Principal Solutions Architect (AI Solutions) - Government Digital Service - G6

Bristol, Manchester

DSIT is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government. Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:

1. joining up public sector services
2. harnessing the power of AI for the public good
3. strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
4. elevating leadership and investing in talent
5. funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
6. committing to transparency and driving accountability

People and Transformation

The People & Transformation directorate sits at the heart of shaping DSIT's future. We are responsible for getting the fundamentals right - from pay, recruitment and casework - while also leading the organisation's people, workforce and digital transformation. Our work brings together employee experience, organisational design, workforce planning, digital recruitment, policy, data, AI and strategic change to create a joined-up, user-centred system that is easy to access and built for impact.

We're the driving force behind the DSIT Difference, making this the home for inventiveness, expertise and impact. By attracting exceptional talent, using technology and data to simplify decisions, and building a culture that thrives on innovation and continuous improvement were ensuring DSIT is future-ready, so we can do our best work in a fast-changing world.

DSIT is building a new AI Integration team to help the department embed AI into everyday work, so teams can deliver better outcomes for citizens faster, with greater quality and confidence.

As Principal Solutions Architect, you will lead a small team working across the department to identify AI opportunities and turn them into practical applications. This is not a conventional architecture role. Your team will often work independently of each other with portfolios of stakeholders, embedding with different parts of DSIT to understand problems, spot opportunities and help teams move quickly from idea to action.

You will build the team, set direction, shape priorities and help people choose the most effective route for each opportunity. That may mean coaching colleagues to solve a problem themselves, teaching teams how to use AI well, supporting the design of a low-code solution in a short sprint, bringing in specialist contractors, or escalating more complex needs to another team. You will need to keep the team focused, unblock problems, make useful connections and build clear ways of working across a team of people who are often operating independently.

This is a role for someone entrepreneurial, credible and energising. You will need to inspire others, bring structure to ambiguity, and help a small team deliver high-impact use cases that show clear value for the department.

As a Principal Solutions Architect (AI Solutions), you will:

• set strategic direction, standards and ways of working for a distributed team that is often embedded across different parts of the organisation
• help the team and stakeholders shape demand, prioritise projects, assess value vs effort/risk, make trade-offs, and maintain focus so solutions can be created
• provide AI advice to senior leaders and non-technical stakeholders, communicating to gain support whilst managing risk and complexity
• develop prototypes and deliver lightweight solutions (most likely using Copilot Studio, Power Automate and/or wider Power Platform)
• foster a culture of learning and innovation within your team, role modelling effective and responsible use of AI

We're interested in people who:

• have experience setting clear strategic direction, standards and ways of working for a distributed team that is often embedded across different parts of the organisation
• have experience helping the team and stakeholders shape demand, assess value vs effort/risk, make trade-offs, and maintain focus so solutions can be created, or identifying problems and solution options
• have experience providing advice to senior leaders and non-technical stakeholders, utilising different architecture communication techniques to gain support from stakeholders for architectural initiatives with high levels of risk, impact and complexity
• can translate between user needs, operational reality, governance requirements and technical options
• have hands-on skill with Microsoft low-code tools to prototype and deliver lightweight solutions (Copilot Studio, Power Automate and/or wider Power Platform)
• have experience coaching others to identify reusable patterns and trends, and feeding them back to the wider organisation to anticipate changes to policy and build resilience through your architectural work