Lead Technologist / AI and Data Specialist

You'll be a part of our technology team, but also working closely with designers, product managers, people researchers, and others., We think that AI has the potential to transform many public sector services, but that there are also significant risks if it is not used carefully. We are looking for someone to lead in developing our approach to AI, and helping our clients make best use of it.

This role will evolve over time as our understanding of AI and its uses develops, but we expect it to have two main elements: technology strategy and data architecture. Your focus will depend on the needs of the project at hand and your own skills and interests.

Technology strategy: You'll help set the technical direction for projects, working with clients and project teams to decide how AI can best be used to meet user needs, and how to do so in a way that is safe, ethical, and sustainable. You'll help teams understand the possibilities and limitations of AI, and help them make sensible choices about when and how to use it.

Data engineering: You'll be the subject matter expert for data engineering for AI within dxw, designing and implementing data solutions to help our clients make the best use of data and to manage it in sensible ways. This might involve getting your hands dirty building data pipelines, or directing the work of data engineers (whether inside or outside dxw).

Sales and relationship management: You'll be responsible for helping to build our relationships with clients, partners, and contractors in the AI and data space, helping us to grow our capabilities and reputation in this area. You'll write and talk publicly about the work dxw does to raise our public profile, and you'll lead on sales preparation activities for AI and data heavy projects, with support from the sales team.

As a member of dxw's technical leadership team you'll help set our overall technology strategy, support the technology team as a whole, and you may also be a line manager or mentor.

We want to make sure that as a team we have all these skills, but we don't expect everyone to be brilliant at all of these, and we'll tailor your role to your strengths.

You want to deliver public digital services that improve the lives of the people who need them.

You enjoy variety in your work, like the idea of working on a series of different projects in different domains, and are comfortable working through fuzzy problems, and estimating and scoping work.

You work in a collaborative way, helping others solve problems through curiosity, but also offer your experience when required. Your experience

You are actively interested in using AI and data in a pragmatic way to improve people's lives, balancing potential benefits with potential harms. You don't need to have a lot of experience working with AI tools yet, but you do need to be keen to learn about them, experiment with them, and help others understand them.

You are an experienced technologist with a solid understanding of how to build and operate production software and manage data following modern engineering practices.

We're flexible about exactly where your area of specialism is. You might be more experienced with architecture and technical strategy, or in data modelling and infrastructure.

For architecture and strategy, good examples would be things like leading the migration of a complex system to new infrastructure, conducting technology governance processes, or deciding the stack, deployment process, and testing approach for a new project.

For data modelling and data infrastructure, we'd expect you to be familiar with ETL and MLOps pipelines with version control, CI/CD, automated testing, and observability, and be comfortable getting to grips with new ones. You're comfortable with data warehouses, lakes, lakehouses, meshes, and other slightly stretched data metaphors, and explaining these without jargon to non-technical people. You don't need to know all of these, but tools our clients often work with include:

• R, Python, SQL etc.
• Snowflake, Elastic, Redshift, Data Bricks, Splunk etc.
• Azure Data Factory, AWS Glue etc.
• PowerBI, Tableau, Looker etc.

You are familiar with working on sales bids and are able to build relationships with potential clients, spot opportunities, and develop them into work with the support of our sales team.

You have demonstrated aspects of leadership in the past, perhaps as a line manager or a technical lead.

Do you want to help create digital public services that improve lives? We're an employee-owned agency of technology, design and delivery experts who work primarily with public and third sector organisations to build usable and accessible digital services that fit seamlessly into user's lives. We help organisations like the NHS, the Department for Education, and Citizens Advice spend less money on technology, so that they can spend more on helping the most vulnerable. We aim not only to produce better services, but to radically and permanently improve people's interactions with government to make it a better instrument of good. Recent projects include improving access to adult social care, supporting rehabilitation of people leaving prison, and many more. One of the things that makes us different is that we are employee-owned, so we are not beholden to external shareholders, and are protected against being taken over by private equity. It also means we can prioritise being an inclusive employer, reducing our impact on the planet, and working in the open., Our team is based all around the UK. Some of us work almost entirely remotely, whilst others get together in person in our Leeds HQ and our London office in King's Cross. We provide MacBooks and use Slack and Google apps to work together. Sometimes you'll be using a device provided by a client and using Microsoft tools.