Research Engineer - Agentic Critical-Systems Cyber-Security

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The Role This Research Engineer role sits within The Alan Turing Institute s Defence and National Security programme and focuses on designing, building and evaluating LLM-driven agentic systems to strengthen the cyber resilience of critical national infrastructure, particularly legacy operational technology and industrial control systems that cannot easily be patched or upgraded. The postholder will develop autonomous hardening and monitoring capabilities, create realistic digital twin and simulation environments, run robust large-scale evaluations, and produce high-quality research software, technical outputs, and publications, while working closely with multidisciplinary experts across AI, cyber security and critical systems. It s a highly applied research role suited to someone excited by combining machine learning, software engineering and cyber security to solve complex real-world resilience challenges with national importance. Your Profile We re looking for a technically strong and collaborative research engineer with a solid grounding in AI, machine learning, cyber or information security, computer science, engineering, or a related field, ideally educated to Master s level or with equivalent experience. The ideal candidate will bring hands-on experience building LLM-powered agentic or tool-calling systems, strong scientific software development skills in Python and related frameworks and a track record of delivering practical research or engineering outputs with measurable impact. They ll be comfortable working across disciplines, communicating complex ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences and operating with a high degree of autonomy while contributing positively to a team environment. Experience with network security, cyber-physical systems, virtualisation, OT/ICS environments and research publications would be especially valuable, as would a thoughtful, evidence-led approach and eligibility for Security Check clearance. 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 CNI-relevant scenarios with clear threat models, operational continuity criteria, and defensible assumptions document limitations and known failure modes explicitly. Implement reproducible evaluation pipelines: configuration-driven runs, dataset/version management, baseline implementations and auditable reporting outputs. Develop and validate metrics and scoring methods. Carry out analysis that supports credible interpretation of results (failure case analysis, ablations and sensitivity checks). Application Procedure If you are interested in this opportunity, please click the apply button below. It will redirect you to The Alan Turing Institute jobs portal, where you can find more information and a full job description for this role. You will need to register on the applicant portal and complete the application form including your CV and covering letter. CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: SUNDAY 19 APRIL :59 (LONDON, UK BST) Terms and Conditions This post is offered on a full time, fixed-term basis until 31 March 2027. The annual salary is £45,505 - £51,241 plus excellent benefits, including flexible working and family friendly policies, Employee-only benefits guide The Alan Turing Institute 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 . 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. Security Clearance The successful candidate may be required to undergo a pre-screening check prior to an offer being made. This check will be carried out by HMG Defence and Security Partners. Please be advised, by submitting your application you are consenting to this check, and your personal details (full name, date of birth and home address) to be passed onto our HMG Defence and Security Partners to carry out this check. Eligibility criteria and further information on the process can be found on the UK Government security vetting website . Applicants should check whether they are eligible to apply for SC clearance before applying to this role. 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 to advise us how we can assist you.
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Location:
London
Job Type:
FullTime

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