Principal Machine Learning Developer

Government Recruitment Service; Manchester; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A government service agency in Manchester is seeking a Principal Developer to lead AI-as-a-Service initiatives. You will mentor engineers, oversee machine learning deployments, and collaborate across teams to improve public service delivery through technology. The ideal candidate has strong experience in AI technologies and cloud platforms like Azure and AWS, and possesses excellent leadership skills.

Benefits

Additional pay for out-of-hours work

Qualifications

• Strong background in machine learning and AI technologies.
• Experience leading technical teams and projects.
• Ability to design and build cloud infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Lead deployment and monitoring of machine learning solutions.
• Collaborate with teams to deliver data-driven solutions.
• Mentor senior engineers and support recruitment.

Skills

Machine Learning

AI technologies

Cross-functional collaboration

Data pipeline management

Tools

Java

Node.js

Python

Azure

AWS

TensorFlow

Docker

Job description

This role sits in the Shared Applications Service department, with over 650 engineers. This is the engineering capability, developing in all areas including policing, Border Force, and migration. It includes the Automation and Innovation portfolio, which this role is focused on.

The Home Office Automation and Innovation portfolio delivers the government's commitment to "set the standard for excellence in the AI age" - harnessing cutting-edge technology to revolutionise public service delivery. As outlined in the Government's Generative AI Framework, we're in "a period of rapid and exciting technological changes, which offers huge potential", and we're turning that potential into reality.

Our work spans Home Office mission-critical operations, such as transforming Border Security and immigration processes, to revolutionising asylum case management and enhancing Counter-Terrorism capabilities. Imagine developing technology that helps reunite families, creates safer communities, protects vulnerable people, and ensures smoother journeys for the millions travelling to and from the UK.

Each area presents unique challenges where AI and automation can deliver substantial efficiency savings and improve outcomes for the public and colleagues.

The Principal Developer will be the engineering lead for the new AI-as-a-Service function within Automation and Innovation.

You will lead in many aspects including the deployment, monitoring and iterating of machine learning solutions. You will lead your team to conduct explorative work in Agentic AI.

You will take part in planning with senior stakeholders to make sure that technical designs match strategy. In this you will be expected to help ensure that all engineers, architects, and other professions are working together. You will also identify, test and advocate for new tools or approaches.

You will support the assurance of our solutions and help resolve any discrepancy between approach and organisational strategy.

As a Principal Developer, you will be expected to mentor other senior engineers in technical tasks, as well as support recruitment and assessment activities.

Tools and Technologies we use:

We are keen for Engineers to continue learning new technologies, we have a large range in the Home Office including:

• Backend: Java, Node.js, C#, Python
• Frontend: React, JavaScript, Typescript
• Data Science: NumPy, Pandas, scikit-learn, TensorFlow/PyTorch, SciPy
• Platforms: Azure, AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, Docker, Terraform
• AI: Azure AI Foundry, Amazon SageMaker, Python, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Cloud AI Platform

What you will do:

Your main day to day responsibilities will be:

• Assessing use cases for LLMs/ML and leading on selection of appropriate models.
• Leading on the design and build of central infrastructure and microservices for AI at scale across multiple cloud platforms.
• Developing and maintaining data pipelines supporting model training and deployment.
• Leading end to end ML lifecycle from data preparation to deployment and monitoring.
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver data-driven solutions.
• Working with architects/security and other stakeholders evaluating and advising on design choices and ensuring that they are high quality and balance technical and business considerations.
• Defining and documenting best practices and establishing metrics of model success.
• Carrying out challenging implementation tasks, whilst maintaining strong stakeholder engagement and keeping the relevant documentation up to date
• Leadership of your AI-as-a-Service engineering team, including line management and professional development, ensuring you and your team are trained in the latest tools / tech in the AI and ML space.
• Staying appraised of the latest developments in the AI space by analysing research and academic papers.

Like many organisations we need to maintain our services 24/7, therefore, on occasions there may be a requirement to work out of hours, for which you will be paid an additional allowance.