Head of Security Delivery

The Security function’s role is to protect the Department’s people, assets, and information from those who wish to damage it. We do this by building a diverse team with expert, generalist, and entry level roles to work together to solve the challenges we face. This mix allows us to develop talent and to benefit from a wide range of life experiences.

The Security function has two separate elements, the Core Security Team and the Trade Negotiations Security Team. This role sits in the Core Security Team. The successful candidate will report to the Grade 6 Departmental Security Adviser.

The role is part of the Government Security Profession (GSP) under Corporate Enablers. The GSP is one of the recognised career progressions within the Civil Service and offers a challenging and rewarding career.

You will lead on Security Culture Education and Awareness (SCEA), and Business Continuity and Incident Management (BC & IM). Each of these functions has SEO leads who you will line manage. The team is also supported by additional HEO and EO officers; a team of seven in total.

You will ensure DBT complies with the required elements of the Government Functional Standard for Security (GovS 007) and industry best practices that fall under your functional areas.

You will oversee the provision of an expert and high-quality specialist business continuity function and incident management support. As a BC subject matter expert, your advice will be relied upon by senior managers across the department. Colleagues will look to you to resolve complex problems to ensure critical business activities across the department can continue during a BC incident.

You will do this by leading on the development of DBT’s BC policies and strategies, contingency guidance, and plans. You will therefore be expected to understand HMG standards and business continuity management best practices and advise on their integration into DBT. You will develop and implement a testing and exercising regime to assure our response plans and documentation.

You will also deliver appropriate policies, processes, and strategies to support your SCEA portfolio, reviewing and updating them as the need arises. You will work closely with the National Technical Authorities and government partners to ensure that DBT has access to the latest central security guidance and resources to support SCEA activities and campaigns, and horizon scan to identify key security risks to DBT’s objectives, providing appropriate advice and mitigations. Your team will manage the Security shared mailbox, often acting as the first point of contact for enquiries, incidents, and breach reporting. You will be expected to oversee and report on these activities, which can be unpredictable in content and number.

Across both portfolios, you will need to build and maintain relationships with your respective BC and divisional security coordinator networks and senior sponsors, sharing BC and security best practice, advice, and guidance, and offering specialist support to the wider departmental community.

As part of the Security Senior Management Team, you will be expected to provide security advice and briefings to senior officials including Ministers, DBT’s two Permanent Secretaries and other colleagues as required. You will also be a security stakeholder for major programmes, projects and campaigns and be required to review business cases and provide advice and guidance on security for new projects.

 You will provide support to the Senior Security Adviser and their deputies as required and will be expected to participate in an out of hours on-call rota (approximately one week in seven) to provide cover for security incidents. This attracts an on-call allowance.

Essential Criteria

• Certificate of the Business Continuity Institute (CBCI) and a Membership of the Business Continuity Institute (MBCI) or a willingness to work towards this.
• Experience in developing and delivering BC and IM response arrangements, and knowledge and experience of Command, Control, Communications, and multi-agency working.
• Willing to travel to other DBT regional and overseas locations to support awareness campaigns and outreach activities.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience in government and/or large corporate environment of comparable scale with comparable risks.
• Experience of planning and delivering organisation-wide security or other awareness campaigns and engagement activities.
• Eligible and willing to undergo Developed Vetting. A minimum of SC clearance will be required before a candidate can be substantively appointed.

Personal Attributes & Skills

• Capable of working across organisational boundaries and across disciplines to deliver results, collaborating effectively with others.
• Be versatile in adapting to new challenges and ways of working to deliver results and build a successful team in a changing environment.
• Ability to influence senior leaders and stakeholders to drive change, using excellent people management skills.
• Take a strategic approach to business analysis using a variety of tools to prepare strategies by evaluating the opportunities and challenges faced by DBT as it moves forward.

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

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing

We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Business Continuity / Incident Management

• 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%

We recognise the challenges that people with (multiple) protected characteristics may experience on the job market and in their career progression. We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible, and we hope to attract applications from underrepresented groups, including ethnic minorities, people with a disability, and people with gender diverse identities.

Please refer to the attached candidate pack for further information on our benefits.

Job contact :

• Name : Ben Kirby
• Email : Ben.Kirby@businessandtrade.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : dbtrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk