Applied AI Scientist Ref. 3717

Job Description

Flexible working: we support full time, part time (minimum three days a week), compressed hours, job share and other flexible working patterns. Due to the sensitive nature of our work, remote or home working opportunities are limited to one day per week.

About us

We're MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Our mission is to protect the security and economic wellbeing of the UK from overseas threats such as regional instability, terrorism, and cyber attacks. Working across the globe and in close partnership with MI5 and GCHQ, we help the Government to counter these threats through the provision of secret intelligence A role in MI6 will see you providing vital support to this work, within a supportive and encouraging environment that puts the emphasis on teamwork.

The role

We’re creating dedicated teams focused on bringing AI into some of our most mission critical areas, helping develop technologies that enhance how MI6 operates today and prepare us for the challenges of tomorrow. As an Applied AI Scientist, you’ll play a central role in that effort, engaging directly with real world operational workflows. You’ll understand the patterns AI needs to learn and identify where automation or augmentation can unlock new efficiencies and insights.

You’ll work closely with mission teams to understand their day to day tasks, data flows and analytical challenges, and to determine where AI can genuinely improve outcomes. Much of your work will sit at the exploratory edge of technology: prototyping ideas, testing hypotheses, evaluating open source tools and experimenting with new approaches. You’ll build proofs of concept, validate model behaviour and assess how different architectures can be deployed securely and ethically within our environment. Once approaches are validated, engineering teams will productionise and scale the solutions you’ve helped design.

You have experience of writing software at a level sufficient to ensure that your AI work can deliver real operational impact. Day to day, you’ll apply modern AI and data science techniques, from natural language processing and text classification to fine tuning and deploying large language models. You’ll rigorously evaluate model performance, explore agentic and workflow oriented AI, and help teams understand how these capabilities can augment human judgement. Ethical, secure and compliant use of AI is central to the role, and you’ll help shape how we steward these technologies responsibly across MI6.

You have also started to step into AI leadership, contributing to how AI is understood and applied. We’re open to this meaning different things for different people, depending on your skills and interests. For example, you might have a passion for being a role model and mentoring junior technologists as they grow as professionals. Or you might look wider, working with people from other, non-technical backgrounds and influencing AI adoption strategy in the wider organisation. Many people in this role do both. Either way, you’ll be part of a growing community shaping MI6’s direction in AI. As our capability evolves, you’ll contribute to decisions on tools, processes and best practice, helping us evaluate and adopt rapidly advancing technologies. There will be opportunities to work with global mission partners, attend conferences and stay at the forefront of developments in the wider AI ecosystem. This role offers significant scope to innovate, giving you the freedom to explore, experiment and make a tangible impact on how AI is used across MI6.

About you

You’re an applied AI scientist with a strong technical foundation and a natural curiosity for how AI can solve meaningful, real world problems. You’ve developed, trained and deployed models before, and you’re confident working across the full lifecycle of modern AI techniques. You understand data, you understand systems, and you enjoy working close to users so you can see the impact of what you build.

Your experience means you can explore complex datasets, design prototypes and evaluate model behaviour with rigour. You’re comfortable working with natural language data, large language models and emerging agentic approaches, and you know how to test, benchmark and validate them effectively. You understand where AI adds value and where it doesn’t, and you’re thoughtful about how to introduce it into existing workflows in a safe, ethical and secure way.

You approach problems with a combination of analytical depth and practical judgement. You can explain technical ideas clearly to colleagues with different backgrounds, build positive relationships across mission, product and engineering teams, and translate operational needs into realistic AI opportunities. You’re comfortable navigating uncertainty, experimenting with new tools and assessing whether a technique is robust enough for its environments.

Always keeping up to date with emerging methods, you explore new technologies to understand their potential and are motivated to keep improving your craft. You care about building solutions that are reliable, responsible and genuinely useful, and you’re driven by the chance to contribute to work with real world mission impact across MI6.

Training and development

We take professional development seriously, and you’ll be joining a community that invests in helping people grow their skills. You’ll have access to a broad mix of learning opportunities, including classroom courses, online training, technical deep dives and development pathways shaped around your interests and the needs of the organisation. This includes support to strengthen your capability across modern AI techniques, data science methods, cloud technologies and wider analytical or engineering practices.

We use the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework (formerly known as DDaT) as a compass to provide guidance and tools to support you. You can find out more about the framework here: Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework. You’ll also have opportunities to work with external professional bodies and training providers who offer routes to specialist accreditation, advanced AI training or broader professional recognition. Whether you choose to deepen your expertise in a specific technical area or broaden your capability across new domains, you’ll have the guidance and support you need to progress.

