Police AI - Head of Data Science and Evaluation

• Details
• Reference number
• 476072
• Salary
• £75,860

We offer a competitive salary of £75,860 - £82,300 per annum, dependent on experience, together with a market allowance of up to £12,500, recognising the specialist nature of this role

A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

GBP

• Job grade
• Grade 6
• T2 (20)
• Contract type
• Fixed term
• Secondment
• Length of employment
• 24 months
• Business area
• Police AI - College of Policing
• Type of role
• Other
• Working pattern
• Flexible working, Full-time
• Number of jobs available
• 1
• Contents

• Location
• About the job
• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

Location

Remote working (anywhere in the UK)

About the job

Job summary

This post is open to applicants who can meet the College’s nationality, UK residency and vetting requirements.

Remote working (anywhere in the UK). Please note, some travel may be required.

PoliceAI is a nationally significant technology and transformation programme in UK policing. Backed by central government investment and positioned at the heart of the police reform agenda, PoliceAI is the new National Centre for AI in Policing, helping to shape how policing uses data, technology and artificial intelligence to tackle crime, protect the public and modernise frontline operations.

We bring together operational policing, technical expertise, product delivery, assurance and the responsible use of AI to develop and scale capabilities that improve public safety outcomes. Our work helps forces respond more effectively to demand, strengthen investigations, identify risk and harm earlier, and free up frontline time for the activities that matter most to communities.

This is an opportunity to contribute to a programme with national reach and meaningful public service impact, helping to define how AI is developed, governed and adopted across one of the UK’s most important public services. The work is varied and complex, moves at pace, and has potential to deliver better tools for policing, better outcomes for the public, and stronger foundations for the responsible use of AI.

Police AI is hosted within the College of Policing.

Our mission is: Leadership, Standards, Performance . This guides our work with individuals, forces, and policing partners towards our vision. We exist to support police officers, police staff and volunteers to deliver the best service to the public. Only through high quality leadership, consistent standards and continual performance improvement can everyone in policing reach their full potential. Our mission guides our work with individual, forces and partners towards our vision.

Additional Information:

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles.

Due to our status as Public Servants, we are not eligible to participate in the Civil Service transfer process. Therefore, while successful candidates can transfer in on their existing terms and conditions, any subsequent transfer out of the College to the Civil Service cannot be guaranteed on existing terms and conditions, and new starter/modernised terms may apply.

The College embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we comply with the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and apply the minimum selection criteria at sift stage of the recruitment process.

Job description

We are looking for people who are motivated by public service, interested in responsible innovation, and comfortable working collaboratively across organisational, operational and technical boundaries. Joining PoliceAI means contributing to a supportive, multidisciplinary team that is helping to shape the future of policing and ensure AI is used in ways that are effective, responsible, operationally useful and worthy of public trust.

As Head of Data Science & Evaluation, you will balance immediate delivery with the long-term task of building a high-performing data science and evaluation function. Leading the development and rigorous assessment of AI-enabled products that improve public safety, productivity and decision-making, you will also shape the team, methods, standards and evidence base that allow Police AI to innovate at pace and earn trust over the years ahead.

You will:

• Build, lead and grow a high-performing multidisciplinary team of data scientists and testing and evaluation specialists.
• Establish repeatable and auditable testing, evaluation, verification and validation (TEVV) frameworks, spanning dataset provenance and quality, robustness, bias, human–computer interaction, wider system effects and lifecycle monitoring.
• Lead the internal development and assessment of AI solutions, translating operational policing problems into testable hypotheses, meaningful measures and practical products.
• Define and implement the data foundations required for credible evaluation, including ground truth data requirements, labelling processes, provenance and versioning, synthetic data generation, test-set construction and data quality controls.

We are looking for someone with a strong record of leading data science teams and delivering AI solutions, who is comfortable developing people whilst embedding the standards and practices needed to evaluate AI rigorously and scale its use responsibly.

You will combine deep technical credibility with pragmatic leadership, working under ambiguity, navigating difficult methodological choices and a varied range of stakeholders to deliver material improvements across policing. You will work closely with engineering, delivery, data governance and Responsible AI colleagues, as well as operational users and partners, to turn complex needs into useful solutions and defensible evidence.

You will be expected to take well-founded decisions on areas such as model and data strategy, evaluation design, centralised and distributed testing, open-source and commercial solutions, and continuous monitoring, as well as providing input into development priorities and direction. Communication of performance, limitations, trade-offs and risk must be clear to technical and non-technical audiences.

For the right person, this role offers a compelling challenge: technically difficult and varied data science, ownership of a nationally influential evaluation function, direct public impact and the chance to raise the standard for how AI is developed, tested and adopted across policing.

Person specification

Some of your responsibilities will include:

• Building and developing a high-performing data science and evaluation team; coaching Data Scientists and evaluation specialists, setting clear objectives, and embedding a culture of innovation, methodological rigour and technical excellence.
• Leading technical delivery of AI-enabled solutions and their evaluation across the full lifecycle, from problem definition, model and data strategy and experimentation through to deployment, monitoring and continuous assessment.
• Defining consistent, repeatable and auditable TEVV approaches, working with Engineering to build reusable testing pipelines and sound foundations for dataset provenance, versioning, sampling, labelling and data quality.

