of critical products and infrastructure for that goal: from building our core evaluation framework, to developing state of the art AI agents, to writing complex orchestration for multi-actor cybersecurity tests. This position offers a unique opportunity to be the core part of one of the leading organisations in the AI research and governance space.
The role
Our Senior Software Engineers work both on the core platform and infrastructure underlying our evaluations as well as directly within our individual research teams. This requires a mix of skills across our engineers: Creating expert interfaces and highly accessible red-teaming frontends, providing fast and secure inference channels for internal and external models, as well as ML ops capabilities for hosting and fine-tuning our own models.
It also requires cross-functional collaboration, as our SWEs work closely with scientists, domain experts, and research engineers to develop brand new evaluation tools that leverage emerging research, while maintaining high levels of privacy and security integrity.
We work with a mixture of our own custom and open-source evaluation, analysis and visualisation frameworks. While much of our work will require prototyping and proving completely new approaches, our expectation is to ultimately deliver rock-solid outputs and evaluations that can be depended on.
You will be expected to bring your own experience and opinions when it comes to software architecture, and the design of the user-facing parts of our evaluation's platform.
On any given day you will be interacting with researchers, research engineers, UX designers or our operations team to define requirements, turn those requirements into designs, prototypes or production code in collaboration with other engineers, and make sure that our platform is bug-free, stable and covered with a solid amounts of tests to withstand the ever-increasing evaluation traffic. All while ensuring privacy and security requirements of the highest standards.
Requirements & Experience
You will need significant combined experience in one or more of the following areas:
We highly encourage generalists to apply but there is no need to check all the boxes.
This role may be a great fit if you:
Machine Learning
Core requirements
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:
Application
To apply for this post, please send us the following documents:
Why are you interested in joining the AISI right now?
What are the most important technical projects UK government needs to undertake within the next few months to advance AI Safety?
What do you want to be doing to drive those projects forward?
Is there anything else about your skills, experience or background youd like us to be aware of?
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
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 workstream lead. The process will culminate in a conversation with members of the senior team here at AISI.
Sift and interview process
Candidates should expect to go through some or all of the following stages once an application has been submitted:-
We reserve the right to close this vacancy with a two week notice period if we have received a sufficient number of applications. Please submit your application as early as possible to ensure that you are considered for the role.
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 [email protected] 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 applicants 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
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
DSIT T&Cs v1.2 Opens in new window (docx, 179kB) |
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