Principal Technologist- Gov Voice

This is a 12 Month Fixed Term Appointment

Applications for this role close 2nd August 23:59 UK Time

Who we are

We are a team at the forefront of applying cutting-edge AI to transform how people experience government services.

Gov Voice is building a trusted, reusable AI voice service that makes it easier for people to access government services by phone. For millions of people, contact centres are one of the most important and highest-volume ways they interact with government. We are creating an AI-enabled voice capability that can make those interactions simpler, faster and easier to navigate.

Gov Voice is part of the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), which is working to make digital government simpler, clearer and faster for everyone. We are responsible for helping set, lead and deliver the vision for a modern digital government.

We are a team at the forefront of applying cutting-edge AI to transform how people experience government services. We sit within the Government Digital Service. We are not currently part of the Incubator for AI, although the two teams will work increasingly closely together.

This is not innovation for its own sake. We are building a real service for real users in a high-trust, high-scrutiny environment. Our goal is to create something practical, resilient and reusable that departments across government can adopt with confidence.

This is a rare opportunity to work at the intersection of frontier AI and real-world delivery. You will be part of a multidisciplinary team bringing together product, delivery, AI, design, policy, operations and technical expertise to solve complex problems that matter. This is the kind of role that comes along rarely: a chance to shape the technical direction of an ambitious AI-enabled public service, while helping define what good looks like for modern, trustworthy AI systems in government.

If you are motivated by difficult technical problems, meaningful public impact, and the opportunity to influence how reusable AI-enabled services are built across government, this is an opportunity to make a genuine difference.

What you will do

The Principal Technologist role exists to make it easier to build excellent technology in the UK public sector. This is a senior individual contributor role for a high-agency, entrepreneurial technologist who wants their work to matter at national scale.

You will lead through technical judgement, influence and clarity of vision rather than line management. You will help shape and drive the technical direction for Gov Voice, ensuring that architectural decisions are robust, pragmatic and aligned with wider government standards and long-term service outcomes.

You will work across disciplines and organisational boundaries to connect strategy with delivery, helping teams make good technical decisions in a fast-moving area shaped by rapid advances in generative AI. You will bring a strong point of view on architecture, engineering quality and responsible technology adoption, while remaining grounded in user needs, operational realities and delivery constraints.

As a Principal Technologist, you will:

• Help design and drive the technical strategy for the area you work in, ensuring alignment with broader GDS standards, organisational priorities and long-term service goals
• Hold and communicate a clear vision for technical architecture best practice , enabling the team to build resilient, reliable and maintainable government services, and translating that vision for both technical and non-technical audiences
• Bring expertise in generative AI technologies , sharing recent developments, implementation approaches and good practice, and helping the team make informed decisions in a rapidly evolving field
• Guide architectural and technical design decisions in areas of high risk, complexity and ambiguity, balancing innovation with security, resilience, operability, compliance and value for users
• Ensure technical designs meet user needs and acceptance criteria , while also working within practical time, budget and delivery constraints
• Work collaboratively in agile, multidisciplinary teams , partnering with departments and a wide range of specialists to shape coherent, scalable and responsible technology solutions
• Support and evolve technical governance and assurance , helping embed repeatable standards, proportionate controls and robust evaluation of technologies and design choices
• Challenge the status quo where needed , using sound judgement and evidence to improve how government designs, builds and adopts modern technology

This role will require you to operate strategically while staying close enough to delivery to ensure ideas can be implemented effectively. At times, you will be helping set direction across a broad and ambiguous problem space; at others, you will be working through specific technical trade-offs with teams building and operating the service.

Person specification

Essential experience

We are interested in people who have:

• Experience supporting wider organisational objectives beyond immediate delivery goals, ensuring architectural decisions are aligned with strategic priorities and long-term service outcomes
• Experience communicating with technical and non-technical stakeholders at all levels, including across organisational boundaries, using clear architectural communication techniques to build shared understanding of complex concepts
• Experience working collaboratively across multidisciplinary and technical teams, such as engineering, data science, machine learning and operations, to shape coherent, scalable and responsible technology solutions
• Experience making and guiding architectural design decisions characterised by high levels of risk, ambiguity and complexity, using strong technical judgement, trade-off analysis and first-principles thinking
• Experience using influencing and relationship-building skills to gain support from business and technical stakeholders for initiatives with significant risk, impact and complexity
• Experience defining and connec