SEO- Engagement Manager on Consult- 12 Month FTA

Salary:

This role is grade SEO
National Salary: £44,620- 49,065

London Salary: £47,355- £52,090

About the Incubator for AI (i.AI)

The Incubator for AI exists to pioneer transformative applications of AI for the public good.

We operate under three core principles:

• Talent: we bring together the UK’s best AI talent
• Innovation: we set precedents for what is possible in government
• Impact: We relentlessly pursue benefits to the public from AI.

About Consult

Every year the UK government runs hundreds of public consultations, some receiving tens

of thousands of responses. Manually analysing them requires around 75,000 working days

and costs up to £20m annually. Consult changes that. It uses large language models to rapidly sort consultation responses into key themes, freeing analysts to focus on insight rather than categorisation. We have carried out tests on 30 live consultations, saving tens of thousands of admin hours and over a million pounds. It is currently in Beta with four UK government departments, with a full cross-government rollout targeted for 2027. 

The Role

Consult is preparing to scale. It has already supported some of the most high-profile consultations in recent government and it is now being rolled out across departments by 2027. 

A lot of technical work has been done. The hard work now is to break institutional barriers and promote adoption of the tool, as well as improving how policy professionals consider the public voice to get better policy outcomes. To do this, we are building an expert engagement function to support departments through onboarding, and build a network of relationships that makes adoption self-sustaining. 

This is also a genuinely pioneering role. Consult is one of the first AI tools to be scaled across the whole of central government, and the engagement function you are joining is new. There is no established playbook. You will be helping to build one, which means handling uncertainty, making judgment calls, and shaping how this work develops.

As the Engagement Manager, you will be one of the primary points of contact for government departments using or preparing to use Consult. You will work on the customer journey end-to-end, manage the day-to-day relationships with departmental leads, and help build a cross-government community of practice that shares learning and builds confidence in the tool over time.

This role is embedded in a multidisciplinary product team - one of the highest-agency teams in government, with direct backing from the Prime Minister and No.10. You will work closely with the product manager, user researchers, engineers and designers to make sure what gets built reflects what departments actually need and you will feed user insight back into the team regularly influencing the product direction.

Contract Type

This is a 6-12 month fixed-term contract, with the potential for extension subject to performance reviews and business need.The role is open to those currently at HEO (on a Temporary Duty Allowance) and SEO. The successful candidate must hold or be willing to apply for the Vetting level SC - more information on https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels

Who We’re Looking For

You are someone who understands that the barriers to technological change in government are rarely technical. They are institutional, cultural, and human. You are comfortable navigating all three, and you know how to build trust with busy policy professionals who are running a consultation for the first time and need support that is practical, not theoretical.

Your experience includes: 

• Stakeholder engagement and relationship management: you have experience managing relationships with multiple stakeholders simultaneously, ideally in a government or public sector context
• Communication and behaviour change: you can explain a technical product clearly to a non-technical audience and understand that adoption requires changing how people work, not just giving them access to a tool
• Organised and delivery-focused: you can manage multiple onboarding journeys at different stages simultaneously without things falling through the cracks and proactively improve processes as inefficiencies are identified
• Understanding of government and policy: you understand how policy teams work and what it takes for a new tool to become standard practice across a department
• Collaborative working style: you are embedded in a product team, not operating as a separate function. You share what you learn and see engagement as integral to what the team is building.

 Desirable but Not Essential

• Experience with public consultation processes or policy analysis
• Familiarity with AI tools and their application in government contexts
• Experience building or contributing to a community of practice
• Experience coordinating volunteer or analyst groups in a research or policy context

What We Offer

• Backing from the Prime Minister and No.10 to build transformative AI products
• A team culture and development support that prioritises personal growth, including Learning and Development (L&D) days, annual stipends, and conference funding
• Hybrid working from our London, Bristol, or Manchester offices

The Civil Service is committed to attracting, retaining, and investing in talent wherever it is

found. We encourage applications from all backgrounds. Even if you don’t meet every

criterion listed, we’d love to hear from you if you have the core technical skills and a passion

for the mission.