Alongside formal training, you’ll benefit from mentoring, peer support and a collaborative community that shares knowledge openly. You’ll have opportunities to rotate across different teams, explore emerging technologies and contribute to shaping how MI6 evolves its AI and data science capability. As you develop, you’ll have the space to experiment, expand your expertise and play an active role in strengthening our AI practice across the organisation.

Rewards and benefits

You’ll receive a starting salary of £74,624 and recruitment and retention allowance of £6,251, plus other benefits including:

• 25 Days Annual Leave automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years' service, and an additional 10.5 days public and privilege holidays
• opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
• interest-free season ticket loan (travel and parking)
• excellent pension scheme
• cycle to work scheme
• facilities such as a gym, restaurant, and on-site coffee bars (at some locations)
• paid parental and adoption leave

Equal opportunities

At MI6 diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: those with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under-represented in our workforce such as women, those from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities and those from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Find out more about our culture, working environment and diversity on our website.

Offer Of Interview

We are committed to providing equitable opportunities throughout the recruitment process to support candidates with disabilities. As part of this, we aim to ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants who best meet the essential minimum criteria for this position, will be offered an interview, if it is practical for us to do so. (This is known as the Offer of an Interview.) To secure an interview for this role, the minimum criteria (in order of application process) are:

• you will be required to reach the minimum pass mark for the Situational Judgement Test which looks at your ability to problem solve. If you meet this criteria, you will be directed to complete an application form
• you have experience of creating and rigorously evaluating systems that utilise Artificial Intelligence and/or Machine Learning to solve complex problems with hard to measure success criteria – to be assessed at application sift
• you have experience of writing software at a level sufficient that enables your AI work to deliver impact, and can explain and use modern engineering practices – to be assessed at application sift
• you have started to step into AI leadership, whether within your team, helping junior engineers to develop professionally, and/or within your wider organisation, helping shape strategy and adoption – to be assessed at application sift

There is a wide range of extra support available throughout the recruitment process to enable you to do your best, visit our how to apply page for information on reasonable adjustments we can offer.

What to expect

Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:

1. An initial online application form including pre-screening questions to ensure you meet our eligibility criteria
2. Online Situational Judgement Test (SJT) rating the appropriateness of your responses to a series of short scenarios. The SJT tests criteria important for all roles in our organisation
3. Application sift reviewing your motivation, skills and a competency question
4. A HR interview focusing on motivation and competencies important to the role
5. If successful at the HR interview, you will be invited to a face-to-face technical assessment. (Please note the role maps to Principal AI Scientist on the aforementioned GDDPC framework. We will assess you against this framework by asking questions about your previous projects and experiences.)
6. If successful, you’ll receive a conditional offer of employment

Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 to 9 months to process including vetting, so we advise you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.

Before you apply

To work at MI6, you need to be a British citizen or hold dual British nationality. Read about our eligibility criteria.

This role requires the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV). It’s something everyone in the UK Intelligence Community undertakes. Find out more about the vetting process.

Please note we have a strict drugs policy, so once you start your application, you can’t take any recreational drugs and you’ll need to declare your previous drug usage at the relevant stage.

Before you apply, we advise you to consider setting up a separate email address for your contact with us, to ensure your personal and application correspondence remain separate. Try to avoid having identifying features in your email address, such as your first and/or surname and date of birth. This is good practise and will help you manage your application with us more discretely.

The role is based in London so you’ll need to live within a commutable distance. Please consider any financial implications and practicalities before submitting an application, as we do not offer relocation costs.

We offer reasonable reimbursement of travel costs for candidates attending in person interviews or assessments during the recruitment and vetting process. Full details will be provided with your interview or assessment invitation.

Reimbursement is discretionary and will only be made in line with the Candidate Expenses Policy, as amended from time to time. Candidates must book their own travel, using the most economical option, and provide original hardcopy receipts for reimbursement.

Please note, you should only launch your application from within the UK. If you are based overseas, you should wait until you visit the UK to launch an application. Applying from outside the UK will impact on our ability to progress your application. You should not discuss your application, other than with your partner or a close family member.

Right to withdraw statement:

Please be aware that we withhold the right to bring forward the closing date for this role from the original closing date once a certain number of applications have been received. Please be mindful of this and submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.