To be successful in this role you’ll need:

• Proven leadership of data science or AI teams, including hiring, line management, coaching and development, with experience of establishing, growing and scaling technical capability and leading teams through delivery in line with organisational goals, user needs, priorities and timescales.
• Significant hands-on experience of developing and deploying production-grade AI/ML and generative AI solutions, with strong technical judgement, coding practice and proficiency in a range of data science domains.
• Expertise in proportionate AI testing and evaluation, including validation and verification, robustness and adversarial testing, bias and fairness, interpretability, human factors and generative AI challenges such as hallucination, prompt sensitivity, guardrail testing and RAG evaluation.

Please see the attached job description which contains full details of the role.

Behaviours

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

• Managing a Quality Service
• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace
• Seeing the Big Picture

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £75,860, College of Policing contributes £21,976 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides .

College staff have Public Servant status. As a Public Servant, you are eligible to join the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension Scheme.

The College is a great place to work. We're passionate about our people and offer a wide range of benefits, including (but not limited to):

• Defined benefit pension scheme with an average employer contribution of 28.97%
• Up to 31.5 days holiday (this is in addition to 8 public holidays and 1 privilege day)
• Continued professional development and structured career paths
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption leave
• Flexi-time (for certain grades)
• Benenden Healthcare
• National Dental Plan
• Discounts for on-line shopping
• Free employee support line
• Interest free season ticket loans
• Rewards and recognition scheme
• Learning and development tailored to your role.
• An environment with flexible working options.
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.

We also have a number of thriving staff networks that provide the opportunity for advice, support and to drive change. A place to get your voice heard, share experiences and challenge our working practices to ensure equality of opportunity for all.

• For more information about our benefits and staff networks, visit What we offer as an employer , College of Policing
• Things you need to know
• Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles , and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

This post is open to applicants who can meet the College’s nationality, UK residency and vetting requirements.

Vacancy reference: 7271

1. Application

As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete:

• Cover Letter
• CV

Your CV should consist of your career history/qualifications and skills/experience, including any key achievements in each role.

2. Sift – TBC

The sift will be held on the Cover Letter and CV as listed in the advert.

3.Interview – Week Commencing 14/09/2026

If you are successful at sift stage, you will be invited to an interview that will be Behaviour (as listed in the job advert) based questions.

The interview will take place on MS Teams .

This role is available for 24 months as a fixed term appointment or as a secondment opportunity to:

• colleagues employed directly by the College or the Civil Service. Please note you will be required to obtain the written support of your line manager prior to submitting your application.
• serving police officers substantive in the rank of Superintendent, or those officers suitably qualified for temporary promotion in the rank of Chief Inspector. All applicants must have the support of their Chief Officer which must be of NPCC rank, i.e., CC, ACC or DCC and this must accompany an application.
• serving police staff at the equivalent rank of Superintendent who have their chief officer's approval. Chief Officer’s approval must be of NPCC rank, i.e., CC, ACC or DCC. Approval for a secondment must accompany an application

Central service conditions may apply.

Please ensure you return the attached secondment approval form either as an attachment when submitting your application or via email to recruitment@college.police.uk.

For further information on applying for a secondment please visit the “Secondments into the College” page.

For fixed Term contracts:

Whilst this fixed term contract is offered on the understanding that it will only last as long as the stated contract length, there could be a possibility that it could be extended or made permanent should circumstances allow.

Our vetting

If you are successful at interview, you will be required to undertake pre-employment security checks. You will be sent a security questionnaire which must be accessed within 24 hours.

Please note, these checks can take up to 10 weeks. You will only be offered a start date after the checks have been completed. If the outcome of these checks is not satisfactory, your recommendation for employment will be withdrawn. Vetting Level required is NPPV3, but DV may be required for the role.

Internal College applicants who are at risk of redundancy or in need of redeployment and pass the recruitment process, will be given priority over other applicants.

How to apply and contact information:

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, and as Public Servants we follow the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles .

We embrace diversity and promote equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

For further information visit our ‘Work for us’ page.

What it's like working at the College of Policing

If you would like to discuss the role in more detail please contact Harry Schone Harry.Schone@college.police.uk, Deputy Director Police AI .

We believe that a diverse workforce brings many benefits to the organisation including diversity of thought and improvements to the way we work internally and with partners and communities. We strive to be fully inclusive but we know there is more to do. We genuinely encourage people from all backgrounds and underrepresented groups to apply for this role.

We want to continually improve our recruitment processes and to remove any barriers to equal opportunities that could disadvantage those from particular backgrounds. In order for us to have the information to do this, we ask you to please complete the diversity section of the online application process. We use a “blind” shortlisting process and we hope that by using this method we will be able to promote greater diversity in our workforce and remove any subconscious decisions based on biases.

The College is committed to support the Greening Government Commitment and reducing our Environmental impact. We have a dynamic Environmental Management Plan in place which encompasses various objectives, including our pledge to reduce business travel. To support our green agenda we have, in phase one, installed Electric Vehicle Charging Points at our sites in Ryton (12 points) and Harperley Hall (4 points). We encourage employees to become an Environment Champion to help with promoting and delivering our Environmental Management Plan. Our One Step Greener approach encourages all College staff to make small changes to create a better future for everyone.

Please note that in order to work for the College of Policing you must have the Right to Work in the UK with indefinite leave to remain. In addition, you will also be required to provide an address history in the UK for the preceding 5 years.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• 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)
• 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

Further information on nationality requirements

Working for the Civil Service

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

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

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans initiative.

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : College of Policing Recruitment Team
• Email : recruitment@college.police.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : recruitment@college.police.uk