Deputy Director, AI Product

Job description

About the job

Job summary

This position can be based at any of the following locations: 102 Petty France (MOJ) London, SW1H 9AJ. Cardiff Churchill House, Cardiff, CF10 2HH.

Job description

Reporting into the Director of the Justice AI Unit you will:

Strategic Product Leadership

• Set the product vision and strategy for AI across the Justice AI Unit, ensuring investment is focused on genuine user needs and measurable justice outcomes.
• Lead the Justice AI Unit's portfolio of AI products, making clear choices about priorities, investment and where teams should focus.
• Define and embed high standards for AI product development, ensuring products are outcome-driven, user-obsessed, evidence-led and developed responsibly.
• Shape how AI products are built and adopted across the justice system, moving from ideas and pilots to products that can deliver impact at scale.

Product Development and Delivery

• Lead the development of AI-native products, working across product, engineering, design, research and operational teams to turn emerging AI capabilities into valuable products.
• Ensure teams deeply understand the problems they are solving, test assumptions early and use evidence and user insight to guide product decisions.
• Create empowered multidisciplinary teams that can move quickly, make good decisions and take responsibility for outcomes.
• Challenge established ways of working where they constrain effective product development, and establish better ways to build, test, learn and scale AI products.

Team Leadership and Capability

• Build and lead a high-performing product management function, providing clear direction, coaching and development to product leaders and teams.
• Create a strong product culture focused on curiosity, collaboration, experimentation, evidence and measurable outcomes.
• Build product capability across the Justice AI Unit, helping teams and senior stakeholders develop a shared understanding of what good AI product development looks like.

Responsible AI and Adoption

• Embed responsible AI throughout the product lifecycle, ensuring products are developed and adopted safely, ethically and with appropriate consideration of fairness and public trust.
• Ensure AI products have clear measures of success and plans for adoption, evaluation and continuous improvement.
• Work across organisational boundaries to ensure AI products can be adopted effectively across MoJ services and deliver sustainable value at scale.

Senior Leadership and Influence

• Act as a trusted product adviser to senior leaders across the Ministry of Justice and wider government, communicating complex product choices and trade-offs clearly.
• Work as part of the Justice AI Unit senior leadership team, ensuring product strategy and delivery are aligned with the Unit's wider priorities.
• Represent the Justice AI Unit in senior forums and, where required, deputise for the Director.

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:

• Lead Criteria - Significant experience leading product strategy and a portfolio of products, making clear prioritisation and investment decisions based on user needs, evidence and measurable outcomes.
• Excellent leadership skills, with a proven ability to provide clear direction and coaching to high-performing product teams.
• Proven experience building new products people want from 0 to 1, and taking successful products through adoption and scale.
• Exceptional stakeholder skills, with an ability to act as a trusted adviser to senior stakeholders, influence strategic decisions and build strong relationships across organisational boundaries.
• Experience building and delivering AI-native products, with strong product judgement and an understanding of the opportunities, limitations and responsible use of AI.

Desirable experience:

• Entrepreneurial or start-up experience.

Person specification

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: [1] 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 [2] Civil Service People Plan and the [3] Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

References

Visible links
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity
2. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-people-plan-2024-2027
3. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-diversity-and-inclusion-strategy-2022-to-2025

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

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Leadership
• Delivering at Pace
• Changing and Improving
• Managing a Quality Service

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £86,000, Ministry of Justice contributes £24,914 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).

• Access to learning and development
• A working environment that supports a range of flexible working options to enhance your work life balance
• A working culture which encourages inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
• Annual Leave
• Public Holidays
• Season Ticket Advance

For more information about the recruitment process, benefits and allowances and answers to general queries, please click the below link which will direct you to our Candidate Information Page.

Link: https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

Things you need to know

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 Behaviours and Experience.

For full details of the Selection Process and Recruitment Timeline, please view the Candidate Information pack.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) 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.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : SCS Recruitment Team
• Email : [email protected]

Recruitment team

• Email : [email protected]

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission's Recruitment Principles. If you feel a department has breached the requirement of the Recruitment Principles and would like to raise this, please contact SSCL ([email protected]) in the first instance. If the role has been advertised externally (outside of the Civil Service) and you are not satisfied with the response, you may bring your complaint to the Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/civil-service-recruitment/complaints/

https://jobs.justice.gov.uk/careers/JobDetail/22197?entityId=22197