Deputy Director, AI Product

Job summary

This position can be based at any of the following locations: 102 Petty France (MOJ) London, SW1H 9AJ. Cardiff Churchill House, Cardiff, CF10 2HH.

Job description

Reporting into the Director of the Justice AI Unit you will:

Strategic Product Leadership

• Set the product vision and strategy for AI across the Justice AI Unit, ensuring investment is focused on genuine user needs and measurable justice outcomes.
• Lead the Justice AI Unit’s portfolio of AI products, making clear choices about priorities, investment and where teams should focus.
• Define and embed high standards for AI product development, ensuring products are outcome-driven, user-obsessed, evidence-led and developed responsibly.
• Shape how AI products are built and adopted across the justice system, moving from ideas and pilots to products that can deliver impact at scale.

Product Development and Delivery

• Lead the development of AI-native products, working across product, engineering, design, research and operational teams to turn emerging AI capabilities into valuable products.
• Ensure teams deeply understand the problems they are solving, test assumptions early and use evidence and user insight to guide product decisions.
• Create empowered multidisciplinary teams that can move quickly, make good decisions and take responsibility for outcomes.
• Challenge established ways of working where they constrain effective product development, and establish better ways to build, test, learn and scale AI products.

Team Leadership and Capability

• Build and lead a high-performing product management function, providing clear direction, coaching and development to product leaders and teams.
• Create a strong product culture focused on curiosity, collaboration, experimentation, evidence and measurable outcomes.
• Build product capability across the Justice AI Unit, helping teams and senior stakeholders develop a shared understanding of what good AI product development looks like.

Responsible AI and Adoption

• Embed responsible AI throughout the product lifecycle, ensuring products are developed and adopted safely, ethically and with appropriate consideration of fairness and public trust.
• Ensure AI products have clear measures of success and plans for adoption, evaluation and continuous improvement.
• Work across organisational boundaries to ensure AI products can be adopted effectively across MoJ services and deliver sustainable value at scale.

Senior Leadership and Influence

• Act as a trusted product adviser to senior leaders across the Ministry of Justice and wider government, communicating complex product choices and trade-offs clearly.
• Work as part of the Justice AI Unit senior leadership team, ensuring product strategy and delivery are aligned with the Unit’s wider priorities.
• Represent the Justice AI Unit in senior forums and, where required, deputise for the Director.

Deputising for the Director of AI

• Represent the Director in strategic forums, including cross-government AI working groups, high-level stakeholder engagements, and external conferences.

Essential Experience:

• Lead Criteria - Significant experience leading product strategy and a portfolio of products, making clear prioritisation and investment decisions based on user needs, evidence and measurable outcomes.
• Excellent leadership skills, with a proven ability to provide clear direction and coaching to high-performing product teams.
• Proven experience building new products people want from 0 to 1, and taking successful products through adoption and scale.
• Exceptional stakeholder skills, with an ability to act as a trusted adviser to senior stakeholders, influence strategic decisions and build strong relationships across organisational boundaries.
• Experience building and delivering AI-native products, with strong product judgement and an understanding of the opportunities, limitations and responsible use of AI.

Desirable experience:

• Entrepreneurial or start-up experience.

Person specification

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Diversity & Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the [2] Civil Service People Plan and the [3] Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

References

Visible links
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity
2. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-people-plan-2024-2027
3. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-diversity-and-inclusion-strategy-2022-to-2025

For full details about the Role, Key Responsibilities and Person Specification, please download and review the Candidate Information pack

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Leadership
• Delivering at Pace
• Changing and Improving
• Managing a Quality Service

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £86,000, Ministry of Justice contributes £24,914 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).

• Access to learning and development
• A working environment that supports a range of flexible working options to enhance your work life balance
• A working culture which encourages inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
• Annual Leave
• Public Holidays
• Season Ticket Advance

For more information about the recruitment process, benefits and allowances and answers to general queries, please click the below link which will direct you to our Candidate Information Page.

Link: https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided