G7 Delivery Manager — AI & Future of Work Unit

Job summary

The UK AI Security Institute is the world's largest and best-funded team dedicated to understanding the capabilities and impacts of advanced AI and developing practical risk mitigations. We’re in the heart of the UK government with direct lines to No. 10, and we work with frontier developers and governments globally.

We’re here because governments are critical for advanced AI going well, and UK AISI is uniquely positioned to mobilise them. With our resources, agility and international influence, this is the best place to shape both AI development and government action to ensure AI systems are deployed safely and responsibly.

The AI & Future of Work Unit was established in January 2026 to research and monitor AI's economic and labour market impacts and provide timely advice to government on when and how to respond. It is a DSIT Secretary of State priority and has been publicly announced. In her 17th March Mais lecture the Chancellor announced the creation of the AI Economics Institute. AIEI) The AIEI will build on the example of the AI Security Institute, by drawing on world-leading expertise to closely monitor the impact of AI on our productivity and on our labour markets. It is anticipated that the Future of Work Unit, and this delivery manager role, will work closely with the AIEI

The unit operates as a cross-government function with three core workstreams — research, policy analysis, and policy coordination — that form an integrated pipeline: research produces novel evidence on AI capabilities and labour market impacts; policy analysis translates that evidence into actionable insight; and policy coordination turns insight into cross-government preparedness and response.The unit sits across DSIT and AISI, works closely with HMT, DWP, DBT, DfE and other departments, and is supported by an expert panel of external advisors from industry, academia, civil society and trade unions. The team includes economists, data scientists, policy analysts, and researchers. The unit's work connects scenario modelling, real-time monitoring indicators, experimental research, policy libraries and governance processes into a system for managing the UK's response to AI-driven labour market change.

This is a small, high-impact team working on one of the most consequential questions facing the UK economy. The work is substantive, fast-moving, and visible to the most senior decision-makers in government. You would be joining at a formative moment — helping to shape how the unit operates, not just keeping an existing system running.

Job description

Primary objective:

Lead end-to-end internal delivery management for the AI & Future of Work Unit, making the unit's strategy operational by building the delivery planning, tooling, internal governance, and risk management systems needed to deliver a high-profile, cross-government programme. You will work closely with the unit's Strategy, Governance and International lead, who owns external governance (including the expert panel and cross-Whitehall governance forums), strategic direction, and stakeholder communications — your role is to ensure the internal delivery infrastructure translates that strategy into action.

Core responsibilities and approximate time allocation:

• Build and run the internal delivery system (~40%): Design and implement a single integrated delivery plan across the unit's three workstreams — research, policy analysis, and policy coordination. Produce clear, concise delivery reporting for the Deputy Director, Director General, and senior stakeholders including No 10 and HMT when required. The aim is to ensure that the three workstreams stay aligned on what is being delivering, dependencies are managed, and senior leaders can make timely decisions with accurate information.
• Lead internal meeting cadence and operational governance (~20%): Establish and run effective internal meeting rhythms — standups, delivery reviews, sprint planning, retrospectives, and product sign-off sessions. You will not run external governance forums, but you will ensure the internal cadence aligns with external governance rhythm (ministerial committees, DG meetings, expert panel meetings) so that decisions and high-quality internal products are ready when external forums need them.
• Support cross-government delivery coordination (~15%): Work alongside the Strategy, Governance and International lead to support the operational coordination of the virtual team model across DWP, HMT, DBT, DfE, and MHCLG. Your focus will be on tracking agreed OGD contributions against the delivery plan, maintaining visibility of what is on track and what is at risk, and escalating delivery risks early. These strategic relationships sit with the Strategy lead — you will ensure commitments are delivered as agreed, particularly for analytical products.
• Implement modern delivery tooling (~15%): Configure modern tools (the unit is piloting Linear) that work for both code-based workflows (GitHub, Python, R) and document-based policy work. You don't need to be a software engineer, but you should be comfortable working alongside technical colleagues and integrating delivery tracking with their infrastructure (GitHub, cloud infrastructure). The aim is to ensure the unit has the tools to effectively prioritise, track, and manage workflows across teams.
• Unblock and enable (~10%): Identify and resolve delivery risks before they escalate – resource clashes, data delays, approval queues, competing priorities. This will ensure that deadlines are met and team resources are aligned with work priorities. Coordinate the research publications calendar alongside the Strategy lead, ensuring analytical products land at the right moment to maximise their influence on policy decisions.

Impact:
The right person will transform how the unit operates internally — moving from informal coordination to a professional delivery function that gives the team, the Deputy Director, and senior stakeholders confidence that a high-profile programme is on track. You will work in close partnership with the Strategy, Governance and International lead to ensure that the unit's delivery infrastructure and its strategic direction are tightly aligned. You will have significant influence over the unit's internal ways of working and will be visible to the most senior decision-makers in government through your delivery reporting.

What success looks like:

First 90 days:

• You have mapped all three workstreams' current activities, milestones, and dependencies into a single delivery plan
• You have established an internal meeting cadence and rhythm that the team finds useful, and that is docked into the external governance calendar
• You have met all key cross-government contacts and have a clear picture of OGD contributions and how they connect to the delivery plan
• You have a working relationship with the Strategy, Governance and International lead and have agreed how the two roles coordinate day-to-day

6 months:

• A delivery plan is in place that all three workstreams use and trust. People know what's coming, what depends on what, and where the risks are
• Delivery reporting to the DD and senior stakeholders is regular, concise, and honest — risks are surfaced early, not discovered late
• The cross-government virtual team has visible progress tracking on the delivery side, with clear escalation routes when things slip
• Modern delivery tooling is adopted and working for both technical and non-technical team members — it is lightweight, integrated, and reduces delivery frictions.

