Strategy & Delivery Adviser - AI Security Institute

Responsibilities

Strategy & Delivery roles in AISI are broad by design. We encourage individuals to actively shape their role and innovate on the team’s modes and methods of working. Below is an illustrative, non-exhaustive list of potential responsibilities:

• Lead operational delivery for research projects from idea to output. This includes coordinating ethical and legal approvals, managing project deliverables and timelines, and establishing partnerships with third parties.
• Own high-priority special projects, like recruiting top Research Engineers to build the infrastructure our research depends on.
• Coordinate the team's objective-setting, pulling input from across the research team, working with the research lead, and contributing a view of what we should prioritise.
• Build impactful partnerships with researchers outside AISI, figuring out the operational mechanisms required (e.g. grants, contracts) and making them work.
• Bring our findings to stakeholders in AISI, the UK government, and AI labs. This includes drafting policy reports, delivering presentations, and briefing counterparts.

Person specification

Role

We are not looking for a particular CV. People do well in this role from a wide range of backgrounds and at a range of experience levels. What matters is a set of aptitudes:

• Agency: You take ownership and get things done without close direction, anticipating problems and resolving them before they escalate.
• Collaborativeness: You work well with people, gaining trust through reliability and building strong working relationships within the team, across AISI and wider government, and with external partners.
• Communication: You communicate effectively and adapt to your audience, whether expert or non-expert.
• Research interest: You can engage with academic research closely enough to coordinate it, following what a study is doing and why, without being a researcher yourself.
• Adaptability: You are comfortable with ambiguity and shifting priorities, and good at working out a sensible path forward when things are unclear.

The one thing that is essential: you want to reduce the risks that frontier AI poses to people and society, and the problems our team works on are the ones you want to help with.

This might not be the role for you if

• You want to conduct research yourself. You will have real influence over what the team works on and how, but you will not be doing research directly.
• You want a single, clearly-defined remit. You will be holding different priorities at once, and what is on your plate will change.
• You only want to work on strategy. A meaningful share of the job is the practical, hands-on work of making projects actually happen, and the role does not work without it.
• You need to be the expert in the room before you act. You will often be adding value in areas you are still learning.

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace

Alongside your salary of £44,620, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £12,926 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

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.

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 (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Apply using this link: Job Application for Strategy & Delivery Adviser - AI Security Institute at Civil Service Jobs

Application: you will be asked to submit a CV and answer 3 application questions (word count: 250 words max per question):

• Why do you want to work at the AI Security Institute, and why is the Societal Impacts team where you want to contribute?
• Which one societal risk from AI do you think our team should prioritise, and why?
• Tell us about a time you were responsible for delivering something difficult that depended on several people. What made it difficult, what did you do to keep it on track, and what was the outcome?

Interview 1: Experience interview

Interview 2: Task and Civil Service Behaviours Interview. The task details will be circulated ahead of the 2nd interview.

Interview 3: Final interview with Senior Leadership

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

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.

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) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein