Technical Programme Manager, Chem-Bio

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.

AI capabilities in the life sciences are advancing faster than at any point in history. Foundation models can now design novel proteins, interpret genomic sequences. These are extraordinary tools for scientific progress, but also have the potential for harm if misused.

The AI Security Institute's Chem‑Bio team exists to evaluate the capability of both frontier and narrow AI models in chemistry and biology, ensuring the UK government and its partners have an accurate view of risks and capabilities. This team is one of AISI's most consequential paths to impact, at a critical moment. Over the next twelve months it will need to move faster, deliver more complex research programmes, and engage more deeply with partners in major AI labs and security services than it has before.

This role is for the person who makes that possible. You will sit directly alongside the CB team's researchers: helping them structure ambiguous research questions into tractable programmes, ensuring that our research lines up with the rigorous empirical claims the team must be able to evidence to inform policy, recommending which novel technical work to start and stop, or sequence technical dependencies across work streams.

It is a research‑programme architecture role, working at the interface between "what should we investigate?" and "how do we actually do so?"

Research programme architecture
. You will work directly with researchers to scope projects: refining what questions we're actually trying to answer, what the milestones and success criteria are for novel technical work, and how to sequence technical dependencies, resource and time across work streams. You will be the person who turns "we should probably look into X" into a tractable research plan with clear deliverables, without imposing process that gets in researchers' way.

Research delivery tracking and unblocking. You will bring a continuous improvement mindset to the team’s existing lightweight research management structures - sprint cadence, dependency maps, progress tracking - that create visibility and grip without overhead. You will surface technical blockers before they become crises and intervene directly to resolve them, and know exactly when and to whom to escalate. The goal is researchers spending their time on research, not logistics.

Cross‑government technical engagement. You will manage the technical interface with government partners (Dstl, UKHSA, MOD, and others) where that engagement is about research— data‑sharing arrangements, conducting joint technical work, scoping requirements for access for classified compute. This role is about ensuring the work we deliver is technically sound, not about communicating its results, which sits with our exploitation colleagues. You will work closely with the CB team's delivery and exploitation colleagues to make sure the work they do is technically grounded.

Team operations and pace. You will maintain the operational rhythm that lets a small, high‑performing research team move at frontier speed inside government. You will ensure the team has what it needs to deliver, and that nothing falls through the cracks.

• A track record as a technical programme manager working directly with researchers or engineers. You have managed complex technical programmes – ideally at an AI lab, a biotech startup, in defence/intelligence R&D, or in a similarly high‑ambiguity research environment. You know how to scope and…