Lead AI Engineer - Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government - G7

Darlington, London, Manchester, Wolverhampton

AI technology is rapidly evolving and there is immense opportunity to harness this capability to transform delivery at MHCLG. The new AI directorate at MHCLG is driving forward AI development and adoption across the department and support to partners in local government.

We are looking for a passionate and enthusiastic lead AI engineer to join our team and be at the leading edge of AI delivery in a central government department, to deliver high-impact projects at pace to improve outcomes and productivity. You will unlock new approaches through the adoption of AI tools and techniques to build the evidence base that drives smarter, more impactful decisions. You will contribute to the discovery, pilot, implementation and scaling of AI projects by the Directorate, developing models for secure, ethical and effective AI tools that deliver high value opportunities and improve outcomes.

You will join a multi-disciplinary team of technical experts (including data engineers, data scientists, developers, user research, delivery managers, service owners) with an ambitious and exciting remit to harness the potential of AI, working on high impact projects that deliver operational efficiencies and support policy development through the rapid prototyping and scaling of products and services. You will be forward deployed , working collaboratively across the organisation and with external partners, interacting with a range of stakeholders to explore, build and maintain foundational AI capability and champion the role and impact of AI in the process.

Find out more about our Digital teams and what they are working on through our MHCLG Digital blog . Please note that MHCLG do not offer visa sponsorship and applicants will need a valid visa for the duration of your employment.

As a Lead AI Engineer, you'll:

• Work within agile, multidisciplinary teams to identify, develop, configure and deliver AI / machine learning models so they can be used in products and services, defining minimum viable products (MVPs) and iterating based on user needs
• Engaging with programme leads and stakeholders to ensure approaches are appropriate and outputs meet end-user expectations
• Lead workstreams to identify, develop, configure and deliver AI models for AI prototyping and scaling, testing and production and assuring them to ensure they meet performance requirements
• Working closely with others to integrate models into existing systems
• Take responsibility for ensuring models used in live products and services stay safe, secure and continue to work effectively, apply your knowledge of policies relating to AI ethics and responsible use
• Work with stakeholders to identify and address ethical and privacy concerns. Research and apply developments in data ethics and privacy to improve compliance and processes
• Confidently define / build / configure AI models to support AI delivery in line with best practice and standards
• Use agreed specifications to design, code, test and document programs or scripts of medium-to-high complexity, using the right standards and tools
• Establish enterprise-scale AI deployment / life cycle working in collaboration with Digital / Cyber / Data Protection and Knowledge Information Management teams
• Continuously improve delivery by identifying potential efficiencies and savings in existing processes, ensuring resources are utilised appropriately
• Lead on collaboration and building AI capability while supporting the continuous development and upskilling of the wider technical team
• Line or matrix manage junior members of the team and interns as required, providing support to their learning and development
• Role model and champion your role in AI across the organisation and more widely across government and have a curiosity for the latest trends in GenAI, LLMOps, and ML more broadly

As a Lead AI Engineer, you'll have:

• A passion for utilising data and AI responsibly for the public good and to improve citizens lives
• Experience building end-to-end LLM applications (prompt engineering, data models, API integration, input/output handling, training, monitoring)
• Python expertise: strong experience with core libraries and writing clear, modular, reusable code with error handling and logging
• Cloud and tooling skills: experience working with Azure or AWS; and familiarity with version control (Git/GitHub), command line, and IDEs
• Software engineering practices: unit testing (e.g. pytest), code reviews, and general good practice in collaborative development
• Applied data science skills: strong grounding in statistics and a range of standard techniques (supervised/unsupervised ML, cross-validation, time-series, NLP basics, SQL)
• Communication skills: able to explain technical work clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, manage active and reactive communication, support or host difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders
• Delivery and collaboration skills: proactive, self-motivated, organised, and effective at working to deadlines as part of a team
• Proven and relevant professional experience in a data science or related field, or a combination of qualifications/certifications and experience that demonstrates technical capability