AISI Pay and Reward Lead

This role sits at the heart of AISIs work on pay, reward, and retention. The postholder will lead and deliver key elements of AISI's pay, reward, and retention agenda, taking ownership of priority workstreams and providing evidence-based recommendations to senior decision-makers. They will be responsible for coordinating complex projects, driving delivery across stakeholders, and ensuring that strategic pay and reward initiatives progress at pace.

The role will involve direct support to senior decision-making, including contributions to complex pay proposals, the development of non-standard reward approaches, and engagement with senior stakeholders across the AISI, DSIT and Cross Government.

Working across People, Talent, and wider AISI leadership, the postholder will help shape a more competitive and coherent offer for staff. It is a role for someone who is highly organised, analytical, and comfortable working on sensitive, complex issues with senior stakeholders, who is able to think creatively to solve our unique challenges and pioneer novel solutions.

These are top priorities for AISIs Director and Chief Technical Officer, and the postholder will play a key role in strengthening the organisations ability to recruit and retain globally scarce talent.

The postholder will be expected to operate with a high degree of autonomy, taking ownership of substantial workstreams and making recommendations within agreed parameters, while escalating strategic decisions where appropriate.

Key responsibilities

The postholder will:

Strategy and policy

• Lead discrete areas of AISI's pay and reward strategy, developing options, recommendations, and implementation plans for senior leaders.
• Take ownership of specific pay and reward initiatives, including technical allowance and retention-related workstreams, ensuring delivery against agreed objectives and timelines.

Senior casework

• Act as the lead coordinator for designated senior pay and reward cases, bringing together evidence, stakeholder views, risks, and recommendations to support decision-making.
• Draft and present high-quality proposals and briefing materials for senior leaders, exercising judgement on options, risks, and implementation considerations.

Evidence and analysis

• Own the development and maintenance of AISI's pay and reward evidence base, ensuring that senior decisions are informed by robust data, market intelligence, and benchmarking.
• Lead quantitative analysis and modelling activities, interpreting findings and making recommendations to inform strategic decisions.

Coordination and delivery

• Lead cross-functional delivery of agreed pay and reward workstreams, ensuring stakeholders are aligned, actions are tracked, and agreed outcomes are achieved.
• Take responsibility for identifying risks, dependencies, and delivery challenges, escalating issues appropriately and proposing solutions.
• Serve as the recognised point of contact for assigned pay and reward priorities, providing authoritative advice and maintaining momentum across multiple stakeholders.
• Work closely with the Project Lead for Pay to deliver a coherent programme of work across multiple priorities.

What we are looking for

Essential

• Ability to independently lead and resolve complex people, workforce, or organisational issues, exercising sound judgement and balancing competing priorities.
• Excellent written communication, including the ability to turn complex material into clear briefings, recommendations, and presentations for senior audiences.
• Experience of leading the development of high-quality analysis, briefings, and recommendations that have informed senior decision-making.
• Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage multiple workstreams, deadlines, and stakeholders simultaneously.
• Confidence working with sensitive issues and senior stakeholders, using sound judgement and discretion.
• Ability to work across team boundaries and build productive relationships in a collaborative environment.
• A proactive, delivery-focused mindset, with the ability to take ownership and bring clarity to ambiguity.

Desirable

• Experience of pay, reward, workforce strategy, retention, or related people policy work.
• Experience in HR / People, strategy, operations, project delivery, or another cross-cutting function.
• Familiarity with Civil Service pay constraints, allowances, or wider public sector reward issues.
• Experience of working in a fast-paced organisation undergoing change or scale-up.
• Interest in AISIs mission and the talent challenges facing frontier AI and government.

What success looks like

In this role, success would look like:

• High-quality, decision-ready support on AISIs key pay and reward priorities.
• Improved clarity and momentum on senior pay and technical allowance issues.
• Successful delivery of assigned pay, reward, and retention workstreams, with clear evidence of impact on organisational priorities.
• A robust and trusted evidence base for pay and reward decisions.
• A meaningful contribution to strengthening AISIs overall people offer.

Why this role is interesting

This is an exceptionally high-impact SEO role. The postholder will work on some of the most strategically important people issues in AISI, at a point where the organisation is trying to solve complex and novel problems around pay, retention, and workforce competitiveness.

The role offers direct exposure to senior leaders, complex organisational questions, and work that sits at the intersection of people strategy and mission delivery. It provides a strong platform for developing expertise in pay policy and progressing into more senior leadership roles in HR, strategy, or operations.