PoliceAI - User Centred Design Lead

Job summary

​​This post is open to applicants who can meet the College’s nationality, UK residency and vetting requirements.​

PoliceAI is a nationally significant technology and transformation programme in UK policing. Backed by central government investment and positioned at the heart of the police reform agenda, PoliceAI is the new National Centre for AI in Policing, helping to shape how policing uses data, technology and artificial intelligence to tackle crime, protect the public and modernise frontline operations.

We bring together operational policing, technical expertise, product delivery, assurance and the responsible use of AI to develop and scale capabilities that improve public safety outcomes. Our work helps forces respond more effectively to demand, strengthen investigations, identify risk and harm earlier, and free up frontline time for the activities that matter most to communities.

This is an opportunity to contribute to a programme with national reach and meaningful public service impact, helping to define how AI is developed, governed and adopted across one of the UK’s most important public services. The work is varied and complex, moves at pace, and has the potential to deliver better tools for policing, better outcomes for the public, and stronger foundations for the responsible use of AI.

PoliceAI is hosted within the College of Policing.

About the College of Policing:

Our mission is: Leadership, Standards, Performance. This guides our work with individuals, forces, and policing partners towards our vision. We exist to support police officers, police staff and volunteers to deliver the best service to the public. Only through high quality leadership, consistent standards and continual performance improvement can everyone in policing reach their full potential. Our mission guides our work with individual, forces and partners towards our vision.

Due to our status as Public Servants, we are not eligible to participate in the Civil Service transfer process. Therefore, while successful candidates can transfer in on their existing terms and conditions, any subsequent transfer out of the College to the Civil Service cannot be guaranteed on existing terms and conditions, and new starter/modernised terms may apply.

The College embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we comply with the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and apply the minimum selection criteria at sift stage of the recruitment process.

Location

​​Remote working (anywhere in the UK). Please note, some travel may be required.

Job description

We are looking for people who are motivated by public service, interested in responsible innovation, and comfortable working collaboratively across organisational, operational and technical boundaries. Joining PoliceAI means contributing to a supportive, multidisciplinary team that is helping to shape the future of policing and ensure AI is used in ways that are effective, responsible, operationally useful and worthy of public trust.

The User Centred Design Lead will play a key role in shaping AI-enabled products that support operational policing, ensuring solutions are grounded in real user needs, evidence and day-to-day working practices. Working across multidisciplinary teams, you will lead the research, design and testing of products from discovery through to delivery, helping to create safe, accessible and usable services that improve outcomes for policing professionals.

We're looking for someone with significant experience in user-centred design for complex digital products, who can combine strong research, UX and UI expertise with a practical understanding of how people interact with technology. You'll be comfortable working with product, engineering, data science and operational colleagues, turning complex challenges into effective design solutions. Alongside strong hands-on delivery skills, you'll have the ability to coach and develop others, championing evidence-led and iterative design practices across teams.

Person specification

Some of your responsibilities will include:

• Leading user research, discovery and usability testing activities to understand user needs, operational workflows and opportunities for service improvement.
• Owning the end-to-end user experience for AI-enabled products, including user journeys, interaction design, prototyping and accessibility.
• Working closely with engineers, product teams and policing colleagues to design, test and refine solutions that are practical, usable and evidence-based.
• Shaping how users interact with AI systems, ensuring appropriate transparency, oversight, feedback and user control.
• Leading and developing user-centred design capability, coaching designers and embedding high-quality design practice across multidisciplinary team

To be successful in this role you’ll need:

• Experience leading user-centred design for complex digital products or services from discovery through to live delivery.
• Strong expertise in user research and usability testing, with the ability to translate findings into practical product decisions.
• Experience designing UX and UI solutions and working collaboratively with software engineering teams using modern design tools.
• Knowledge of designing for AI-enabled, automated or data-driven products, including user understanding, reliance, feedback and decision support.
• The ability to lead, influence and communicate effectively across multidisciplinary teams, including experience coaching or developing others.

Please see the attached job description which contains full details of the role.

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

The College is a great place to work. We're passionate about our people and offer a wide range of benefits. The benefits we can offer include:

• Defined benefit pension scheme with an employer contribution of 28.97%
• Up to 30 days holiday (this is in addition to 8 public holidays and 2.5 privilege days)
• Educational funding and study leave
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption leave
• Flexi-time (for certain grades)
• Flexible working hours
• Childcare vouchers
• Benenden Healthcare
• National Dental Plan
• Discount scheme which provides cut-price on-line shopping
• Free employee support line
• Interest free loans for travel.
• Staff networks: You will have the opportunity to join our employee-run networks to provide advice and support and to enable the views of employees from minority groups to be heard. There are currently 6 staff networks; Diversity Champions, LGBT, Carer’s, Women’s, Parenting and our Diverse Ethnic Action network. Each network has access to an executive level sponsor.

