Deputy Director, AI Engineering (Justice AI Unit) - MoJ - SCS1

Manchester Digital; City Of London, East Midlands; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A government department is seeking a Deputy Director for AI Engineering to lead the Justice AI Unit. This role involves overseeing platform engineering, engaging with senior stakeholders, and developing AI-powered applications. The ideal candidate will have extensive knowledge of Azure and LLM technologies, alongside excellent leadership skills. The position is located in various regions across England, with a national focus on AI deployment.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to lead engineering teams effectively.
• Experience with scaling infrastructure in cloud environments.
• Understanding of AI and its ethical implications.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineering across the Justice AI Unit.
• Provide technical leadership for AI product development.
• Ensure operational excellence and security best practices.

Skills

Strategic Leadership

Team Leadership and Coordination

Strong stakeholder engagement

Deep expertise in platform engineering

Experience building LLM-powered applications

Tools

Azure

Open AI

Hugging Face

Job description

Deputy Director, AI Engineering (Justice AI Unit) - MoJ - SCS1

East Midlands (England), East of England, London (region), North East England, North West England, Scotland, South East England, South West England, Wales, West Midlands (England), Yorkshire and the Humber

About the job

Job summary

This is a National based role

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.
• 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

Person specification

For full details about the Role, Key Responsibilities and Person Specification, please download and review the Candidate Information pack

Behaviours

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