Evals Research Scientist / Engineer

Apolloresearch; City of London; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI research firm in London seeks Research Scientists and Engineers to evaluate and mitigate risks in AI models. Ideal candidates will collaborate with frontier labs and contribute to innovative projects related to scheming. The role requires strong experience in empirical research, LLM steering, and software engineering. Flexible hours, unlimited vacation, and a competitive salary of £100k to £200k are offered.

Benefits

Flexible work hours

Unlimited vacation

Paid work trips

Professional development budget

Qualifications

• Self-taught candidates welcomed.
• Experience in empirical research related to scheming and AI.
• Strong scientific writing and communication skills.
• Comprehensive experience in LLM steering.
• Software engineering skills required.

Responsibilities

• Work on safety evaluations for frontier models.
• Design and evaluate AI control protocols.
• Automate evaluation pipelines.
• Collaborate with frontier labs.

Skills

Empirical research

Scientific writing

LLM steering

Software engineering

Tools

Python

Inspect

Job description

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Application deadline: We are currently considering applications on a rolling basis. It can take multiple weeks until we respond, even if you are a great fit. Applications are accepted until 31 October 2025. We encourage early submissions and will start interviews in early October.

About The Opportunity

We’re looking for Research Scientists and Research Engineers who are excited to work on safety evaluations, the science of scheming, or control/monitoring for frontier models. You will have the opportunity to

• Work with frontier labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind, by running pre‑deployment evaluations and collaborating closely on mitigations, e.g., our work on anti‑scheming or OpenAI’s o1‑preview system card and Anthropics’s Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 system card.
• Build evaluations for scheming‑related properties (such as deceptive reasoning, sabotage, and deception tendencies). See our conceptual work on scheming, e.g., evaluation‑based safety cases for scheming or how scheming could arise.
• Work on the "science of scheming," e.g., by studying model organisms or real‑world examples of scheming in detail. Our goal is to develop a much better theoretical understanding of why models scheme and which components of training and deployment cause it.
• Work on automating the entire evals pipeline. We aim to automate substantial parts of evals ideation, generation, running and analysis.
• Design and evaluate AI control protocols. Since agents have longer and longer time‑hor‑izons, we’re shifting more effort to deployment‑time monitoring and other control methods.
• Note: We are not hiring for interpretability roles.

Key Requirements

• We don’t require a formal background or industry experience and welcome self‑taught candidates.
• Experience in empirical research related to scheming, AI control and evaluations and a scientific mindset: You have designed and executed experiments, can identify alternative explanations for findings and test alternative hypotheses to avoid over‑interpreting results. This experience can come from academia, industry, or independent research.
• Track record of excellent scientific writing and communication: You can understand and communicate complex technical concepts to our target audience and synthesize scientific results into coherent narratives.
• Comprehensive experience in Large Language Model (LLM) steering and the supporting Data Science and Data Engineering skills. LLM steering can take many different forms, such as: a) prompting, b) LM agents and scaffolding, c) fluent LLM usage and integration into your own workflows, d) experience with supervised fine‑tuning, e) experience with RL on LLMs.
• Software engineering skills: Our entire stack uses Python. We’re looking for candidates with strong software engineering experience.
• (Bonus) We recently switched to Inspect as our primary evals framework, and we value experience with it.
• Depending on your preferred role and how these characteristics weigh up, we can offer either an RS or RE role.

We want to emphasize that people who feel they don’t fulfill all of these characteristics but think they would be a good fit for the position, nonetheless, are strongly encouraged to apply. We believe that excellent candidates can come from a variety of backgrounds and are excited to give you opportunities to shine.

Logistics

• Start date: Target of 2‑3 months after the first interview.
• Time allocation: Full‑time.
• Location: London (in‑person); in rare situations we may consider partially remote arrangements on a case‑by‑case basis.
• Work visas: We can sponsor UK visas.

Benefits

• Salary: 100k - 200k GBP (~135k - 270k USD).
• Flexible work hours and schedule.
• Unlimited vacation.
• Unlimited sick leave.
• Lunch, dinner, and snacks are provided for all employees on workdays.
• Paid work trips, including staff retreats, business trips, and relevant conferences.
• A yearly $1,000 (USD) professional development budget.

About Apollo Research

At Apollo Research, we’re primarily concerned with risks from Loss of Control, i.e., risks coming from the model itself rather than humans misusing the AI. We’re particularly concerned with deceptive alignment / scheming, a phenomenon where a model appears to be aligned but is, in fact, misaligned and capable of evading human oversight. We work on the detection of scheming, the science of scheming, and scheming mitigations. We closely work with multiple frontier AI companies to test their models before deployment or collaborate on scheming mitigations.

At Apollo, we aim for a culture that emphasizes truth‑seeking, being goal‑oriented, giving and receiving constructive feedback, and being friendly and helpful.

Equality Statement

Apollo Research is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity and are committed to providing equal opportunities to all, regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.

How to Apply

Please complete the application form with your CV. The provision of a cover letter is optional but not necessary. Please also feel free to share links to relevant work samples.

Interview Process

Our multi‑stage process includes a screening interview, a take‑home test (≈2.5 hours), 3 technical interviews, and a final interview with Marius (CEO). The technical interviews will be closely related to tasks the candidate would do on the job. There are no LeetCode‑style general coding interviews. If you want to prepare for the interviews, we suggest working on hands‑on LLM evals projects (e.g., as suggested in our starter guide), such as building LM agent evaluations in Inspect.

Privacy and Fairness

We are committed to protecting your data, ensuring fairness, and adhering to workplace fairness principles in our recruitment process. To enhance hiring efficiency, we use AI‑powered tools to assist with tasks such as resume screening. These tools are designed and deployed in compliance with internationally recognized AI governance frameworks. Your personal data is handled securely and transparently. If you have questions about how your data is processed or wish to report concerns about fairness, please contact us at [email protected].