Senior Innovation Manager

Digital Catapult is a deep tech innovation organisation. We help businesses grow by applying advanced technologies, partnering with government, industry, and academia to deliver solutions that benefit the UK’s economy and society. With nearly 300 innovators across multiple UK regions, we tackle significant challenges through collaborative, practical innovation, enabling responsible development and adoption of deep technologies.

Digital Catapult is looking for a Senior Responsible Innovation Manager to embed responsible practice across our organisation and the partners we work with. This role suits someone who works confidently at the intersection of innovation, deep tech, and societal impact.

You will bring your domain expertise and experience to inform how the organisation addresses responsible technology innovation, and you will engage closely with technologists, partner organisations, legal and executive stakeholders. The role spans our responsible innovation approaches towards emerging technologies – such as AI, creative technologies, and quantum, both internally, in innovation and research projects, and externally, in support of the organisations we work with.

The role sets out to guide and ope rationalise responsible innovation and enable the practical application of ethics in developing transformative and deep technologies across complex industries. As the regulatory and sociotechnical landscape around these technologies is moving quickly, we need someone who tracks that closely and who is confident translating that into actionable recommendations to inform our organisational strategy and shape our capability.

• Act as subject matter expert and primary advisor on responsible technology innovation across Digital Catapult, supporting senior leadership and legal stakeholders.
• Bring a risk‑aware, human‑centred and responsible perspective to the organisation, advising on how we work with industry and how we develop and use technology.
• Lead and champion responsible technology innovation practice across Digital Catapult programmes, fostering a culture of responsible innovation.
• Provide strategic guidance and mentorship to project leads and teams to integrate ethics, risk management, and harm mitigation into their ways of working from the outset.
• Conduct risk assessments, consultations and training services for organisations, including startups and enterprise level partners.
• Provide advice and consult on the responsible initial application of novel technologies, as well as on novel applications of existing or more established technologies.
• Work closely with academic partners on responsible innovation and technology risk research.
• Facilitate internal learning on responsible technology, building awareness and practical capability among colleagues, working with innovators and technologists.
• Monitor and enable compliance with regard to responsible technology innovation standards, regulations, best‑practice and emerging industry requirements.
• Examine the socio‑technical impacts of emerging technologies across complex systems and sectors.
• Contribute to Digital Catapult's external position on responsible technology innovation through industry engagement and published work.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a field related to technology ethics or governance, such as Computer Science, Social Sciences, Design or Law.
• Working experience developing and implementing responsible technology frameworks, policies, or guidelines within an organisation.
• Proven experience in embedding ethical, legal, and social considerations into the design, development, and deployment of AI or data‑driven technical solutions.
• Ability to engage and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams (design, data science, engineering, legal, business) to deliver responsible innovation outcomes.
• Confidence in communicating and advocating for responsible technology practices to both technical and non‑technical audiences, including delivering training or awareness programmes.
• Evidence of staying current with emerging trends, technologies, and regulations in deep technology and responsible innovation; with proven knowledge of…