Government must seize the opportunity of AI to drive outcomes in the public interest. This is of critical importance now. Government needs innovation and must not sleep on the opportunity presented by AI to drive better services for taxpayers and citizens.
i.AI (the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence) sits within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as part of the new digital centre of government. Our mission is to harness the opportunity of AI to improve lives, drive growth, and deliver better public services. We are an AI product team that focuses on delivery of technical solutions to public service challenges, responding to ministerial priorities and driving impact out into departments from the centre.
i.AI delivers high impact products and is mission-led, delivering value and innovation within government. We are able to move fast and build things, and are set up specifically to pivot quickly towards priority use cases, and re-use technologies for future impact.
You can see more about our work on ai.gov.uk and on LinkedIn. We work in the open and our code can be found at https://github.com/i-dot-ai.
Our team is based across Bristol, Manchester and London, and we work in a hybrid manner as default. A minimum 60% of your working time should be spent at your principal workplace, although requirements to attend other locations for official business will also count towards this level of attendance. We will consider part-time and flexible working arrangements – we encourage you to discuss your needs with the hiring manager if you are offered the role.
Job overview
i.AI is a small and dynamic team. DMs help the team achieve defined goals - whether that’s a sprint target, a product milestone, or a wider programme objective - helping the people around them work together effectively to get there. You will need to work flexibly, designing processes around the needs of a given product team, and going beyond the strict DM remit to identify and solve wider project and team problems.
You will be working across one or more of i.AI's product teams, providing delivery leadership alongside Product Managers or technical team leads. Your work could range from a small group scoping a brand new idea, to a full multidisciplinary team delivering at scale. Products that our DMs work on include AI tutoring tools for schools, AI consultation analysis tools for government departments, or infrastructure platforms that power all of i.AI's products.
Delivery also sits at a key overlap between project and internal processes, and as a Senior Delivery Manager you will also take ownership of key internal processes to improve our work across the incubator. This might include leading on how i.AI tracks and improves delivery across the incubator, or devising new systems to resolve systemic challenges.
Being flexible and passionate about getting things done are essential; this is a varied role and we need someone who's keen to adapt to what's needed.
The Senior DM role at i.AI spans the full range of product delivery – from early scoping and stakeholder engagement, through procurement, assurance and risk management, to keeping multidisciplinary teams focused and unblocked as they build. As a Senior Delivery Manager, you will often be the most senior delivery voice on a product, and are expected to lead on the harder problems — setting direction, managing upward, and building delivery capability in others. No two products are the same, and you will adapt your approach accordingly.
In practice, your work might involve:
- Scoping deliverables, defining goals, and mapping the path to impact for new AI products
- Orchestrating cross-disciplinary teams – including engineers, user researchers, data scientists, and evaluators – aligning on timelines and deliverables, breaking work into deliverable chunks, visualising work in progress, and actively reducing work required
- Working to proactively remove blockers to delivery, reconciling differences within the team and ensuring that stakeholder expectations are aligned
- Tailoring relevant agile methodologies to suit the needs of the team at different stages of product maturity, coaching and mentoring others in agile delivery, and driving team-wide adoption of the right practices for each context
- Owning risk and dependency management across products: identifying, tracking and resolving issues, actively addressing the most complex risks including where ownership sits outside the immediate team, and escalating to senior leadership where necessary
- Owning procurement paths and contractual management with external vendors, frontier AI labs, and government stakeholders
- Working with product leads on the engagement for products, for example designing and running the onboarding process, building productive relationships with teams from other government departments and beyond to enable delivery
- Supporting the effective performance of the team by promoting inclusion of diverse voices, regular, honest and constructive feedback, and continuous improvement
- Leading products through assurance processes, both internal and across other government departments
- Managing budgets and resources to ensure efficient use of funding
- Helping shape how i.AI tracks and improves its own delivery, including contributing to incubator-wide processes and tooling. Leading how i.AI tracks and improves its own delivery, owning incubator-wide processes and tooling and driving continuous improvement across teams.
