Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
Principal Technologist- i.AI
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Job Summary
About the Incubator for AI (i.AI)
The Incubator for AI (i.AI) is a fast-moving, autonomous technical unit within the UK government. Our mission is to pioneer transformative applications of AI to build a better Britain.
We Operate Under Three Core Principles:
Talent: We bring together the UK’s best AI talent across a range of functions. You will work alongside exceptional researchers and top government leaders, staying at the cutting edge of technology.
Innovation: We set precedents for what is possible in government. We combine the pace of a start-up with the influence of being at the digital centre of government. You will test new ideas, expand what is possible, and leverage unique government data to create novel solutions.
Impact: We are dedicated to using AI as a tool for public good - this can mean improving outcomes in schools, boosting housebuilding or providing more personalised support for those in need. With the backing of the Prime Minister, you will turn technical breakthroughs into real-world applications that affect millions of citizens.
Job Description
About the job
Who we are
We are a team at the forefront of applying cutting-edge AI to transform how people experience government services.
Gov Voice is building a trusted, reusable AI voice service that makes it easier for people to access government services by phone. For millions of people, contact centres are one of the most important and highest-volume ways they interact with government. We are creating an AI-enabled voice capability that can make those interactions simpler, faster and easier to navigate.
Gov Voice is part of the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), which is working to make digital government simpler, clearer and faster for everyone. We are responsible for helping set, lead and deliver the vision for a modern digital government.
This is not innovation for its own sake. We are building a real service for real users in a high-trust, high-scrutiny environment. Our goal is to create something practical, resilient and reusable that departments across government can adopt with confidence.
This is a rare opportunity to work at the intersection of frontier AI and real-world delivery. You will be part of a multidisciplinary team bringing together product, delivery, AI, design, policy, operations and technical expertise to solve complex problems that matter. This is the kind of role that comes along rarely: a chance to shape the technical direction of an ambitious AI-enabled public service, while helping define what good looks like for modern, trustworthy AI systems in government.
If you are motivated by difficult technical problems, meaningful public impact, and the opportunity to influence how reusable AI-enabled services are built across government, this is an opportunity to make a genuine difference.
Who We Are
Gov Voice is part of the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), which is working to make digital government simpler, clearer and faster for everyone.
We are a multidisciplinary team bringing together product, delivery, AI, policy, operations, service design, security and data expertise to turn emerging technology into practical public services. We’re not building prototypes for the sake of it — we’re building something real, reusable and trusted that departments across government can adopt with confidence.
This is the kind of project that comes along rarely: frontier technology, real-world delivery, meaningful public impact, and complex problems worth solving. We’re looking for people who want to help define what secure, privacy-conscious and trustworthy AI in government looks like.
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What You Will Do
The Principal Technologist role exists to make it easier to build excellent technology in the UK public sector. This is a senior individual contributor role for a high-agency, entrepreneurial technologist who wants their work to matter at national scale.
You will lead through technical judgement, influence and clarity of vision rather than line management. You will help shape and drive the technical direction for Gov Voice, ensuring that architectural decisions are robust, pragmatic and aligned with wider government standards and long-term service outcomes.
You will work across disciplines and organisational boundaries to connect strategy with delivery, helping teams make good technical decisions in a fast-moving area shaped by rapid advances in generative AI. You will bring a strong point of view on architecture, engineering quality and responsible technology adoption, while remaining grounded in user needs, operational realities and delivery constraints.
As a Principal Technologist, You Will:
- Help design and drive the technical strategy for the area you work in, ensuring alignment with broader GDS standards, organisational priorities and long-term service goals
- Hold and communicate a clear vision for technical architecture best practice, enabling the team to build resilient, reliable and maintainable government services, and translating that vision for both technical and non-technical audiences
- Bring expertise in generative AI technologies, sharing recent developments, implementation approaches and good practice, and helping the team make informed decisions in a rapidly evolving field
- Guide architectural and technical design decisions in areas of high risk, complexity and ambiguity, balancing innovation with security, resilience, operability, compliance and value for users
- Ensure technical designs meet user needs and acceptance criteria, while also working within practical time, budget and delivery constraints
- Work collaboratively in agile, multidisciplinary teams, partnering with departments and a wide range of specialists to shape coherent, scalable and responsible technology solutions
- Support and evolve technical governance and assurance, helping embed repeatable standards, proportionate controls and robust evaluation of technologies and design choices
- Challenge the status quo where needed, using sound judgement and evidence to improve how government designs, builds and adopts modern technology
This role will require you to operate strategically while staying close enough to delivery to ensure ideas can be implemented effectively. At times, you will be helping set direction across a broad and ambiguous problem space; at others, you will be working through specific technical trade-offs with teams building and operating the service.
Person specification
Essential Experience
We are interested in people who have:
- Experience supporting wider organisational objectives beyond immediate delivery goals, ensuring architectural decisions are aligned with strategic priorities and long-term service outcomes
- Experience communicating with technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels, including across organisational boundaries, using clear architectural communication techniques to build shared understanding of complex concepts
- Experience working collaboratively across multidisciplinary and technical teams, such as engineering, data science, machine learning and operations, to shape coherent, scalable and responsible technology solutions
- Experience making and guiding architectural design decisions characterised by high levels of risk, ambiguity and complexity, using strong technical judgement, trade-off analysis and first-principles thinking
- Experience using influencing and relationship-building skills to gain support from business and technical stakeholders for initiatives with significant risk, impact and complexity
- Experience defining and connecting strategies or technical visions across teams, organisations or wider government, so that solutions remain secure, compliant, interoperable and future-ready
- Experience creating technical designs across the product or service lifecycle in environments characterised by high risk, impact and complexity
- A strong interest in technology and AI, and in applying them to build user-centred services in a fast-changing environment, ensuring technical solutions deliver meaningful outcomes for users
- Experience leading or evolving architectural governance and assurance approaches, embedding repeatable standards and robust evaluation of emerging technologies
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If you meet some of these criteria, but not every single one, we would still encourage you to apply.
Why join us
This is a chance to help shape a technically ambitious, high-profile service at a point where the most important technology, architecture and adoption decisions still need to be made.
You will work with talented, supportive and mission-driven colleagues across disciplines, and you will have the opportunity to influence not only the service itself but also how reusable AI-enabled technology is designed and delivered across government.
The work is complex, visible and meaningful. The technology is evolving quickly. The constraints are real. And the opportunity to create public value at scale is significant.
If you want to help build resilient, trusted and user-centred AI-enabled services for government, we would love to hear from you.
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
Candidates will be asked a scenario question by the panel and should be expected to respond to follow-up questions. Further details will be provided in advance, including the opportunity for candidates to prepare for the technical interview.
Salary and Benefits
Alongside your salary of £74,605, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £21,613 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.
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