Building on the successes of AI for Cyber Defence (AICD) Research Centre, the Defence & National Security (D&NS) team at the Alan Turing Institute is developing an ambitious programme of research to deliver a fundamental shift in Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) cyber-resilience using AI. The focus of this new programme is the cyber resilience of CNI, including legacy operational technology (OT) and end-of-life operating systems; both of which underpin critical sectors from energy and water to data operations, but that cannot be patched, upgraded, or modified without risking operational disruption or invalidating safety certification.
ROLE PURPOSE
This role will sit within the Defence and National Security team and will focus on advancing resilience of CNI by designing, building, and evaluating LLM-driven agentic systems for the autonomous hardening of legacy operational technology and industrial control systems.
Eligibility for Security Check (SC) clearance is a requirement for this role. Eligibility criteria and further information on the process can be found on the UK Government security vetting website.
HOW YOU WILL MAKE AN IMPACT
- Collaboratively design, build and maintain agentic, AI systems and evaluation suites that support CNI cyber resilience and legacy software hardening against known vulnerabilities.
- Develop virtualisation based digital twin environments and implement techniques for assuring operational continuity in the context of CNI.
- Develop realistic virtualised environments with legacy OT/ICS hosts, including legacy operating system instances running OT/ICS control software and with representative OT protocol traffic.
- Contribute to high-quality collaborative research as part of the Turing’s CNI resilience mission.
- Develop CNl-relevant scenarios with clear threat models, operational continuity criteria, and defensible assumptions; document limitations and known failure modes explicitly.
- Carry out analysis that supports credible interpretation of results (failure case analysis, ablations and sensitivity checks).
- Run large-scale evaluations on HPC and cloud platforms, improving performance and reliability through batching/parallelisation, resource-aware execution, and systematic debugging of non-determinism and environment drift.
- Play a role in planning and running AI-based CNI red-blue teaming competitions, ensuring robust environment design and evaluation protocols are in place.
ABOUT YOU
- Experience integrating with LLM APIs and building agentic or tool-calling pipelines to implement multi-step reasoning workflows (e.g., MCP, LangGraph).
- A Master’s degree (or equivalent qualification or experience) in cyber/information security, AI, machine learning, computer science, engineering, or a related discipline.
- Understanding of network security principles including at least one of: defensive or offensive security techniques, network traffic analysis, or cyber-physical systems security.
- Strong software development in a scientific computing context, ideally Python, with standard tooling (Git, Linux), and a track record of delivering working research software or applied engineering artefacts with measurable outcomes.
- Ability to plan and carry out research independently or collaboratively, evidenced by high-quality outputs commensurate with career stage including publications, technical reports, or significant open-source contributions.
Please see the job description for a full breakdown of the role and person specification.
APPLICATION PROCEDURE
If you are interested in this opportunity, click the apply button above, register on the careers portal and complete the application form including your CV and cover letter. Your cover letter should focus on the following:
- Your motivation for applying for this role
- An overview of your experience developing software in a scientific computing context
- Publication list (if not covered in CV)
If you have questions about the role or would like to apply using a different format, please contact us on [email protected].
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
This post is offered on a full time, fixed-term basis for 12 months. The annual salary is £45,505 - £51,241 plus excellent benefits, including flexible working and family friendly policies, Employee-only benefits guide I The Alan Turing Institute
Eligibility for Security Check (SC) clearance is a requirement for this role, please see job description for further details.
The Alan Turing Institute is based at the British Library, in the heart of London’s Knowledge Quarter. We expect staff to come to our office at least 4 days per month. Some roles may require more days in the office; the hiring manager will be able to confirm this during the interview.
EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
We value diversity of background, experience, and perspective, and are proud to be an inclusive employer. We warmly encourage applications from all backgrounds, particularly from groups currently under-represented in our sector. If you feel passionate about this role but don’t meet every single requirement, please apply – we recognise that great candidates may bring strengths beyond the criteria listed.
We are committed to making sure our recruitment process is accessible and inclusive. This includes making reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability or long-term condition. Please contact us at [email protected] to advise us how we can assist you.
Please note all offers of employment are subject to obtaining and retaining the right to work in the UK and satisfactory pre-employment security screening which includes a DBS Check. Full details on the pre-employment screening process can be requested from [email protected].