Person specification
- Energised by people problems — you understand team dynamics, have an instinct for what makes groups work well together, and have experience coaching or developing others in delivery practices
- A proactive fixer — you take ownership of problems, get creative about solving them, and don't wait to be asked
- Determined to make processes work — whether that's a government assurance framework, a procurement route, or an internal way of working, you're the person who figures out how to make the system serve the goal, not the other way round
- Fluent across technical and non-technical worlds — you can hold a conversation with an AI engineer and translate it for a minister's office
- Comfortable with ambiguity — you can move fast in early-stage, loosely-defined work and know how to shift gear as a product matures
- An expert at identifying and managing risks, dependencies and blockers — including actively addressing the most complex risks where ownership sits outside the immediate team, and knowing when to escalate and when to just fix it
- Deeply experienced in agile delivery and able to adapt methods to what the team actually needs, not just what the textbook says, and able to coach others in the right practices for the context
- Strong working knowledge of government assurance, procurement and budget processes, or similar processes in large organisations.
Strong candidates come from many different backgrounds, and we encourage a broad range of applications to ensure we have a well-balanced team. Studies show that talented people, especially those from groups underrepresented in their field, are more likely to doubt themselves and feel like an 'imposter'.
Unique perspectives enrich teams, so we urge you to have confidence in your potential contributions. If aspects of this role resonate with you, please apply.
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- The first 30 minutes will involve a role play exercise. You will be given details of this ahead of your interview, to allow you to prepare.
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £56,850, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £16,469 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:
- A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
- Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
- A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
- An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
- Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.
- A hybrid office/home based working model where staff will spend a norm of 40-60% of their time in the office (minimum of 40%) over a month with flex dependent on balancing business and individual need.
Office attendance
The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience.
Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action.
Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Experience and Technical skills.
As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and personal statement.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Please use your personal statement (in no more than 1,000 words) to:
Describe a project blocker — technical, organisational, or interpersonal — that required creative problem-solving to resolve. What was your role, and what did you do? Describe a time when you had to work with a team that wasn't functioning well — whether due to unclear roles, competing priorities, interpersonal tension, or something else. What did you do, and what changed as a result?
In the event that we receive a large number of applications we reserve the right to sift on personal statement alone.
Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment/interview.
Interviews
- Round 1- 30 minutes Q+A style of interview focussing on your experience.
- Round 2- 1 hour 15 minute interview with a panel of 2. This will involve a role play exercise and test technical skills. You will be given details ahead of this interview in order for you to prepare accordingly.
Sift and Interviews
Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.
Further Information
Reasonable Adjustments
We are proud to be a disability confident leader and we welcome applications from disabled candidates and candidates with long-term conditions.
Information about the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and some examples of adjustments that we offer to disabled candidates and candidates with long-term health conditions during our recruitment process can be found in our DSIT Candidate Guidance. A DSIT Plain Text Version of the guidance is also available.
We encourage candidates to discuss their adjustment needs by emailing the job contact which can be found under the contact point for applicants section.
If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.
If successful and transferring from another Government Department a criminal record check may be carried out.
New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.
A location based reserve list of successful candidates will be kept for 12 months. Should another role become available within that period you may be offered this position.
Candidates who meet the minimum benchmark may be placed on a Reserve List for consideration for similar roles, including those at a lower grade. Candidates who narrowly miss the benchmark and are not placed on the Reserve List may still be considered for an offer in a similar role at a lower grade.
Please note terms and conditions are attached. Please take time to read the document to determine how these may affect you.
Any move to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare; for further information visit the Childcare Choices website.
DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).
DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.
In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service on your behalf.
However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct. If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing [email protected] stating the job reference number in the subject heading.
Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences.
This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment.
A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5 year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.
Please be aware the levels of national security clearance are changing which may impact on the level needed for this role by the time of appointment. All efforts will be made to keep candidates informed of any changes and what that will mean in terms of vetting criteria. For more information please See our vetting charter
For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the Demystifying Vetting website.
Feedback
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check (opens in a new window). See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window).
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).
Apply and further information
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job contact
Recruitment team
Further information
Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the recruitment principles, and wish to make a complaint, then you should contact in the first instance [email protected].
If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: Click here to visit Civil Service Commission/Complaints.
Attachments
DSIT T&Cs v1.2 - Opens in new window (docx, 61kB)
