Distinguished Scientist, Sovereign Language Modelling

We are looking for a Distinguished Scientist, Sovereign Language Modelling to provide scientific and strategic leadership for this high-priority research area. The team’ work aims to strengthen national resilience and support the safe and accountable deployment of AI in areas of public value. You will shape and lead an ambitious research portfolio spanning compliant data pipelines, model pre-training, reinforcement learning and post-training, advanced distillation, agentic systems and efficient deployment. Leading a multidisciplinary team of researchers and research engineers, you will take research from foundational questions through to demonstrators and deployment, while building partnerships across academia, government and industry.

About You

You will be an internationally recognised research leader in Natural Language Processing and/or Machine Learning, with deep, hands-on expertise across areas such as model training, reinforcement learning and post-training, distillation and model compression, agentic systems, efficient inference and distributed training. You will bring an outstanding and sustained record of research contributions, alongside experience setting strategic research direction, leading complex collaborations and translating research into real-world impact. We are looking for someone with proven experience leading research software and infrastructure at scale, securing significant external funding and communicating complex technical work to senior, specialist and non-specialist audiences. You will combine hands-on technical expertise with strong scientific leadership, strategic judgement and a commitment to responsible, safe and open AI research.

How You Will Make an Impact

• Set the scientific direction for Sovereign Language Modelling, defining and developing an ambitious research agenda aligned with Fundamental Research priorities.
• Build and lead a high-quality research portfolio, taking programmes from foundational research questions through to demonstrators and deployment.
• Build, lead and mentor multidisciplinary teams of researchers and research engineers, developing technical capability as priorities and partnerships evolve.
• Provide hands-on scientific leadership, working alongside technical teams and partners to tackle challenging methodological problems, maintain scientific quality and model excellent research practice.
• Translate research into real-world resilience impact, applying Sovereign Language Modelling research to operational problems, data and constraints, including secure, classified or sensitive environments where required.
• Develop strategic partnerships and secure resources, building collaborations across academia, government and industry and helping secure the funding, data, compute, facilities and partner commitments needed to deliver the portfolio.
• Represent the Institute as a senior scientific authority for Sovereign Language Modelling, communicating evidence clearly to partners, boards and research audiences and monitoring emerging developments in the field

Please see our portal for a full breakdown of the Job Description.

Terms and Conditions

This full-time post is offered on a permanent basis with an annual salary range of £96,000 - £115,000. Our offers include excellent benefits including flexible working and family friendly policies, which can be seen here.

Applications on a secondment basis (0.8 FTE) can also be considered, with salary pro-rated to the FTE commitment.

Application procedure

Please see our jobs portal for full details on how to apply and the interview process.

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.

£96,000 to £115,000 per annum