Cognitive Scientist - Alignment

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.  

The deadline for applying this role is 15 June 2025, end of day, anywhere on Earth. 

AISI’s alignment team examines ways to prevent models from autonomously attempting to cause harm. The team’s research is led by Geoffrey Irving, AISI’s Chief Scientist – a research agenda can be found here. 

This exciting new team is part of AISI’s Solutions Group, which will also examine ways to prevent misuse risks (our Safeguards team) and ways to prevent models from causing harm, even if they are autonomously attempting to do so (our Control team).    

ROLE SUMMARY 

As a Cognitive Scientist working on alignment, you will:  

• Develop and publish a research agenda carefully specifying the areas of cognitive science most relevant to alignment, leaning on safety case sketches written by yourself and/or the wider alignment team to ensure that research areas are clearly relevant and important. 

• Carefully design experiments and human studies that precisely target the most important open problems in alignment. 

• Supervise external research. We will fund the studies you design; you will need to supervise this research in a ‘PI’-type role. 

Person Specification  

We are interested in hiring individuals at a range of seniority and experience within this team, including in Senior Cognitive Scientist positions. Calibration on final title, seniority and pay will take place as part of the recruitment process. We encourage all candidates who would be interested in joining to apply. 

You may be a good fit if you have some of the following skills, experience and attitudes:  

• Relevant cognitive science research experience in industry or academia (e.g. PhD in a relevant field and/or spotlight papers at relevant conferences).  

• Broad knowledge of existing approaches to alignment (T-shaped: some deep knowledge, lots of shallow knowledge).  

• Strong writing ability.  

• Ability to work autonomously and in a self-directed way with high agency, thriving in a constantly changing environment and a steadily growing team, while figuring out the best and most efficient ways to solve a particular problem.  

• Bring your own voice and experience but also an eagerness to support your colleagues together with a willingness to do whatever is necessary for the team's success and find new ways of getting things done within government.  

• Have a sense of mission, urgency, and responsibility for success, problem-solving abilities and preparedness to acquire any missing knowledge necessary to get the job done.  

• Comprehensive understanding of large language models (e.g. Claude 3.5). This might include both a broad understanding of the literature, as well as hands-on experience with things like pre-training or fine tuning LLMs. 

• Experience working with world-class multi-disciplinary teams, including both scientists and engineers (e.g. in a top-3 AI lab).  

Salary & Benefits 

We are hiring individuals at all ranges of seniority and experience within this research unit, and this advert allows you to apply for any of the roles within this range. Your dedicated talent partner will work with you as you move through our assessment process to explain our internal benchmarking process. The full range of salaries are available below, salaries comprise of a base salary, technical allowance plus additional benefits as detailed on this page. 

• Level 3 - Total Package £65,000 - £75,000 inclusive of a base salary £35,720 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £29,280 - £39,280 

• Level 4 - Total Package £85,000 - £95,000 inclusive of a base salary £42,495 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £42,505 - £52,505 

• Level 5 - Total Package £105,000 - £115,000 inclusive of a base salary £55,805 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £49,195 - £59,195 

• Level 6 - Total Package £125,000 - £135,000 inclusive of a base salary £68,770 plus additional technical talent allowance of between £56,230 - £66,230 

• Level 7 - Total Package £145,000 inclusive of a base salary £68,770 plus additional technical talent allowance of £76,230