People Partner — Sovereign AI

Job summary

Sovereign AI is the UK's sovereign venture fund, funded by the UK Government and dedicated to scaling British AI companies. With a £500M fund it invests from pre-seed through growth stage across five priority areas: compute and infrastructure, foundation models, AI in health and life sciences, scientific discovery, and trust, safety and assurance.

Alongside capital, Sovereign AI offers founders sovereign compute, fast-tracked visas for global AI talent, and strategic assets including national datasets, research partnerships, and grants and contracts of up to £10m. The mission is to help British AI startups start here, scale here, and win everywhere.

Job description

As we scale our team and portfolio, we are hiring our first People Partner to build the talent function from the ground up and ensure our people have the best environment to succeed. This is a high-ownership, generalist role suited to someone comfortable building process from scratch, operating at both strategic and hands-on levels, and working closely with leadership in a fast-moving, high-stakes environment.

Primary objective: To own talent and people strategy across the fund as Sovereign AI's first dedicated people hire — shaping how the fund attracts, hires, develops and retains talent as it grows.

Core responsibilities:

Talent acquisition:

• Own end-to-end recruitment for the fund, from investment professionals to operations and platform roles.
• Build a scalable hiring process — sourcing strategy, interview frameworks, scorecards and offer management.
• Partner with leadership to define hiring plans against fund strategy and headcount budget.
• Build and maintain a strong talent pipeline, including passive candidates in AI/investing.

People operations & culture:

• Design and implement core people processes — onboarding, performance management, compensation frameworks and career development.
• Own HR operations (contracts, benefits, compliance and policies), ensuring they scale with the fund.
• Shape and protect culture as the team grows, embedding values into how people work and are evaluated.
• Act as a trusted advisor to leadership and team members on people matters.

Strategic partnership:

• Sit close to leadership as a thought partner on org design, team structure and workforce planning.
• Bring market intelligence on comp benchmarking, talent trends and competitive positioning in AI/VC.

Impact: Builds Sovereign AI's people function from the ground up, directly enabling the fund to attract and retain the talent needed to scale British AI companies.

Measurable success: 90 days — established core hiring processes and built trust with leadership. 6 months — scalable recruitment and onboarding running, key hires delivered, foundational people policies in place. 1 year — a functioning, scalable people function with embedded performance, compensation and culture frameworks.

Person specification

Essential

• 3+ years in a people/talent role, ideally including time in a startup, VC/fund or high-growth tech environment.
• Track record of building people processes from scratch, not just administering existing ones.
• Strong recruitment experience, particularly for senior or specialist hires.
• Excellent judgment and discretion; close to sensitive, confidential information.
• Genuine interest in AI and the venture/fund landscape.
• Sharp communicator who can flex between strategic conversations with leadership and hands-on operational work.

Preferred

• Experience hiring investment professionals or technical/research talent.
• Familiarity with fund structures, carry, and compensation norms in venture/private markets.

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Managing a Quality Service

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,620, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £12,926 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

• A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
• Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
• An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
• Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.

Office attendance

The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.

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 (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and personal statement.

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Please use your personal statement (in no more than 500 words) to tell us how your skills align with this role and share examples.

In the event of a large number of applicants, applications will be sifted on personal statement.

Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment/interview.

Stage 1 — Experience interview

Stage 2 — Structured interview assessing behaviours and role-relevant scenarios and exercise, e.g. a people-strategy task).

Stage 3 — Final interview with leadership

Sift and interview dates

Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.

Further Information

Former DSIT recruitment campaigns are continuing as usual, but candidates should be aware that following the Government’s announcement on the changes to some