Principal Solutions Architect (AI Solutions)

You will build the team, set direction, shape priorities and help people choose the most effective route for each opportunity. That may mean coaching colleagues to solve a problem themselves, teaching teams how to use AI well, supporting the design of a low-code solution in a short sprint, bringing in specialist contractors, or escalating more complex needs to another team. You will need to keep the team focused, unblock problems, make useful connections and build clear ways of working across a team of people who are often operating independently.

Job description This is a role for someone entrepreneurial, credible and energising. You will need to inspire others, bring structure to ambiguity, and help a small team deliver high-impact use cases that show clear value for the department. As a Principal Solutions Architect (AI Solutions), you will: set strategic direction, standards and ways of working for a distributed team that is often embedded across different parts of the organisation help the team and stakeholders shape demand, prioritise projects, assess value vs effort/risk, make trade-offs, and maintain focus so solutions can be created provide AI advice to senior leaders and non-technical stakeholders, communicating to gain support whilst managing risk and complexity develop prototypes and deliver lightweight solutions (most likely using Copilot Studio, Power Automate and/or wider Power Platform) foster a culture of learning and innovation within your team, role modelling effective and responsible use of AI

Person specification We’re interested in people who: have experience setting clear strategic direction, standards and ways of working for a distributed team that is often embedded across different parts of the organisation have experience helping the team and stakeholders shape demand, assess value vs effort/risk, make trade-offs, and maintain focus so solutions can be created, or identifying problems and solution options have experience providing advice to senior leaders and non-technical stakeholders, utilising different architecture communication techniques to gain support from stakeholders for architectural initiatives with high levels of risk, impact and complexity can translate between user needs, operational reality, governance requirements and technical options have hands-on skill with Microsoft low-code tools to prototype and deliver lightweight solutions (Copilot Studio, Power Automate and/or wider Power Platform) have experience coaching others to identify reusable patterns and trends, and feeding them back to the wider organisation to anticipate changes to policy and build resilience through your architectural work

To provide more information and context about the role, we are holding an open recruitment session on the 22nd June 2026, from 12:00 - 13:00. There will be a presentation followed by a Q&A Session. If you would like to be invited to the session, please email GDSrecruitment@dsit.gov.uk.

Please note This role requires SC clearance, which would normally need 5 years’ UK residency in the past 5 years. This is not an absolute requirement, but supplementary checks may be needed where individuals have not lived in the UK for that period. This may mean your security clearance (and therefore your appointment) will take longer or, in some cases, not be possible.

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.