12 months:

• The delivery function is embedded and recognised as an enabler by the whole team.
• Internal governance rhythms are mature and well-integrated with the external governance forums.
• The delivery manager and strategy lead operate as a seamless partnership — the unit's strategy is consistently translated into delivery, and delivery intelligence consistently informs strategy.
• You are seen by the team and senior stakeholders as the person who makes things work — not someone who creates process for its own sake.

Representative projects:

• Building the unit's first integrated delivery plan that connects a research programme (with data pipelines, model runs, and academic collaborations) to a policy coordination programme (with ministerial briefings, cross-government submissions, and SpAd requests) into a single coherent picture.
• Implementing Linear as the unit's delivery tool, configured to track both technical GitHub-based workflows and policy document workflows, and producing delivery dashboards that give the DD an at-a-glance view of programme status.
• Designing the internal meeting cadence for the unit — sprint planning, delivery reviews, product sign-off sessions — and ensuring these are docked into the external governance calendar so that products are ready when ministerial committees, DG meetings, and the expert panel need them.
• Coordinating a major cross-government analytical deliverable — tracking contributions from five departments against agreed timelines, identifying slippage early, and escalating to the Strategy lead when strategic intervention is needed.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

1. Proven delivery management experience in complex, multi-disciplinary settings. You have run delivery across teams that do different kinds of work — spanning analysis or research and policy, or technical and non-technical functions. You know how to build a plan that people actively use, and report progress in ways that are honest and effective.
2. Exceptional proactivity and ownership. You do not wait to be told that something needs organising. You see the gap and fill it — proposing the process, drafting the agenda, setting up the tracker, and following through. You have a bias towards action and a low tolerance for drift.
3. Strong relationship-building and communication skills. You build trust quickly and can work effectively with senior economists, policy leads, researchers, and external stakeholders with different priorities and working styles. You brief clearly and concisely verbally and in writing , and are comfortable facilitating conversations where people disagree.
4. Experience running internal governance and operational rhythms. You have established and run effective internal meeting cadences, delivery reviews, and sign-off processes for complex programmes. You understand how internal delivery governance needs to connect to external governance forums (boards, panels, ministerial committees) and can ensure that products and decisions are ready when those forums need them. You do not need to have run external governance yourself, but you need to understand how delivery feeds into it.
5. Comfort with modern tools and technical environments. You have used modern project management tools (Linear, Jira, Trello, Asana, Azure DevOps, or similar) and can configure them for a team's needs. You are comfortable working alongside colleagues who use code-based tools (Python, R, GitHub) and can see how delivery tracking integrates with those workflows.

Preferred:

• Experience in government delivery, DDaT, or agile delivery — including pragmatic use of discovery/alpha/beta rhythms, service standards, or OKRs
• Familiarity with analytical or research delivery: coordinating dashboards, experiments, modelling programmes, or publication workflows
• Understanding of AI, labour markets, or economic policy — helpful for anticipating dependencies and understanding what matters when
• Experience coordinating across multiple government departments or organisations, particularly in a model where strategic direction and operational delivery are owned by different people
• Background in a fast-moving environment — start-up, consultancy, research institute, think tank, or NGO — where complex multi-workstream programmes needed to be held together with limited infrastructure

Behaviours

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

• Working Together
• Delivering at Pace
• Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £54,415, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £15,764 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

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.
• A hybrid office/home based working model where staff will spend a norm of 40-60% of their time in the office (minimum of 40%) over a month with flex dependent on balancing business and individual need.

What We Offer

Impact you couldn't have anywhere else

• Incredibly talented, mission-driven and supportive colleagues.

• Direct influence on how frontier AI is governed and deployed globally.

• Work with the Prime Minister’s AI Advisor and leading AI companies.

• Opportunity to shape the first & best-resourced public-interest research team focused on AI security.

Resources & access

• Pre-release access to multiple frontier models and ample compute.

• Extensive operational support so you can focus on research and ship quickly.

• Work with experts across national security, policy, AI research and adjacent sciences.

Growth & autonomy

• If you’re talented and driven, you’ll own important problems early.

• 5 days off and annual stipends for learning and development, and funding for conferences and external collaborations.

• Freedom to pursue research bets without product pressure.

• Opportunities to publish and collaborate externally.

Life & family*

• Modern central London office (cafes, food court, gym), or where applicable, option to work in similar government offices in Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, Salford or Bristol.

• Hybrid working, flexibility for occasional remote work abroad and stipends for work-from-home equipment.

• At least 25 days’ annual leave, 8 public holidays, extra team-wide breaks and 3 days off for volunteering.

• Generous paid parental leave (36 weeks of UK statutory leave shared between parents + 3 extra paid weeks + option for additional unpaid time).

• On top of your salary, we contribute 28.97% of your base salary to your pension.

• Discounts and benefits for cycling to work, donations and retail/gyms.

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.

Applications will be sifted on CV and personal statement. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to interview, which will assess Civil Service Behaviours and Strengths as outlined below.

The interview will also include a short presentation exercise. Candidates will be given a short brief in advance (provided 24 hours before interview). This will be followed by panel questions. Further details will be provided to shortlisted candidates.

1. Experience & Motivations Interview
2. Presentation & Behaviours Interview
3. Senior Leadership Interview

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 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.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).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 : Thomas Slater
• Email : thomas.slater@dsit.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : Georgia.Stone@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/