Selection process

To apply, please send your CV along with responses to the following two questions outlined in the application form (maximum 250 words each):

1. Tell us about a time you helped an organisation, team or individual adopt a new way of working. What was the barrier to change, how did you approach it, and what did you do when things did not go to plan?
2. Describe a situation where you had to explain something complex to an audience with no expertise in the area. How did you tailor your communication, and how did you know it had landed?

Candidates will be sifted on the basis of their CV and written responses. Successful candidates will be invited to an interview, which will include a role play exercise designed to reflect the kinds of situations you will encounter in the role.

This role will be assessed against the following Civil Service behaviours: Communicating and Influencing, Managing a Quality Service, and Changing and Improving.

What We Offer 

Impact you couldn't have anywhere else 

• Incredibly talented, mission-driven and supportive colleagues. 

• Direct influence on how frontier AI is governed and deployed globally. 

• Work with the Prime Minister’s AI Advisor and leading AI companies. 

• Opportunity to shape the first & best-resourced public-interest research team focused on AI security. 

Resources & access 

• Pre-release access to multiple frontier models and ample compute. 

• Extensive operational support so you can focus on research and ship quickly. 

• Work with experts across national security, policy, AI research and adjacent sciences. 

Growth & autonomy 

• If you’re talented and driven, you’ll own important problems early. 

• 5 days off and annual stipends for learning and development, and funding for conferences and external collaborations. 

• Freedom to pursue research bets without product pressure. 

• Opportunities to publish and collaborate externally. 

Life & family* 

• Modern central London office (cafes, food court, gym), or where applicable, option to work in similar government offices in Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, Salford or Bristol. 

• Hybrid working, flexibility for occasional remote work abroad and stipends for work-from-home equipment. 

• At least 25 days’ annual leave, 8 public holidays, extra team-wide breaks and 3 days off for volunteering. 

• Generous paid parental leave (36 weeks of UK statutory leave shared between parents + 3 extra paid weeks + option for additional unpaid time). 

• On top of your salary, we contribute 28.97% of your base salary to your pension. 

• Discounts and benefits for cycling to work, donations and retail/gyms. 

Eligibility

Not all staff working in a government department or accredited non-departmental public body are considered to be civil servants.

If any of the following statements apply to your circumstances then you should select ‘No’ when answering:

• You are a member of agency staff working in a government department
• You are employed by an external organisation contracted into government roles
• You are a self-employed contractor working in a government department

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups: (non reserved posts only - text to show depending on how vacancy was built)

• 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

This job is only open to UK nationals. (Reserved posts only - Text to show depending on how vacancy was built)

For more information on job nationality requirements and the right to work in the UK, see the Civil Service Nationality rules (opens in a new window) and the UK Visas and Immigration rules (opens in a new window)

Interviews under the Disability Confident Scheme

We want to encourage disabled people to apply for jobs and give them an opportunity to show their skills, talent and abilities at the interview stage. The Civil Service runs a Disability Confident Scheme, offering an interview (opens in a new window) to a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants that meet the minimum selection criteria for the job.

To be considered for an interview under this scheme you must have:

• a physical or mental impairment, or a long term health condition which has a substantial and long term (over 12 months) adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day to day activities
• demonstrated in your application and testing stages that you meet the minimum job criteria as set out in the advert or person specification for the post

Reasonable adjustments

We want to support you if you need an adjustment in the recruitment process, even if you do not feel you qualify for the Disability Confident Scheme.

We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions or mental ill health. Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, diabetes, or schizophrenia.

Some of the adjustments we have offered are:

• application or interview help
• a time of day that works for you
• extra time
• sign language interpretation
• advice about assistive technology

For more information, you can read the government guidance on Reasonable adjustments for workers with disabilities or health conditions (opens in a new window)

Declaration

• All the information I've given in my application form is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and relates to my own experiences
• This is my only application for this role and accurately reflects my suitability
• I understand a check against the National Collection of Criminal Records and against other records or databases may be undertaken if I'm offered a position
• I understand that I’ll be asked for evidence of identification if I’m offered a post
• I understand my application may be rejected or I may be subject to disciplinary action if I've given false information or withheld relevant details
• I understand my application may be rejected or I may be subject to disciplinary action if evidence of plagiarism is detected. Examples of plagiarism can include presenting the ideas and experience of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own.

If you have any concerns about what we will do with your information, please see our privacy notice (opens in a new window). (amend to greenhouse data protection information)

Additional Information