Senior Software Engineer, Chem-Bio

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. Based in the heart of the UK government with direct lines to No. 10, AISI works with frontier AI developers and governments globally to shape both AI development and government action.

About the Team

AISI's Chemistry-Biology (CB) team conducts technical research to assess evolving AI capabilities related to science R&D and CB misuse, and the effectiveness of technical safeguards that might mitigate associated risks. The team is interdisciplinary, comprising machine learning researchers and engineers, software engineers, virologists, bacteriologists, behavioural scientists, biosecurity experts, and policy specialists who work closely across government.

Role Responsibilities

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be a core individual contributor within AISI's dedicated engineering function, building shared platform, tooling, and infrastructure for research projects.

• Design and build reliable systems — architect and deliver core platform components enabling researchers to run experiments and ship results quickly, including LLM-based agent systems, evaluation frameworks, and supporting infrastructure
• Work closely with researchers — translate varied research needs across general agents, science agents, chemical and biological models, and other CB workstreams into well-engineered, maintainable systems
• Own and deliver significant engineering work — take responsibility for substantial technical projects and shared components, driving them from design through implementation, iteration, and maintenance
• Write high-quality production code — build scalable, robust, and maintainable software, primarily in Python, with strong engineering discipline around testing, documentation, and observability
• Contribute to engineering standards — help improve code quality, development workflows, and shared engineering approaches within a growing engineering team embedded in a research-heavy environment
• Collaborate across AISI — work with Core Technology and engineering teams to share tooling, align on infrastructure, and prevent duplication