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General Information

Working Pattern
Full Time, Part Time/Job Share, Flexible Working
Vacancy Approach
External
Location
National
Region
National
Closing Date
16-Nov-2025
Post Type
Permanent
Number of jobs available
1
Reserve List
12 Months
Job ID
11367

Descriptions & requirements

Job description
The Justice AI Unit is an interdisciplinary team of AI specialists, designers, technologists, and operational experts working to embed responsible AI across the justice system.
We exist to enable the safe and ethical adoption of AI across the MoJ and its agencies, helping our people deliver faster, better and more human services.

Reporting into the Director of Justice AI Unit you will:

Strategic Leadership:

• Lead engineering across the Justice AI Unit, setting technical direction for delivery of AI-powered products at scale.
• Own decisions impacting thousands of users across the justice system, ensuring reliability, security, and fairness.
• Drive adoption of platform engineering best practices, particularly in Azure, ensuring scalable, resilient infrastructure.
• Translate advances in large language models into practical, deployable solutions that support justice outcomes.

Senior Stakeholder Engagement:

• Provide technical leadership for AI product development, ensuring products balance speed, safety, and user need.
• Build and scale applications powered by large language models, including decisions on cost, performance, and latency.
• Apply strong product judgement to weigh trade-offs between functionality, scalability, and user outcomes.

Team Leadership and Coordination:

• Lead and manage a team of engineers, ensuring they deliver innovative products in a fast-paced environment.
• Build a high-performance, mission-driven engineering culture with strong focus on collaboration and pragmatism.
• Coach and develop engineers, providing technical and career progression pathways.

Operational Excellence:

• Ensure security best practices in all engineering work, safeguarding sensitive data and systems.
• Oversee efficient resource planning, infrastructure scaling, and cost management.
• Ensure alignment between engineering delivery and MoJ digital/AI strategy.
Deputising for the Director of AI:
• Represent the Director in strategic forums, including cross-government AI working groups, high-level stakeholder engagements, and external conferences.

Essential Experience:

• Excellent leadership skills, with a proven ability to provide clear direction and coaching to high performing teams
• Strong knowledge and hands-on experience with platform engineering and scaling infrastructure, particularly on Azure.
• Deep expertise in building and delivering meaningful products, preferably at scale.
• Exceptional stakeholder skills, with an ability to act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders within and outside of the team, and develop strong relationships across organisational boundaries and external stakeholders
• Experience building and deploying LLM-powered applications, such as Open AI, Azure, Hugging Face

Additional Information

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.


Diversity & 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 and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.


Contact Information
If you require any assistance please contact us on scsrecruitment@justice.gov.uk. Please quote the job reference in your email to enable us to support you more quickly.

Application form stage assessments

Experience
We will assess your experience for this role via the following methods
CV or Work History, Statement of Suitability
Statement of Suitability
Guidance for the Statement of Suitability
Please make sure you address the following Essential Experience in your CV and Statement:

• Excellent leadership skills, with a proven ability to provide clear direction and coaching to high performing teams
• Strong knowledge and hands-on experience with platform engineering and scaling infrastructure, particularly on Azure.
• Deep expertise in building and delivering meaningful products, preferably at scale.
• Exceptional stakeholder skills, with an ability to act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders within and outside of the team, and develop strong relationships across organisational boundaries and external stakeholders
• Experience building and deploying LLM-powered applications, such as Open AI, Azure, Hugging Face.
Evidence of Experience
CV or Work History, Statement of Suitability

Interview stage assessments

Interview Dates
Expected 10th and 11th December 2025
Behaviours
Communicating and Influencing
Leadership
Delivering at Pace
Changing and Improving
Managing a Quality Service

Other Assessments

Which assessment methods will be used?
Presentation
Level of security checks required
Security Clearance (SC)

Use of Artificial Intelligence (Al)

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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.