Associate - AI Safety

Job Description

About Faculty

Faculty transforms organisational performance through safe, impactful and human-led AI.

We are Europe’s leading applied AI company, and saw its potential a decade ago - long before the current hype cycle.

We were founded in 2014 with our Fellowship programme, training academics to become commercial data scientists.

Today, we provide over 300 global customers with industry-leading software, and bespoke AI consultancy for retail, healthcare, energy, and governmental organisations, as well as our award winning Fellowship.

Our expertise and safety credentials are such that OpenAI asked us to be their first technical partner, helping customers deploy cutting-edge generative AI safely.

Our high-impact work has saved lives through forecasting NHS demand during covid, produced green energy by routing boats towards the wind, slashed marketing spend by predicting customer spending habits, and kept children safe online.

AI is an epoch-defining technology. We want people to join us who can help our customers reap its enormous benefits safely.

About the role:

Faculty has been at the forefront of AI safety research for many years. Whether it’s testing third-party models for bias, managing sensitive data through obfuscation techniques or assessing the uplift malicious actors could get from AI, we’ve done it and, where possible, we’ve shared that knowledge to support the wider community. We’re proud of our work with the AI Safety Institute, OpenAI and others to evaluate frontier models and develop mitigations to improve safety. We want an Associate to join us in developing this further.

Please note, due to the nature of some of the projects you could be deployed on to, you will need to be eligible for security clearance.

What you'll be doing:

As a rapidly growing organisation your role will evolve alongside business and customer needs, but you can expect your key day-to-day responsibilities to include:

• Working directly with clients/customers across governments, frontier labs and major companies to understand and define AI safety requirements

• Delivering business value, whether through supporting the design and implementation of AI safety solutions or developing our business proposition

• Managing individual work streams to support the successful delivery of customer projects e.g. red-teaming an unreleased frontier model, developing model evaluations with subject-matter experts, or working with clients to set safety thresholds in their context

• Building and maintaining strong relationships with customers and other stakeholders in the AI safety ecosystem

• Working closely with technical teams to ensure that projects run smoothly on a day-to-day basis

• Owning standalone internal Faculty projects

• Supporting business development through undertaking research and creating compelling proposals

• Adapting to an environment where no two days are the same, and taking the initiative to make sure each day is better than the one before

• Growing the scope of your role to match our growing company and the changing requirements of the AI sector.

This role does not require deep technical knowledge, but you will be expected to develop expertise in AI safety methodologies, high-level governance processes and the relevant stakeholder community. We'll help you build your understanding of data science techniques and their application in order to credibly communicate their value to a client, and be an effective member of project teams.

You will have the opportunity to build up this more detailed understanding of data science first-hand, and get involved in optional internal training sessions to further your technical skills.

Who we are looking for:

At Faculty, your attitude and behaviour are just as important as your skill set. We look for individuals who can support our values, foster our culture and deliver for our organisation. We are a small business, and we need people who take the initiative. You will be given a high degree of autonomy, while still being given support as part of project teams, and formal opportunities to learn and develop.

For this role, we specifically want to see evidence of interest and commitment to AI safety. We view AI safety in a broad context, covering potential existential risk, the concern of catastrophic misuse and societal harms such as those deriving from bias, privacy concerns, or the impact of AI on human flourishing. This does not need to be academic or formal qualifications, although such qualifications would be a plus.

We are looking for people that might have:

• Demonstrated interest in AI safety

• Some experience working in a consulting or business role

• Experience in a client or customer facing role

• Experience working as part of a team to problem-solve and analyse

• Some product or technical experience would be useful but not essential

• Domain experience in AI safety relevant fields (e.g. CBRN / national security / cyber) would be a plus but not essential

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• A desire to continuously learn from those around you and improve

• A proactive desire to take initiative and own the solution to a problem

What we can offer you:

The Faculty team is diverse and distinctive, and we all come from different personal, professional and organisational backgrounds. We all have one thing in common: we are driven by a deep intellectual curiosity that powers us forward each day.

Faculty is the professional challenge of a lifetime. You’ll be surrounded by an impressive group of brilliant minds working to achieve our collective goals. Our consultants, product developers, business development specialists, operations professionals and more all bring something unique to Faculty, and you’ll learn something new from everyone you meet. You’ll also have the opportunity to make your mark on a high-growth start-up now poised to expand internationally.