Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
People Partner — Sovereign AI
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Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London, Manchester
Job Summary
Sovereign AI is the UK's sovereign venture fund, funded by the UK Government and dedicated to scaling British AI companies. With a £500M fund it invests from pre-seed through growth stage across five priority areas: compute and infrastructure, foundation models, AI in health and life sciences, scientific discovery, and trust, safety and assurance.
Alongside capital, Sovereign AI offers founders sovereign compute, fast-tracked visas for global AI talent, and strategic assets including national datasets, research partnerships, and grants and contracts of up to £10m. The mission is to help British AI startups start here, scale here, and win everywhere.
Job Description
As we scale our team and portfolio, we are hiring our first People Partner to build the talent function from the ground up and ensure our people have the best environment to succeed. This is a high-ownership, generalist role suited to someone comfortable building process from scratch, operating at both strategic and hands-on levels, and working closely with leadership in a fast-moving, high-stakes environment.
Primary objective
To own talent and people strategy across the fund as Sovereign AI's first dedicated people hire — shaping how the fund attracts, hires, develops and retains talent as it grows.
Core Responsibilities
Talent acquisition:
- Own end-to-end recruitment for the fund, from investment professionals to operations and platform roles.
- Build a scalable hiring process — sourcing strategy, interview frameworks, scorecards and offer management.
- Partner with leadership to define hiring plans against fund strategy and headcount budget.
- Build and maintain a strong talent pipeline, including passive candidates in AI/investing.
People Operations & Culture:
- Design and implement core people processes — onboarding, performance management, compensation frameworks and career development.
- Own HR operations (contracts, benefits, compliance and policies), ensuring they scale with the fund.
- Shape and protect culture as the team grows, embedding values into how people work and are evaluated.
- Act as a trusted advisor to leadership and team members on people matters.
Strategic Partnership:
- Sit close to leadership as a thought partner on org design, team structure and workforce planning.
- Bring market intelligence on comp benchmarking, talent trends and competitive positioning in AI/VC.
Impact
Builds Sovereign AI's people function from the ground up, directly enabling the fund to attract and retain the talent needed to scale British AI companies.
Measurable success
- 90 days — established core hiring processes and built trust with leadership.
- 6 months — scalable recruitment and onboarding running, key hires delivered, foundational people policies in place.
- 1 year — a functioning, scalable people function with embedded performance, compensation and culture frameworks.
Person specification
Essential
- 3+ years in a people/talent role, ideally including time in a startup, VC/fund or high-growth tech environment.
- Track record of building people processes from scratch, not just administering existing ones.
- Strong recruitment experience, particularly for senior or specialist hires.
- Excellent judgment and discretion; close to sensitive, confidential information.
- Genuine interest in AI and the venture/fund landscape.
- Sharp communicator who can flex between strategic conversations with leadership and hands-on operational work.
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Preferred
- Experience hiring investment professionals or technical/research talent.
- Familiarity with fund structures, carry, and compensation norms in venture/private markets.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Communicating and Influencing
- Delivering at Pace
- Seeing the Big Picture
- Managing a Quality Service
Salary and Benefits
- Alongside your salary of £44,620, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £12,926 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.
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.
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 Behaviours and Experience.
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 500 words) to tell us how your skills align with this role and share examples.
In the event of a large number of applicants, applications will be sifted on personal statement.
Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment/interview.
Stages
- Stage 1 — Experience interview
- Stage 2 — Structured interview assessing behaviours and role-relevant scenarios and exercise, e.g. a people-strategy task).
- Stage 3 — Final interview with leadership
Sift and interview dates
Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.
Further Information
Former DSIT recruitment campaigns are continuing as usual, but candidates should be aware that following the Government’s announcement on the changes to some civil service departments, roles will be subject to the machinery of government moves and will ultimately be in one of the new departments. We will provide more information if you are selected for a role. This work remains of high importance to the civil service, and we thank you for your continued interest.
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Existing Civil Servants and applicants from accredited NDPBs are eligible to apply, and can be considered on loan basis (Civil Servants) or secondment (accredited NDPBs). Prior agreement to be released on a loan basis must be obtained before commencing the application process. In the case of Civil Servants, the terms of the loan will be agreed between the home and host department and the Civil Servant. This includes grade on return.
This role is full time only. Applicants who wish to work an alternative pattern are welcome to apply however your preferred working pattern may not be available and you should discuss this with the vacancy holder before applying.
Reasonable Adjustment
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 /Disclosure Scotland 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 Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk stating the job reference number in the subject
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