Engineering Lead, Chem Bio

Details

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Reference number

480003 Salary

£74,605 - £125,000 Base £74,605 + Technical Allowance £50,395 A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97% GBP Job grade

Grade 6### Contract type

Fixed term### Length of employment

24 months### Business area

DSIT - Digital, Technologies and Telecoms### Type of role

Other### Working pattern

Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time### Number of jobs available

1 Contents ------------

• Location
• About the job
• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

Location

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LondonAbout the job -----------------

Job summary

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

AISI’s Chem-Bio team conducts technical research to assess evolving AI capabilities related to scientific R\&D and chemical and biological misuse, as well as the effectiveness of technical safeguards that might mitigate risks arising from those capabilities.

The goal of our research is to inform critical decisions on security, opportunities, policy, and risk mitigation made by governments and AI developers.

We’re a close-knit, unusually interdisciplinary team — made up of machine learning researchers and engineers, software engineers, virologists and bacteriologists, behavioural research scientists, biosecurity experts, long-standing chem-bio policy specialists and talented generalists — who work closely with other technical and policy teams across government.

Job description

Role Description

The Chem-Bio team is building a dedicated engineering capability to support a growing portfolio of high-impact technical research. We are looking for an exceptional Engineering Lead to help build and lead this capability.

This is a senior, hands-on role for someone who enjoys designing and building robust systems in a research-heavy environment. You will lead technical delivery for shared platforms, tooling, and infrastructure that enable Chem-Bio research, while also leading the CB team’s engineers and helping establish strong engineering practices.

You will work closely with researchers to translate ambiguous, fast-evolving requirements into reliable internal tools and systems. You should be excited by both building things yourself and helping others do their best work.

What you might work on

Working in Chem-Bio, you might

• Build platforms that allow researchers to run evaluations and experiments quickly, reliably, and safely across a range of agentic and model-based systems
• Develop shared infrastructure for science-oriented AI research, including support for language models, multimodal models, specialist chemical or biological workflows, and large-scale experiment management
• Support the design and deployment of systems used to study model capabilities, safeguards, and misuse risk in high-stakes scientific domains
• Partner with researchers to turn ambiguous technical requirements into robust internal tools, frameworks, and reusable components
• Coordinate with other engineering teams at AISI to adopt common infrastructure where appropriate and develop bespoke solutions where needed

As Engineering Lead, you will

• Lead technical delivery for Chem-Bio engineering — define priorities for shared platforms, tooling, and infrastructure, and ensure engineering work is aligned with the team’s research needs
• Shape strategy of the wider Chem-Bio team – take a leadership role for the team’s wider technical strategy alongside the Workstream Leads
• Design and build critical systems — architect, implement, and maintain the internal tools and infrastructure that support experiments, evaluations, and analysis
• Work closely with researchers — understand varied technical needs across Chem-Bio workstreams and translate them into well-engineered, maintainable solutions
• Support and guide the team’s engineers — provide day-to-day technical leadership, feedback, and coaching, and help create a high-trust, effective team environment
• Shape engineering standards and ways of working — improve code quality, testing, documentation, reliability, security, and maintainability in a fast-moving research setting
• Contribute to technical planning — help identify common engineering needs across projects, break down work, and ensure effort is focused on high-value problems
• Work across classification systems – build out the team’s access to and work on secure compute
• Coordinate across AISI engineering teams — work with Core Technology and other teams to share infrastructure, align approaches where useful, and avoid unnecessary duplication
• Support hiring as the team grows — contribute to interviewing and candidate assessment, and help define the skills needed in future hires
• Remain hands-on on important technical problems — write code, review designs, unblock delivery, and step into ambiguous or high-priority work where needed

Person specification

Role Requirements

We are looking for the following skills, experience and attitudes, though successful candidates may not meet every criterion. We can be flexible in shaping the role and salary to your background, expertise, and level of experience.

