AISI Pay and Reward Lead

Job summary

AISI is working on one of the most important and fast-moving missions in government: helping the UK understand and respond to frontier AI risks. To do that well, we need to attract and retain exceptional people in a labour market that looks very different from most of the Civil Service.

Job description

This role sits at the heart of AISI’s work on pay, reward, and retention. The postholder will lead and deliver key elements of AISI's pay, reward, and retention agenda, taking ownership of priority workstreams and providing evidence-based recommendations to senior decision-makers. They will be responsible for coordinating complex projects, driving delivery across stakeholders, and ensuring that strategic pay and reward initiatives progress at pace.

The role will involve direct support to senior decision-making, including contributions to complex pay proposals, the development of non-standard reward approaches, and engagement with senior stakeholders across the AISI, DSIT and Cross Government.

Working across People, Talent, and wider AISI leadership, the postholder will help shape a more competitive and coherent offer for staff. It is a role for someone who is highly organised, analytical, and comfortable working on sensitive, complex issues with senior stakeholders, who is able to think creatively to solve our unique challenges and pioneer novel solutions.

These are top priorities for AISI’s Director and Chief Technical Officer, and the postholder will play a key role in strengthening the organisation’s ability to recruit and retain globally scarce talent.

The postholder will be expected to operate with a high degree of autonomy, taking ownership of substantial workstreams and making recommendations within agreed parameters, while escalating strategic decisions where appropriate.

Key responsibilities

The postholder will:

Strategy and policy

• Lead discrete areas of AISI's pay and reward strategy, developing options, recommendations, and implementation plans for senior leaders.
• Take ownership of specific pay and reward initiatives, including technical allowance and retention-related workstreams, ensuring delivery against agreed objectives and timelines.

Senior casework

• Act as the lead coordinator for designated senior pay and reward cases, bringing together evidence, stakeholder views, risks, and recommendations to support decision-making.
• Draft and present high-quality proposals and briefing materials for senior leaders, exercising judgement on options, risks, and implementation considerations.

Evidence and analysis

• Own the development and maintenance of AISI's pay and reward evidence base, ensuring that senior decisions are informed by robust data, market intelligence, and benchmarking.
• Lead quantitative analysis and modelling activities, interpreting findings and making recommendations to inform strategic decisions.

Coordination and delivery

• Lead cross-functional delivery of agreed pay and reward workstreams, ensuring stakeholders are aligned, actions are tracked, and agreed outcomes are achieved.
• Take responsibility for identifying risks, dependencies, and delivery challenges, escalating issues appropriately and proposing solutions.
• Serve as the recognised point of contact for assigned pay and reward priorities, providing authoritative advice and maintaining momentum across multiple stakeholders.
• Work closely with the Project Lead for Pay to deliver a coherent programme of work across multiple priorities.

Person specification

What we are looking for

Essential

• Ability to independently lead and resolve complex people, workforce, or organisational issues, exercising sound judgement and balancing competing priorities.
• Excellent written communication, including the ability to turn complex material into clear briefings, recommendations, and presentations for senior audiences.
• Experience of leading the development of high-quality analysis, briefings, and recommendations that have informed senior decision-making.
• Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage multiple workstreams, deadlines, and stakeholders simultaneously.
• Confidence working with sensitive issues and senior stakeholders, using sound judgement and discretion.
• Ability to work across team boundaries and build productive relationships in a collaborative environment.
• A proactive, delivery-focused mindset, with the ability to take ownership and bring clarity to ambiguity.

Desirable

• Experience of pay, reward, workforce strategy, retention, or related people policy work.
• Experience in HR / People, strategy, operations, project delivery, or another cross-cutting function.
• Familiarity with Civil Service pay constraints, allowances, or wider public sector reward issues.
• Experience of working in a fast-paced organisation undergoing change or scale-up.
• Interest in AISI’s mission and the talent challenges facing frontier AI and government.

What success looks like

In this role, success would look like:

• High-quality, decision-ready support on AISI’s key pay and reward priorities.
• Improved clarity and momentum on senior pay and technical allowance issues.
• Successful delivery of assigned pay, reward, and retention workstreams, with clear evidence of impact on organisational priorities.
• A robust and trusted evidence base for pay and reward decisions.
• A meaningful contribution to strengthening AISI’s overall people offer.

Why this role is interesting

This is an exceptionally high-impact SEO role. The postholder will work on some of the most strategically important people issues in AISI, at a point where the organisation is trying to solve complex and novel problems around pay, retention, and workforce competitiveness.

The role offers direct exposure to senior leaders, complex organisational questions, and work that sits at the intersection of people strategy and mission delivery. It provides a strong platform for developing expertise in pay policy and progressing into more senior leadership roles in HR, strategy, or operations.

Behaviours

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

• Leadership
• Delivering at Pace
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,620, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £12,926 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).

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

• A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
• Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
• An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
• Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.

Office attendance

The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.

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.

As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and personal statement. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Please use your personal statement (in no more than 750 words) to demonstrate their experience against the essential criteria.

Sift: Applications will be assessed on CV and personal statement questions outlined.

Should the team receive a significant amount of applications we reserve the right to sift applicants on CV alone.

Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment/interview.

Stage 1 : Preliminary Conversation- 25- 30 minutes experience based interview.

Stage 2 — Structured Interview: Shortlisted candidates will be invited to a structured interview assessing behaviours against the person specification. The interview will include a short exercise or presentation element — details to be confirmed at shortlisting stage.

Stage 3 – SCS Leadership Panel

Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.

Further Information

Existing Civil Servants and applicants from accredited NDPBs are eligible to apply,and can be considered on loan basis (Civil Servants) or secondment (accredited NDPBs). Prior agreement to be released on a loan basis must be obtained before commencing the application process. In the case of Civil Servants, the terms of the loan will be agreed between the home and host department and the Civil Servant. This includes grade on return.

Reasonable Adjustment

We are proud to be a disability confident leader and we welcome applications from disabled candidates and candidates with long-term conditions.

Information about the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and some examples of adjustments that we offer to disabled candidates and candidates with long-term health conditions during our recruitment process can be found in our DSIT Candidate Guidance. A DSIT Plain Text Version of the guidance is also available.

We encourage candidates to discuss their adjustment needs by emailing the job contact which can be found under the contact point for applicants section.

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.

If successful and transferring from another Government Department a criminal record check may be carried out.

New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.

A location based reserve list of successful candidates will be kept for 12 months. Should another role become available within that period you may be offered this position.

Candidates who meet the minimum benchmark may be placed on a Reserve List for consideration for similar roles, including those at a lower grade. Candidates who narrowly miss the benchmark and are not placed on the Reserve List may still be considered for an offer in a similar role at a lower grade.

Please note terms and conditions are attached. Please take time to read the document to determine how these may affect you.

Any move to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare; for further information visit the Childcare Choices website.

DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).

DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.

In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service on your behalf.

However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct. If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk stating the job reference number in the subject heading.

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment.

A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5 year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.

Please be aware the levels of national security clearance are changing which may impact on the level needed for this role by the time of appointment. All efforts will be made to keep candidates informed of any changes and what that will mean in terms of vetting criteria. For more information please See our vetting charter

For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the Demystifying Vetting website.

Feedback

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist 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 : Connor Spence
• Email : Connor.Spence@dsit.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : Farah.chowdhury@dsit.gov.uk

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the recruitment principles, and wish to make a complaint, then you should contact in the first instance dsitresourcing.GRS@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages at: https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/contact-us/

Attachments

DSIT T&Cs v1.2 Opens in new window (docx, 179kB)