Responsibilities
- 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 workstreams.
- Turn 'we should probably look into X' into a tractable research plan with clear deliverables, without imposing process that gets in researchers' way.
- 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.
- Surface technical blockers before they become crises and intervene directly to resolve them, and know exactly when and to whom to escalate.
- 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.
- Work closely with the CB team's delivery and exploitation colleagues to make sure the work they do is technically grounded.
- Maintain the operational rhythm that lets a small, high-performing research team move at frontier speed inside government.
- Ensure the team has what it needs to deliver, and that nothing falls through the cracks.
Requirements
- 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 structure novel research work (where the answer isn't known in advance), not just deliver against a pre-defined plan.
- You have earned the trust of technical teams by understanding their work deeply enough to provide critical challenge, and engage beyond process.
- Comfort operating at the frontier of AI. You do not need to be a machine learning researcher, but you need to be fluent enough in frontier AI to operate in constant conversation with researchers about our work, strategy and research taste; and understand what's hard, what's speculative, what's blocked, and what 'good' looks like for a given experiment or evaluation.
- High agency and ownership. You take responsibility for outcomes, not activities. When something is stuck, you pick up the phone. You do not wait for someone else to escalate.
- Credibility with technical teams. Researchers trust you because you understand their constraints, respect their expertise, and demonstrably make their lives easier. You influence through competence and service, not authority or process.
- Strong prioritisation under pressure. You can identify what actually matters this week and focus the team's energy there while keeping longer-horizon work alive.
- You have the judgement to recognise work that isn't landing and the confidence to escalate it or recommend that it stop.
- Discretion and judgement in a sensitive domain. You understand that work at the intersection of AI and biology carries dual-use sensitivity. You are comfortable working within classified constraints and can make sound trade-offs between openness, security and pace.
Nice to Have
- Experience in biosecurity, life sciences, public health or adjacent domains where similar dual-use judgement is required
- Prior experience at a frontier AI lab
- Existing SC or DV clearance
- Experience working in or with Dstl, MOD, DHSC, UKHSA or equivalent national security/adjacent bodies in other settings
- Hands-on comfort with modern productivity tools (coding agents, Linear) and willingness to use AI tools as part of daily work
Additional Information
- Work at the intersection of AI and biology carries dual-use sensitivity.
- Comfortable working within classified constraints.
- Must be able to make sound trade-offs between openness, security and pace.
