Head of Responsible AI and Assurance - Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - G6

Location: Bristol, London, York

About the job

Defra is the UK government department responsible for safeguarding our natural environment, supporting our world-leading food and farming industry, and sustaining a thriving rural economy. Our broad remit means we play a major role in people's day-to-day life, from the food we eat, and the air we breathe, to the water we drink. Digital, Data, Technology and Security (DDTS) is the trusted team for digital across the entire Defra Group. We have around 1000 colleagues across DDTS and our ambition is to make it easier and faster than ever for people to interact with Defra. If you are ready to drive innovation and push boundaries, we want to hear from you. Join us and together we will create a great place for living, and a green and healthy future for all.

The Head of Responsible AI and Assurance will provide senior leadership for Defra's approach to responsible, trustworthy and auditable AI, ensuring AI-enabled solutions are adopted in a way that is safe, lawful, ethical and operationally sustainable. The role exists to enable Defra to realise value from AI while maintaining public trust and meeting HMG's expectations for robust governance and proportionate assurance of digital and data activity. It establishes and operates the department's AI assurance approach, including assurance standards, risk tiering, and decision routes for high-risk AI use cases. The postholder will work with senior stakeholders across DDTS, Data Protection, Legal, Commercial and Delivery Group leads. They will also act as an escalation point on AI risk and assurance and ensure a consistent approach across delivery portfolios.

The role will broadly:

• Set and maintain Defra's responsible AI and AI assurance framework, tools and associated standards.
• Lead assurance mechanisms (risk tiering, reviews/clinics, evidence requirements, and decision routes).
• Provide expert leadership on ethical, sustainable and societal considerations in AI adoption and use.
• Ensure AI solutions include appropriate controls for auditability, transparency, evaluation, validation and monitoring.
• Enable delivery through clear, proportionate guardrails rather than creating barriers.

Please note for this role you will require SC Clearance. To gain SC clearance all applicants are required to have been a UK resident for a minimum of 5 years. If this requirement is not met, the individual will not be able to progress their application further.

Responsibilities:

• Own Defra's responsible AI principles and assurance approach; ensure alignment to cross-government (HMG) AI guidance and digital functional expectations.
• Establish and chair (or deputise chairing of) AI assurance/design clinics and related governance forums, ensuring right expertise is engaged at the right time.
• Define risk rating and assurance requirements for AI initiatives (including evidence standards, evaluation expectations, sign-off routes, and escalation thresholds).
• Advise senior leaders and delivery teams on complex AI risks and mitigations (e.g., bias/fairness risks, performance drift, data protection concerns, human oversight).
• Ensure AI delivery includes technical and procedural controls for logging, auditability, model/prompt change control, and operational monitoring e.g., Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) / Large Language Model Operations (LLMOps).
• Oversee the development of reusable assurance artefacts (templates, checklists, decision records) and embed them into DDTS delivery pathways.
• Represent Defra's approach in cross-government and professional forums where appropriate.

Skills:

• Governance and assurance: Ability to design proportionate, risk-based assurance models and frameworks for complex, high-impact systems.
• Data ethics and responsible AI: Ability to define and operationalise ethical frameworks, translating principles into enforceable controls and assurance processes.
• Stakeholder relationship management: Confidently influence senior stakeholders, clearly articulating risk trade-offs and enabling informed decision.
• Data science and AI innovation: Possess applied understanding of end-end AI/ML lifecycle, evaluation and monitoring to assure system performance and reliability.

This role aligns primarily with the Digital and Data Profession "Lead Data Scientist" role, with a specialist focus on AI governance, assurance and responsible AI. The role applies data science, risk and governance expertise at an organisational level to ensure AI systems are safe, ethical and effective.

Demonstrable skills/experience aligned to the Lead Data Scientist (G6) role (technical skills outlined below), within the Government Digital and Data Profession:

• Applied maths, statistics and scientific practices: expert level
• Data engineering: expert level
• Data ethics and privacy: expert level
• Data science innovation: expert level
• Programming and build (data science): expert level
• Developing Data Science Capability: expert level

Experience:

• Leading governance/assurance in a regulated or high-assurance setting.
• Working across multidisciplinary teams to embed standards without blocking delivery.
• Handling novel, ambiguous risks and advising senior decision-makers.