Forward Deployed Engineer - Ministry of Justice - SEO
Government Digital & Data -
Location
East Midlands (England), East of England, London (region), North East England, North West England, Scotland, South East England, South West England, Wales, West Midlands (England), Yorkshire and the Humber
About the job
Job summary
These positions are based Nationally.
Job description
Summary
Our justice system faces serious challenges, from rising demand and staff shortages to siloed systems and inconsistent access. AI presents an opportunity to address these problems at scale. But this opportunity must be seized with care.
The Justice AI Unit is a small, fast-moving and innovative team. We build and ship products quickly across the Ministry of Justice. By embedding AI that enhances, not replaces, human judgement, we aim to deliver better outcomes, faster services, and greater fairness for all.
Role
As Forward Deployed Engineer I in the Justice AI Unit, you will help build and deploy AI products that have real-world impact across courts, prisons, and probation services. You’ll work with frontline staff and multidisciplinary teams to understand user needs, develop practical solutions, test and improve products, and support deployment into live operational environments. This is a role designed for engineers early in their career who want to grow fast in a high-agency environment. You'll be paired with a senior engineer, given scoped ownership from day one, and expected to stretch — not to arrive fully formed.This is a hands-on, high-agency role for engineers who want to work at pace, across the full AI and software stack, and in service of one of the most complex and vital systems in the country. Join us to transform justice through practical, responsible AI.
We value curiosity, pragmatism, and the ability to work in ambiguity. If you don’t meet all of the experience below, don’t worry - we’re looking for people who can learn quickly on the job and adapt to a rapidly evolving landscape.
Responsibilities
- Develop practical AI products, tools, workflows and technical components for use across the Ministry of Justice.
- Work with users in operational settings such as courts, prisons and probation to understand needs, gather feedback and improve solutions.
- Contribute across the software and AI stack, including frontend, backend, databases, APIs, data pipelines, model integration, LLM workflows and deployment support.
- Support end-to-end delivery, from understanding the problem and building prototypes through to testing, documentation, deployment and iteration.
- Apply user feedback to improve products and ensure solutions are useful, accessible and aligned to operational needs.
- Identify and raise quality, usability, data, security, accessibility or operational risks early.
Essential Criteria
- Experience and/or working knowledge of building, testing and deploying software, data products or technical components in a real-world environment.
- Experience working across parts of the software or AI stack, such as frontend, backend, databases, APIs, data pipelines, model integration or cloud deployment.
- Experience supporting the development of solutions such as LLM workflows, predictive models, automation tools, scheduling tools, data pipelines or user-facing applications.
- Ability to work and adapt in complex or ambiguous organisational contexts.
- Strong collaboration skills, including the ability to work effectively in multidisciplinary teams.
Desirable Criteria
- Experience with our stack- NextJS, FastAPI, Postgres
- Experience with LLM observability and evaluation tools like Langfuse
- Cloud and infrastructure experience - Terraform, Azure etc.
- Entrepreneurial or startup experience
Agreed Expectations
The successful candidate will be expected to work from London as the home base of the Justice AI Unit. Candidates not currently based in London will be required to either relocate or undertake regular travel to London, with attendance expected at least once per week, in line with business needs.
