Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
Lead Full Stack Engineer- i.AI
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Bristol, London, Manchester
Job Summary
About the job
The Incubator for AI (i.AI) builds AI products inside the UK government that change how public services work across education, health, planning, and parliament. Small teams, start-up pace, national-scale impact. We are based in London, Bristol and Manchester, with hybrid working.
Full Stack Engineers build the products and services that bring AI capabilities to users: interfaces, APIs, data layers, infrastructure and delivery pipelines that make AI safe, reliable and useful for citizens and civil servants. Our stack includes Python (Django, FastAPI), TypeScript, modern JS frameworks (React, Astro, Svelte), PostgreSQL, AWS and Terraform. We integrate frontier LLMs through providers such as Amazon Bedrock, and the AI-integration landscape evolves as the ecosystem matures.
Job Summary
We build a portfolio of AI products at different stages of maturity, from early discovery through to services running at scale. You will be part of a small cross-disciplinary team working on one of these products, owning problems end-to-end and shipping real improvements for users. Over time you may move between products as priorities shift, giving you breadth across different problem domains and technologies. We’re looking for engineers who care as much about understanding the problem as writing the code, and who thrive when working closely with people from different disciplines.
Job Description
Job description
What you'll do
- Partner with the Product Manager to shape the strategic direction of your product, translating organisational goals into delivery objectives and OKRs for the team.
- Own the technical architecture of your product, making final decisions on approach while bringing engineers along with the reasoning.
- Coordinate and prioritise engineering work across your team, balancing delivery pace with technical quality and sustainability.
- Develop a deep understanding of the problem space, participating in discovery, interrogating assumptions, and aligning on what success looks like.
- Create an environment where engineers do their best work through clear expectations, regular feedback, and support for growth.
- Maintain high engineering standards across the team through code review, testing practices, and operational discipline.
- Represent engineering in cross-team and leadership conversations, communicating technical trade-offs and risks clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
- Still write code, particularly on the hardest problems or where architectural decisions need to be validated through implementation.
Person specification
Who you are
- Experience leading the technical direction of a product or team, including making architectural decisions and owning the consequences.
- A track record of working closely with product managers or equivalent roles to define goals, shape roadmaps, and connect engineering work to outcomes.
- Experience coordinating and growing engineers. You set clear expectations, give useful feedback, and create the conditions for others to do great work.
- Strong technical depth across the stack, with the judgement to know when to go deep and when to delegate.
- Clear communication with both technical and non-technical audiences. You can explain trade-offs, articulate risk, and build confidence in your direction.
You don't need to meet every criterion to apply. If this role excites you, we'd love to hear from you.
What we offer
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Career-defining projects with outsized impact
- Backing from the Prime Minister and No10 to scope and build transformative AI products.
- Unique opportunities to apply technology to transform the public sector and citizens' lives.
- Talented, supportive and mission-driven colleagues.
Resources & access
- Access to frontier models and ample compute.
- Work with experts across national security, policy, AI research and adjacent sciences.
Growth & empowerment
- A team culture and development support that prioritises personal growth.
- Opportunities to own important products early and develop them in small empowered teams.
- 5 days off learning and development, annual stipends for learning and development and funding for conferences and external collaborations.
Life & family
- Opportunity to work from London, Manchester or Bristol offices.
- Hybrid working, flexibility for occasional remote work abroad and stipends for work-from-home equipment.
- Generous annual leave - 25 days plus one additional day for each year of service
- Generous paid parental leave (up to 39 weeks full pay + option for additional unpaid time).
- On top of your salary, we contribute 28.97% of your base salary to your pension.
- Discounts and benefits for cycling to work, dental insurance, donations and retail/gyms.
- These benefits apply to direct employees. Benefits may differ for people joining through other employment arrangements such as secondments.
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Technical take home test
- Second interview in which we’ll review the technical test Details of this will be given to candidates ahead of time.
Alongside your salary of £69,675, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £20,184 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.
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.
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Selection Process
Appointment is conditional on successfully completing UK Government SC clearance. Prior clearance is not required—we will sponsor and support you. You should normally have been resident in the UK for 2 of the past 5 years. Employment is conditional on obtaining and maintaining the required clearance(s). More detail on clearance eligibility can be found on the UK Government website: National security vetting: clearance levels - GOV.UK
In accordance with the Civil Service Commission rules, the following list contains all elements of the selection process.
To apply please upload your CV and answer any required questions. There is no need to upload a separate cover letter.
Candidates should expect to go through some or all of the following stages once an application has been submitted:
- A short initial conversation
- Technical take home test
- Second interview in which we’ll review the technical test
- Third interview with wider representation from the team
- Final interview with members of the senior team
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). As part of the application process, we monitor statistics on D&I. You can see how we process this data here: Recruitment privacy notice - GOV.UK.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Experience and Technical skills.
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 security 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.
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 security 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)
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