3,695 Jobs

Job summary

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

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

Police AI 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, Police AI 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.

Police AI is hosted within 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.

Additional Information:

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles.

Due to our status as Public Servants, we are not eligible to participate in the Civil Service transfer process. 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.We comply with the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and apply the minimum selection criteria at sift stage of the recruitment process.

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 Police AI 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.

As Head of Engineering, you will balance immediate delivery with the long-term task of building a high-performing engineering function. Leading the development of AI-enabled products that improve public safety, productivity and decision-making, you will also shape the team, culture, technical standards and operating model that allow Police AI to deliver now and scale its impact over the years ahead.

You will:

• Build, lead and grow a high-performing multidisciplinary team across software, data and AI engineering and architecture.

• Define Police AI’s engineering approach, tooling, standards and patterns, creating coherence without constraining innovation.

• Turn promising proofs of concept into secure, transparent and scalable products that can be trusted in operational policing environments.

• Build portable evaluation pipelines and reusable engineering components, communicating trade-offs across security, reliability, performance, portability and cost.

We are looking for someone with a strong record of building and operating production-grade services, who is comfortable leading and developing teams whilst embedding and enforcing the standards and practices needed to scale delivery safely and sustainably.

You will combine technical credibility with pragmatic leadership, working through ambiguous scope, complex architectural choices and a varied range of stakeholders to deliver material improvements across policing. You will work closely with product, platform, data science and delivery colleagues, as well as operational users and partners to translate complex needs into practical, robust solutions.

You will be expected to take evidence-based strategic decisions on areas such as tooling, platform architecture, open-source adoption and CI/CD, and communication of technical decisions and risks must be clear to technical and non-technical audiences

For the right person, this role offers a compelling challenge: technically difficult and varied engineering, ownership of a function with substantial cross-organisation influence, national-scale public impact and the chance to raise the standard for AI across policing.

Person specification

Some of your responsibilities will include:

• ​​Building and developing a high-performing engineering team; coaching Engineers and Senior Engineers, setting clear objectives, and embedding a culture of innovation and engineering excellence.​

• ​​Leading technical delivery of AI-enabled solutions using modern engineering practices (CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure as code).​

• ​​Providing support to enable the Data Science & Evaluation team to undertake effective test and evaluation, building reusable and portable testing pipelines.​

To be successful in this role you’ll need:

• ​​Proven leadership of engineering teams, including hiring, line management, coaching, and development, with experience of establishing, growing, and scaling technical capability, and leading teams through delivery in line with organisational goals, user needs, priorities, and timescales.​

• ​​Extensive experience designing, building, and operating production services and data pipelines on various platforms, with strong technical judgement to deliver scalable, reliable, secure, and cost-effective solutions.​

• ​​Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices across the delivery lifecycle, including CI/CD, automated testing, code review, version control, release management, and observability.​

Behaviours

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

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

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £75,860, College of Policing contributes £21,976 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).

College staff have Public Servant status. As a Public Servant, you are eligible to join the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension Scheme.

The College is a great place to work. We're passionate about our people and offer a wide range of benefits, including (but not limited to):

• Defined benefit pension scheme with an average employer contribution of 28.97%

• Up to 31.5 days holiday (this is in addition to 8 public holidays and 1 privilege day)

• Continued professional development and structured career paths

• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption leave

• Flexi-time (for certain grades)

• Benenden Healthcare

• National Dental Plan

• Discounts for on-line shopping

• Free employee support line

• Interest free season ticket loans

• Rewards and recognition scheme

• Learning and development tailored to your role.

• An environment with flexible working options.

• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.

We also have a number of thriving staff networks that provide the opportunity for advice, support and to drive change. A place to get your voice heard, share experiences and challenge our working practices to ensure equality of opportunity for all.

For more information about our benefits and staff networks, visit What we offer as an employer , College of Policing

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.

Vacancy reference: 7252

1. Application

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

• Cover Letter
• CV
• Your CV should consist of your career history/qualifications and skills/experience, including any key achievements in each role.

Your CV will be scored against the experience required for the role as noted within the essential criteria.

2. Sift – TBC

The sift will be held on the Cover Letter and CV as listed in the advert.

3. Interview – Early September

If you are successful at sift stage, you will be invited to an interview that will be Behaviour (as listed in the job advert) based questions. Behaviours listed in the selection process will be scored at the interview.

The interview will take place on MS Teams.

This role is available for 24 months (2 years from start date) as a fixed term appointment/secondment. 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.

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

• Serving police officers substantive in the rank of superintendent, or those officers suitably qualified for temporary promotion in the rank of 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 superintendent 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.

• 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.

  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, Deputy Director AI Lab, harry.schone@college.police.uk

  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.

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

Security

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

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.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 : College of Policing Recruitment Team
• Email : Recruitment@college.police.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : Recruitment@college.police.uk

Attachments

Head of Engineering v1.0 (1) Opens in new window (docx, 59kB)Secondment approval form (3) Opens in new window (docx, 81kB)