Police and Public Protection Technology, Chief Technology Officer

Croydon, Hendon, Manchester, Sheffield

At the Home Office, our task is simple – to keep the UK safe. Doing this means working across a huge range of projects, dealing with some of the most high-profile and important issues the country faces. If you’re talented, tenacious and forward-thinking, you’ll find yourself in good company. Join us at the heart of government, take advantage of huge opportunities and help us build an unrivalled department.

You’ll join Police and Public Protection Technology (PPPT), an organisation within the Home Office that keeps the public safe through world-class law enforcement technology services. As Chief Technology Officer, you’ll take on a highly varied and challenging role. You’ll define and implement our wide-ranging Technology and Platforms strategy, which will change the way we collaborate, strategise and deliver our services. In turn, you’ll be improving our capabilities and helping us better serve the public.

Additionally, you’ll establish a continuous improvement process for all engineering, technology and architectural activities, and decide on our approach to the management and decommissioning of legacy systems. Managing technical risk, developing a scalable test lifecycle and defining our solutions architectures are also key aspects of your role.

To apply, you’ll need experience designing and building complex, high-volume transactional digital services. You should also have a deep knowledge of technology and platform services, and be able to manage a large engineering, technology and architecture team.

Skills in managing technical debt, communicating, consulting, driving efficiencies and measuring technical risk are important. You should have a good understanding of cyber security, risk management, key controls and how an enterprise organisation provides security technologies and capabilities.

Whatever your role at the Home Office, we’ll support your career plans and evolve your skills with exceptional tools, training and coaching. There’s also a wealth of opportunity to move around and work across different departments. As a Civil Service employee, you’ll be entitled to a wide range of benefits, including generous annual leave, flexible working, childcare and travel allowances, numerous staff networks and clubs, onsite facilities and a Civil Service pension.

Key responsibilities include: 

• Defining and implementing a PPPT technology strategy – aligned to the DDaT Technology Strategy, focussed on Engineering, Technology & Architecture across the PPPT Portfolio lifecycle.
• Defining & implementing solution architectures and integrating them into business as usual – aligned to DDaT Enterprise Architecture, ensure that all emergent and intentional solution design is fit for purpose across the whole lifecycle management of the PPPT portfolio.
• Managing and improving Engineering, Technology & Architectural governance – aligned with DDaT Technical Design Authority, manage the architecture and design processes & methods, improvement of the governance regime & assurance of ongoing architecture and design activities.
• Leadership of Engineering & Architecture and Product staff – ensure that all Technology team members are well managed and aligned with the Portfolio CTOs strategy for the PPPT Portfolios.
• Establishing a continuous improvement process for all Engineering, Technology & Architectural activities – establish continuous improvement processes and goals that drive efficiency in the cost and quality of platform services.
• Ensuring Home Office information is safe & secure – i.e. services are built to comply with Home Office and regulatory requirements, authentication systems for users and partners are secure and the hosting platform is resilient to internal and external attack.
• Determining our approach to management & decommissioning of legacy systems – i.e. approach and roadmaps for managing & retiring legacy systems
• Establishing our overall engineering approach and improving our efficiency – across products and platforms, covering processes, tools, controls and policies and engineering maturity.
• Managing technical risk – identification of key areas of technical risk, from technical debt through to product supportability, scalability etc
• Enabling an efficient, scalable & repeatable test & regime – ensuring our test lifecycle is scalable to support faster release cadences and is as efficient as can be. Using automation and also covering non-functional requirements in addition to functional testing.

Further information could be found in the Candidate pack for the role.

Essential Criteria 

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate their knowledge, experience, capability and behavioural approach to a high standard against the following key criteria:

• Deep knowledge of technology and platform services to provide technical authority to the department.
• Designing and building complex, high-volume, transactional digital services.
• Setting up and managing a large Engineering, Technology & Architecture team in a complex, regulated environment with an emphasis on integrating architecture governance and processes into business-as-usual operations.
• Managing technical debt across a complex technology landscape.
• Understanding of cyber security, risk management, key controls and how an enterprise organisation provides security technologies and capabilities.
• Presenting to and working with stakeholders at every level of seniority with good interpersonal skills.

Desirable Criteria

• Innovating to drive efficiency in the cost and quality of platform services.
• Measuring and representing architecture & engineering maturity, technical risk.
• Knowledge of Agile product management and product engineering
• Good consulting and relationship management skills.

Alongside your salary of £103,287, Home Office contributes
£27,887 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration
is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them
to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through
building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above.
This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions.
Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and
conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your
personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any
absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you
to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Open to UK nationals only.

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.

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Job contact :

• Name : Katie Gardiner
• Email : PPPTDirectorsOffice@homeoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : HORCSCSRecruitment@homeoffice.gov.uk