Strong candidates will typically have

• Significant experience building and maintaining complex software systems in Python or similar languages, with a strong track record of technical leadership
• Experience leading technical work in a team, whether as an Engineering Lead, Staff engineer, senior research engineer, tech lead, or similar
• Strong experience designing and operating cloud-based infrastructure and internal platforms, ideally including AWS, containers, infrastructure-as-code, orchestration systems, and CI/CD tooling
• Strong judgement on how to build reliable, maintainable systems in environments with ambiguous requirements and rapidly evolving priorities
• Experience partnering closely with highly technical stakeholders — for example researchers, scientists, product leads, or policy teams — and turning their needs into effective engineering solutions
• Ability to support and develop others, whether through line management, mentoring, or technical leadership
• An understanding of working in a security context and the requirements of leading engineering work across classification systems
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate clearly with both engineers and non-engineers
• A strong sense of mission, urgency, and responsibility for outcomes, including willingness to operate hands-on when needed

We would be especially excited by candidates with experience in one or more of:

• Research engineering or infrastructure for ML/AI teams
• LLM-based systems, model serving, evaluation frameworks, agent systems, or ML tooling
• Computational biology, bioinformatics, cheminformatics, or scientific software/infrastructure
• Secure infrastructure, access controls, auditing, or engineering in sensitive or regulated environments
• Building internal developer platforms or shared tooling for multi-team technical organisations
• Working in interdisciplinary environments combining software engineering with scientific, policy, or operational stakeholders

Other core requirements

Please note that this is a reserved post. We can only consider applications from UK nationals (including dual nationals who hold British citizenship). Appointment is conditional on successfully completing UK Government SC clearance. Prior clearance is not required — we will sponsor and support you. You should normally have been resident in the UK for the past 5 years. You may also be required toundergo Developed Vetting (DV). DV typically requires a longer period of UK residency (around 10 years). Employment is conditional on obtaining and maintaining the required clearance(s). More detail on clearance eligibility can be found on the UK Government website: National security vetting: clearance levels - GOV.UK

You should be able to spend at least 9 days per fortnight working with us.

You should be willing to work from our office in London (Whitehall) at least 3days/week.

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Successful candidates will be invited to a 45 minute technical/ strategy conversation where we will delve in to the candidates fit for the position. Details will be send to candidates in advance.

Benefits

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Alongside your salary of £74,605, Department for Science, Innovation \& Technology contributes £21,613 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides . The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

• A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
• Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
• An extensive range of learning \& professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
• Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.
• A hybrid office/home based working model where staff will spend a norm of 40-60% of their time in the office (minimum of 40%) over a month with flex dependent on balancing business and individual need.

Office attendance

The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.

Things you need to know

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Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.### Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles , and will assess your Experience and Technical skills. Candidates will be required to submit a CV that fits the essential criteria for the position. Successful candidates will be invited to a 45 minute technical/ strategy conversation where we will delve in to the candidates fit for the position. Further details of this will be sent to candidates in advance.

Further Information

Former DSIT recruitment campaigns are continuing as usual, but candidates should be aware that following the Government’s announcement on the changes to some civil service departments, roles will be subject to the machinery of government moves and will ultimately be in one of the new departments. We will provide more information if you are selected for a role. This work remains of high importance to the civil service, and we thank you for your continued interest.

Reasonable Adjustment

We are proud to be a disability confident leader and we welcome applications from disabled candidates and candidates with long-term conditions.

Information about the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and some examples of adjustments that we offer to disabled candidates and candidates with long-term health conditions during our recruitment process can be found in our DSIT Candidate Guidance. A DSIT Plain Text Version of the guidance is also available.

We encourage candidates to discuss their adjustment needs by emailing the job contact which can be found under the contact point for applicants section.

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.

Candidates who meet the minimum benchmark may be placed on a Reserve List for consideration for similar roles, including those at a lower grade. Candidates who narrowly miss the benchmark and are not placed on the Reserve List may still be considered for an offer in a similar role at a lower grade.

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; for further information visit the Childcare Choices website.

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 Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk 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 applicant’s 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

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.### Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check .

See our vetting charter . People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.### Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles . The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.### Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy .Apply and further information ---------------------------------

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans initiative. Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.### Contact point for applicants

Job contact

• Name : Ben Sams
• Email : ben.sams@dsit.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : ben.sams@dsit.gov.uk

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the recruitment principles, and wish to make a complaint, then you should contact in the first instance ben.sams@dsit.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: Click here to visit Civil Service Commission/Complaints.