The Alan Turing Institute is seeking an outstanding Chief Technology Officer to shape the Institute’s strategic direction and build and lead a world-class engineering capability that works alongside leading researchers to turn ambitious research into real-world impact. This is a rare opportunity for a technically credible and strategically ambitious leader with experience in scaled AI systems, high-performance compute or frontier AI infrastructure to shape a national capability from the centre.
Our mission
We are the UK’s independent national institute for AI and data science. Our mission is to secure the UK’s national resilience for the age of AI, building the capabilities that help the country understand, withstand and respond to the risks and opportunities created by a rapidly changing world.
We work with government and national-level bodies to turn complex national challenges into ambitious programmes of research, engineering and deployment. By convening expertise from academia, industry and government, we build AI and data science capabilities that can be trusted where they matter most.
The Role
This is a rare opportunity to shape the strategic and technical direction of a nationally significant organisation, and to build the engineering capability that turns world-class research into practical impact. The CTO will lead a first-class engineering organisation, bringing together research insight and engineering excellence to advance the state of the art, develop new capabilities and deploy them against important real-world challenges.
It is a build-and-lead role, not a caretaking role: the successful candidate will have ambition, talent and embrace complexity, and will have the authority to shape what comes next.
This role may appeal to someone who has built serious AI systems in a frontier AI lab, hyperscale AI environment or advanced research computing setting, and is now ready to step up into broader leadership. It offers the chance to move from contributing to a large machine to helping shape the direction of an entire institution: setting its technology strategy and engineering culture, making critical architecture choices, building exceptional teams and platforms, working with researchers to push the boundaries of what is technically possible and applying frontier-level capability to problems of national importance.
You will need to be entrepreneurial and ready to take responsibility: this is a role for someone with the technical depth to command respect from outstanding engineers and researchers, and the leadership ambition to build the environment in which they can do their best work.
The Chief Technology Officer will be one of the Institute’s senior strategic leaders, helping to shape its overall direction as well as defining and delivering its technology and engineering strategy. They will ensure that the Institute combines outstanding research with outstanding engineering, strengthening the route from research questions and experimental systems through to robust, deployable capabilities and measurable impact. They will have direct influence over institutional strategy, research and technology priorities, technical investment, senior partnerships and routes to national impact.
Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer and working as a member of the Executive Leadership Team, the CTO will provide strategic leadership across the Institute, working closely with scientific, engineering and delivery leaders. They will create an environment in which researchers and engineers work as genuine partners, combining scientific ambition with engineering excellence to advance research and translate it into practical capability. They will establish strong technical standards, guide investment decisions and develop strategic partnerships across government, academia, industry and the wider AI ecosystem.
How You Will Make an Impact
- Help shape and drive the Institute’s overall strategy as a member of the Executive Leadership Team, bringing deep technological insight to decisions about its priorities, investments and future direction.
- Define and deliver an ambitious technology and engineering strategy aligned with the Institute’s mission and research ambitions.
- Build, lead and develop a world-class engineering organisation, creating a culture that attracts exceptional technical talent and enables people to do their best work.
- Forge a genuinely integrated partnership between research and engineering, enabling multidisciplinary teams to advance research, develop ambitious new technical capabilities and translate them into practical impact.
- Develop the engineering capability required to take promising research from prototype to secure, scalable and sustainable deployment.
- Lead the development of environments for AI model training, evaluation and deployment, including compute, data pipelines, distributed systems and MLOps.
- Set clear engineering, architecture and technical assurance standards.
- Guide investment and build, buy or partner decisions across compute, data, platforms and tooling.
- Strengthen delivery disciplines while addressing technical debt and unnecessary complexity.
- Build, lead and develop high-performing engineering and research engineering teams, and create the organisational conditions for them to work effectively alongside world-leading researchers.
- Embed security, privacy, responsible technology and resilience into technology design and delivery.
- Develop influential partnerships that expand access to infrastructure, expertise and routes to impact.
- Advise the Board and Executive Leadership Team on technology opportunities, investment choices, dependencies and risks.
About You
- A significant record as a strategic and technology leader, with the judgement to help shape the direction of an ambitious mission-led organisation.
- Deep credibility in AI systems engineering, high-performance computing or large-scale distributed infrastructure, with the technical authority to command the respect of exceptional engineers and researchers.
- A strong track record of building, leading and inspiring first-class engineering teams, including developing senior technical leaders and creating a culture of engineering excellence.
- Experience creating effective partnerships between researchers and engineers, enabling teams both to advance research and translate novel ideas into robust real-world capabilities.
- Experience leading platforms or teams that support substantial machine learning workloads.
- Practical understanding of model training environments, including data pipelines, distributed training, orchestration, monitoring, evaluation and performance optimisation.
- Experience translating research, prototypes or emerging technologies into robust products, platforms or operational capabilities.
- Strong judgement in relation to technology investment, suppliers, partnerships and value for money.
- A collaborative and inclusive leadership style, with the ability to build common purpose across research, engineering and delivery, influence peers and institutional leaders, and lead significant change through others.
- Exceptional communication skills and the credibility to influence senior leaders, researchers, policymakers, funders and industry partners.
Experience gained within frontier AI, advanced ML systems, hyperscale or cloud AI, AI infrastructure, research computing, government or other nationally significant technology environments would be particularly valuable.
Above all, the successful candidate will combine deep technical credibility, exceptional engineering leadership and strategic judgement. They will be able to build and inspire world-class technical teams, work as a peer with leading researchers, and help shape the direction of the Institute itself, ensuring that outstanding research both advances the state of the art and becomes trusted capability delivering meaningful public benefit.
Reward and benefits
- Salary: Competitive, with details available on application
- Location: King’s Cross, London
- Contract: Permanent
- Benefits: 30 days’ holiday, private medical insurance and a 10% contributory pension
Application process
To apply,
candidates should submit:
- A
full and current Curriculum Vitae.
- A
cover letter of no more than one page outlining their interest in the
opportunity, how their experience aligns with the role, and the
contribution they believe they could make as Chief Technology Officer.
We value
diversity of background, experience, and perspective, and are proud to be an
inclusive employer. We warmly encourage applications from all backgrounds,
particularly from groups currently under-represented in our sector. If you feel
passionate about this role but don’t meet every single requirement,
please apply – we recognise that great candidates may bring strengths
beyond the criteria listed.
We are committed
to making sure our recruitment process is accessible and inclusive. This
includes making reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability or
long-term condition. Please contact us at [email protected] to advise us
how we can assist you.
Please note all
offers of employment are subject to obtaining and retaining the right to work
in the UK and satisfactory pre-employment security screening which includes a
DBS Check. Full details on the pre-employment screening process can be
requested from [email protected].