Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
Senior 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, startup 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 Description
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.
What You'll Do
- Work with your team to develop a deep understanding of the problem space, participating in discovery, interrogating assumptions, and aligning on what success looks like.
- Shape technical approaches collaboratively, weighing trade-offs with designers, product managers and other engineers to arrive at solutions that work for users and the team.
- Deliver working software across the full stack, from infrastructure and data layers through to APIs and user interfaces, in small, frequent increments.
- Communicate openly by sharing progress, surfacing risks early, and documenting decisions so the team can move confidently.
- Maintain high standards through automated testing, code review, and operational practices that keep services reliable.
- Mentor and support other engineers through pairing, knowledge sharing, and constructive feedback.
- Get stuck in beyond building features, whether that's participating in user research, supporting a live service, or picking up unfamiliar work to keep the team moving.
Person Specification
Who You Are
- Strong experience building and maintaining production services across the stack, with depth in at least one backend language and one frontend framework.
- A collaborative mindset. You believe the best outcomes come from people with different skills and backgrounds solving problems together, and you actively invest in that.
- Experience shaping technical direction in ambiguous environments. You’re comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and revisiting them as you learn more.
- Clear, proactive communication. You naturally keep people around you informed and bring others into decisions.
- A commitment to quality through automated testing, code review, and thoughtful engineering practices.
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
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.
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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 of 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 will be sent to candidates ahead of this interview
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.
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.
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
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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
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.
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.
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
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