Head of Cyber and Autonomous Systems

Job summary

The AI Security Institute (AISI), launched at the 2023 Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit, is the world's first state-backed organisation dedicated to advancing AI security for the public interest. Our mission is to assess and mitigate risks from frontier AI systems, including cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, AI-enhanced chemical and biological threats, large-scale societal disruptions, and potential loss of control over increasingly powerful AI. In just one year, we've assembled one of the largest and most respected research teams, featuring renowned scientists and senior researchers from leading AI labs such as Anthropic, DeepMind, and OpenAI.

At AISI, we're building the premier institution for impacting both technical AI safety and AI governance. We conduct cutting-edge research, develop novel evaluation tools, and provide crucial insights to governments, companies, and international partners. By joining us, you'll collaborate with the brightest minds in the field, directly shape global AI policies, and tackle complex challenges at the forefront of technology and ethics. Whether you're a researcher, engineer, or policy expert, at AISI, you're not just advancing your career – you're positioned to have significant impact in the age of artificial intelligence.

Job description

Role Summary

The Head of Cyber and Autonomous Systems is the technical lead responsible for AISI’s work on evaluating advanced AI capabilities in cyber operations and autonomous systems. The role sits within the CAST portfolio in Research Unit 2 and provides technical leadership across multiple teams working on cyber offence, cyber defence, agentic autonomy, and complex tool-using systems.

This role is accountable for ensuring that AISI has a coherent, credible, and policy-relevant evidence base on cyber and autonomy risks from frontier AI systems. This includes defining what capabilities matter, how they should be measured, how evaluation results map onto risk models, and how evidence is synthesised for decision-makers across government.

The postholder will act as a cross-cutting technical authority within RU2, working closely with other capability leads (e.g. control, misuse, societal impacts) and with policy, intelligence, and security partners across UK government. While the role includes line-management and team leadership responsibilities, its core value is technical judgment, problem selection, and integration across research, evaluation, and risk analysis.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership and strategy

• Act as AISI’s lead for cyber and autonomous systems capabilities, setting direction across CAST teams working on these areas.
• Define and maintain a clear view of what evidence is required to measure AI risk arising from cyber and autonomy capabilities,

Evaluation design and delivery

• Oversee the creation of a comprehensive evaluation suite for cyber and autonomous capabilities, including agentic tasks, tool-use environments, and end-to-end attack or mission chains.
• Ensure evaluations are methodologically sound, reproducible, and interpretable, and that limitations and uncertainties are clearly understood.

Risk modelling and evidence integration

• Ensure that evaluation outputs map cleanly onto AISI risk models, threat frameworks, and policy questions, rather than existing as isolated technical artefacts.
• Integrate evidence from multiple sources (evaluations, red-teaming, external research, incident data) into coherent risk assessments.
• Provide clear judgement on how empirical findings should update risk estimates or policy positions.

Leadership across RU2 and AISI

• Act as a senior leader across Research Unit 2, driving for a positive culture and ensuring coherence between teams
• Mentor team managers, raising the bar across your team

External engagement and credibility

• Represent AISI in discussions with external stakeholders, including frontier AI labs, academia, intelligence and security partners, and international counterparts.
• Maintain awareness of latest developments in AI capabilities, AI-enabled cyber operations, and AIR+D
• Build strong relationships with key stakeholders, inside and outside of government, including Frontier Labs, safety not-for-profits and thinktanks, and the National Security Community

Salary & Benefits

Level 5 - Total Package £105,000 inclusive of a base salary £58,040 plus additional technical talent allowance of £46,960

There are a range of pension options available which can be found through the Civil Service website.

Person specification

Essential

• Experience in at least one of: AI-enabled cyber operations, autonomous/agentic systems, or advanced AI evaluation, with sufficient breadth to lead across adjacent areas.
• Strong track record of technical leadership, including setting research direction, exercising judgment under uncertainty, and integrating work across teams.
• Demonstrated ability to design or oversee complex evaluations of advanced AI systems and interpret results responsibly.
• Ability to connect empirical technical work to higher-level risk models and policy decisions.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to explain technical trade-offs and uncertainty to non-technical senior stakeholders.

Desirable

• Experience working at the interface of artificial intelligence, government, and national security.
• Familiarity with frontier AI.
• Familiarity with the field of AI safety.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams spanning research, engineering, and policy.

Technical skills

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

• The candidates will also be assessed technically within the period with some live research design and methodology questions. The results of the technical assessment within the interview will determine whether the position is offered.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £105,000, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £30,418 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.

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

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 Experience and Technical skills.

Candidates will apply with their CV outlining relevant experience required for the job. The AISI Talent Team will then sift all applications based on essential criteria outlined in the personal specification.

Candidates who are successful at the sift stage will be invited to attend an interview, which will provide a comprehensive assessment of their experience in relation to the role.

The candidates will also be assessed technically within the period with some live research design and methodology questions. The results of the technical assessment within the interview will determine whether the position is offered. You will receive details on the assessment when invited to interview.

This role sits outside of the DDaT pay framework given the scope of this role requires in depth technical expertise in frontier AI safety, robustness and advanced AI architectures.

Sift and interview dates

Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.

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.

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.#

This role is full time only. Applicants who wish to work an alternative pattern are welcome to apply however your preferred working pattern may not be available and you should discuss this with the vacancy holder before applying.

Feedback

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

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.

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 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 (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) 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 (opens in a new window).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 theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) 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 DSITrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.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.

Attachments

DSIT T&Cs v1.2 Opens in new window (docx, 179kB)