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.

​​This post is open to applicants who can meet the College’s nationality, UK residency and vetting requirements.​

College vacancy reference: 7337 - please quote in correspondence

This role is available for 24 months as a fixed term appointment for external candidates or as a secondment opportunity to:

• colleagues employed directly by the College or the Civil Service. Please note you will be required to obtain the written support of your line manager prior to submitting your application.
• serving police officers substantive in the rank of Inspector or Chief Inspector. All applicants must have the support of their Chief Officer which must be of NPCC rank, i.e., CC, ACC or DCC and this must accompany an application.
• serving police staff at the equivalent rank of Inspector or Chief Inspector who have their chief officer's approval. Chief Officer’s approval must be of NPCC rank, i.e., CC, ACC or DCC. Approval for a secondment must accompany an application.

Central service conditions may apply.

Please ensure you return the attached secondment approval form either as an attachment when submitting your application or via email to recruitment@college.police.uk.

For further information on applying for a secondment please visit the “Secondments into the College” page.

For fixed Term contracts:

Whilst this fixed term contract is offered on the understanding that it will only last as long as the stated contract length, there could be a possibility that it could be extended or made permanent should circumstances allow.

Internal College applicants who are at risk of redundancy or in need of redeployment and pass the recruitment process, will be given priority over other applicants.

Application

As part of the application process, you will be required to complete the following:

1. Curriculum Vitae (CV), not exceeding two sides of A4
2. Personal Statement (500 words maximum)

Please note that anonymisation relates to personal identifying information only. Applicants should continue to provide details of employers, organisations, roles, projects and achievements. Removing the names of organisations you have worked for can limit our ability to fully assess your experience during the sift.

Initial CV Sift and Candidate Discussion

Where a high volume of applications is received, an initial sift may be conducted based on candidates' CVs. As part of this process, shortlisted applicants may be invited to take part in a brief informal discussion to explore their experience, skills, and achievements in more detail before applications progress to the next stage.

This discussion will help assess suitability for the role and may be used to determine whether candidates proceed further in the selection process. Candidates who are successful at this stage may either be subject to a full sift or progressed directly to assessment and/or interview, depending on the number of applications received and the requirements of the recruitment process.

Interview

Interviews will be conducted via Microsoft Teams. You will be required to do a 10-minute presentation during the interview, the subject of which will be shared when invited to interview.

And include questions based on the listed behaviours and experience.

Anticipated interview dates: 27th and 28th October

How to apply and contact information:

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, and as Public Servants we follow the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).

We embrace diversity and promote equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

For further information visit our ‘Work for us’ page.

What it's like working at the College of Policing

If you would like to discuss the role in more detail please contact Harry Schone harry.schone@college.police.uk Deputy Director PoliceAI Lab, for all other enquiries please contact recruitment@college.police.uk

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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

We believe that a diverse workforce brings many benefits to the organisation including diversity of thought and improvements to the way we work internally and with partners and communities. We strive to be fully inclusive but we know there is more to do. We genuinely encourage people from all backgrounds and underrepresented groups to apply for this role.

We want to continually improve our recruitment processes and to remove any barriers to equal opportunities that could disadvantage those from particular backgrounds. In order for us to have the information to do this, we ask you to please complete the diversity section of the online application process. We use a “blind” shortlisting process and we hope that by using this method we will be able to promote greater diversity in our workforce and remove any subconscious decisions based on biases.

The College is committed to support the Greening Government Commitment and reducing our Environmental impact. We have a dynamic Environmental Management Plan in place which encompasses various objectives, including our pledge to reduce business travel. To support our green agenda we have, in phase one, installed Electric Vehicle Charging Points at our sites in Ryton (12 points) and Harperley Hall (4 points). We encourage employees to become an Environment Champion to help with promoting and delivering our Environmental Management Plan. Our One Step Greener approach encourages all College staff to make small changes to create a better future for everyone.

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

Security

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.

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 : Harry Schone - Deputy Director PoliceAI Lab
• Email : harry.schone@college.police.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : recruitment@college.pnn.police.uk

Attachments

User_Centred_Design_Lead_JD Opens in new window (docx, 250kB)Secondment approval form Opens in new window (docx, 81kB)