The Alan Turing Institute’s Defence & National Security Programme focuses on protecting our country, its people and the places they inhabit, by delivering strategic advantage in AI for the UK and its allies. The Turing is uniquely placed to lead this endeavour, working closely with government partners to strengthen UK defence and security; through world-class research groups advancing the state-of-the-art in AI, dedicated engineering teams translating research into leading-edge deployment-ready capabilities, and policy and governance experts who ensure AI-based capabilities are developed and deployed responsibly. Our independent research, driven by societal impact and public good, is invaluable for our partners, directly tackling the most difficult and impactful real-world challenges they face. In this interdisciplinary, independent and trusted capacity, the Turing also acts as authoritative convener for diverse expertise in key areas across academia, industry and government.
The AiTASHA project
The Turing has recently been awarded a £1m EPSRC research grant to develop AI methods that can support and enhance intelligence analysis for national security and defence. For this project, the Turing will lead an interdisciplinary consortium that also includes Warwick, Southampton, Heriot-Watt and Cardiff Universities, working closely with UK government defence and national security partners. The project, entitled “AI Intelligence Triage & Acquisition Support for Human-centred Analysis” (AiTASHA), aims to improve the speed and confidence of intelligence analysts’ assessments by building new AI tools that can work alongside human analysts. Intelligence analysts are routinely required to make high-consequence, defensible assessments from vast, complex and uncertain datasets, to identify indicators and warnings of hostile or malicious activities. Analysts must make these assessments rapidly in a highly pressured and resource-constrained environment, where they face difficult choices of what data to analyse first, and whether to gather additional intelligence, potentially at the cost of delay or increased risk.
Addressing this challenge is becoming increasingly urgent as both the scale and complexity of intelligence datasets, as well as the threat posed to UK safety, are growing, and existing AI support tools primarily focus on the identification and visualisation of patterns within datasets, without due consideration of human understanding or context, defensibility, and representation of uncertainty. The goal of this ambitious project is to make fundamental advances that will together underpin and enable a future explainable, defensible AI system that can complement, rather than replace, the work of intelligence analysts; recommending which existing data should be prioritised for human review and which potential new data should be prioritised for acquisition. To address this challenge, we will advance the state-of-the-art across multiple disciplines; interpretable multimodal deep learning models, causal statistical models, human-machine teaming and AI ethics.
ROLE PURPOSE
We are seeking a highly skilled Senior Research Associate to conduct internationally leading research in machine learning, with applications to intelligence analysis. This role will involve investigating and developing methods that will allow deep learning models to encode or represent the same context or mental model as the human analyst, including leveraging and enhancing cutting-edge embedding models, as well as building on existing methods in ML explainability, interpretability, and uncertainty quantification. The research will focus predominantly on vision, language and multimodal models, and on integration of these models with graph-based statistical methods that have been previously developed by members of the project team to support national security use.
This role will be part of the Defence and National Security (D&NS) Programme and will report directly to the PI for the AiTASHA project. Within the Turing, this role will sit primarily within the Defence Artificial Intelligence Research (DARe) centre, which encompasses diverse AI research spanning future sensing, space systems, human-machine teaming, synthetic environments, and edge AI, but there will also be opportunities to engage with researchers from across the D&NS Programme, including from policy and engineering teams.
The successful candidate will also join a vibrant and interdisciplinary team of researchers in the AiTASHA consortium and will have frequent opportunities to engage with internal stakeholders and external government partners throughout the deliver of the project. During the project it Is expected that they will work as part of a small tight-knit cohort of Early Career Researchers spanning the AiTASHA consortium Universities.
HOW YOU WILL MAKE AN IMPACT
- Play a leading role in undertaking high-quality research, actively contributing to, and steering the broader research aims of the Defence & National Security Grand Challenge.
- Provide technical leadership for research projects, ensuring successful outcomes, including that research outcomes meet our government partners’ requirements and can be deployed in the real world.
- Contribute to, and lead where required, interdisciplinary research teams spanning multiple partner organisations.
- Contribute to software development including planning, execution and package release and management.
- Be a point of contact, supporting the PI in engaging with stakeholders regarding projects and deputising for the PI in meetings where necessary.
- Take the lead on writing up findings as they emerge, producing and developing reports and publications in peer- reviewed journals, in collaboration with the research team.
- Present, disseminate and explain our work at meetings/events and contribute to both the internal and external visibility of the Institute
- Supervise the work of early-career researchers in the team and provide guidance as required with line management of direct reports if required.
- Travel may be necessary to meet the requirements of the role
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. Successful candidates will be subject to a DSTL research workers form check at the offer stage.
ABOUT YOU
- Significant practical or academic experience and demonstrable research innovation in developing and applying computer vision and/or large language models; AND/OR machine learning interpretability, explainability, and/or uncertainty quantification.
- A PhD (or equivalent commensurate professional experience and/or qualifications) in a field with significant use of both computer programming and advanced statistical or numerical methods
- Experience developing software in a scientific computing context, ideally using Python/Pytorch, including the use of established libraries used in data science and artificial intelligence research AND an understanding of the importance of good practices for producing reliable software and reproducible analyses, such as version control, issue tracking, automated testing, package management and literate analysis tools.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present complex or technical information, and to adapt the style of communication effectively for diverse audiences to ensure understanding.
- Experience conducting and publishing research to the standard required by top-tier peer-reviewed journals/conferences, and working with stakeholders to identify, understand and refine problems, scoping data science research to solve them.
- Experience in carrying out research independently; scoping and investigating research questions within a given overarching theme, initiating, planning and prioritising activity within subsequent research projects, and leading such projects to successful conclusion.
- Commitment to EDI principles and to the Organisation values and proven ability to work effectively both as part of a team and in cross collaboration with other teams as required by the role, remotely when needed.
- Must be eligible for SC clearance and be willing to undergo the clearance process once in post, if not already held
Please see the job description for a full breakdown of the role and person specification.
APPLICATION PROCEDURE
If you are interested in this opportunity, please click the apply button below. You will need to register on the applicant portal and complete the application form including your CV (maximum 3 pages, no photo) and covering letter (maximum 2 pages) telling us:
- Your experience innovating with code and/or data to solve real-world challenging problems.
- Why you would like to become part of the Turing’s Defence and Security Programme.
- How your skillset would complement the activities of the AiTASHA project.
As these roles require eligibility for Security Check (SC) clearance, you are required to include the following information as part of your cover letter:
- Your current nationality
- Your nationality at birth
- Other nationality (include dual nationality if applicable)
- Confirmation that you have been residing in the UK for the past 5 years (if you haven’t, please provide details of when and where you resided and the reason)
Please note, if these details are not provided, we will be unable to progress with your application.
If you have questions about the role or would like to apply using a different format, please contact us at [email protected].
CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: SUNDAY 14 JUNE 2026 at 23:59 (LONDON, UK, BST)
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
This full-time post is offered on a fixed term basis for 2 years from the start date. The annual salary is £56,840 – £58,482 plus excellent benefits, including flexible working and family friendly policies, Employee-only benefits guide | The Alan Turing Institute
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.