(also known as “Supreme Warden of the National Pipework, Keeper of the Sacred API, and Slayer of Legacy Systems”)
About the Role
In an age when Artificial Intelligence is replacing lawyers, clerks, accountants, and possibly your neighbor’s cat, there remains one role AI cannot touch: the Chief Digital Plumber.
Why? Because while AI excels at producing confident nonsense in milliseconds, it cannot connect the data pipes of a government that still treats PDFs as holy relics. It cannot force agencies to share information. It cannot negotiate with a deputy minister who insists their 1997 Oracle database is “too special to upgrade.”
That is why we need you.
The CDP is not here to build shiny AI apps that ministers can brag about at press conferences. The CDP’s mission is simpler and far harder: fix the plumbing. Build the invisible infrastructure that lets AI (and humans) actually work together without the entire state collapsing under the weight of its own password reset forms.
This role reports directly to the Prime Minister, President, or “whoever is currently in charge of pressing the big red button.”
Key Responsibilities
1. Building the Digital Backbone
- Design and implement a single, mandatory national data exchange layer. Think: the Internet, but less fun and with far more committees.
- Mandate interoperability standards so airtight that even the most stubborn ministry cannot sneak in its “unique” spreadsheet format.
- Identify and eliminate “digital zeros” — those delightful bottlenecks where “digital transformation” means emailing a scanned document, printing it out, signing it with a pen, and then scanning it back in.
2. Driving the “Once-Only Principle”
- Guarantee that citizens and businesses never have to provide the same information twice. In practice, this means preventing the absurdity of a government that asks you for your date of birth in 14 different offices on the same street.
- Establish data ownership and consent frameworks so citizens can confidently say: “Yes, you may use my data to prove I exist” or “No, you may not give my blood type to an AI-powered ‘wellness startup’ located above a kebab shop.”
3. Change Management & Institutional Stability
- Foster a culture of compounding. Not more flashy AI pilots that vanish after 18 months, but boring, dull, shared infrastructure that becomes so reliable nobody notices it until it breaks.
- Ensure stability across political cycles. Ministers come and go, each announcing a “bold digital future” before being reassigned to Fisheries. The pipes, however, must survive.
- Mediate disputes between ministries that treat data like dragon treasure. Your job: convince them to share. Your tools: diplomacy, persistence, and the occasional sledgehammer.
What We’re Looking For
Experience
- 10+ years in large-scale digital system design, preferably in environments where survival required both technical knowledge and psychological resilience.
- Proven ability to navigate political, legal, and technical complexity simultaneously (or at least fake it convincingly).
- Experience in heavily regulated environments—bonus if you’ve ever tried to digitize something in government without losing your will to live.
Skills
- Systems Thinking: Ability to map the entire labyrinth of servers, laws, and human egos and still believe in progress.
- Technical Acuity: Understands APIs, cloud standards, and why “AI can’t fix plumbing if the pipes don’t exist.”
- Political Savvy: Able to explain why data standards matter to someone who believes “the cloud” is literally in the sky.
- Unseen Heroism: Takes pride in invisible infrastructure, because there are no parades for working toilets.
Education
- Master’s degree (or higher) in Computer Science, Public Policy, Engineering, or Applied Futility.
- Equivalent experience includes: debugging at 3 AM, surviving a procurement disaster, or teaching a senior official that a PDF is not, in fact, a database.
Why This Role Matters
In the age of AI, everything looks automated until you check the pipes. Governments can train models, buy algorithms, and announce “digital revolutions,” but none of it works if the ministries can’t share data, the servers don’t talk, and every process ends with “please print, sign, and return.”
AI will replace clerks, translators, consultants, and half the bureaucracy — but it cannot replace the person who builds the system all of them depend on.
That’s the CDP.
Without plumbing, AI is chaos. With plumbing, AI is civilization.
Apply Now
If you:
- Thrive on invisible victories,
- Laugh in the face of political absurdity,
- And believe that the real revolution lies in APIs, not shiny apps...
…then apply to be the Chief Digital Plumber.
History won’t remember your name. But without you, there may not be a history to remember.