Location
City of Westminster

Hours
Full Time

Salary
£67,940 per annum

About the Role
The Incident Response Team (IRT) is responsible for DCMS’s crisis response planning and preparation. The team works across the department and Whitehall on a growing range of issues including cyber, telecoms, subsea cables, and mis/dis-information following recent Machinery of Government changes. The team engages with cross-Whitehall resilience and response fora to represent DCMS interests, handling everything from immediate responses to small crises through to planning for some of the most significant national risks.

As Head of Resilience Planning, you will lead a varied and challenging portfolio to grow DCMS’ resilience capability. You will build strong relationships across the department and Whitehall, developing approaches to resilience by identifying acute risks, exploring their impacts, and offering prioritisation frameworks to support senior leaders in resource allocation. You will play a key role in building and testing contingency plans that support resilience to these risks.

Responsibilities may include cohering plans for responding to catastrophic impacts on Critical National Infrastructure or working with teams to enhance resilience in the voluntary and community sector to maximise impact during national crises.

You will maintain a clear understanding of wider government resilience policy, preparing responses as necessary and representing DCMS at cross-government fora.

As part of the wider resilience and response team, you will participate in an out-of-hours duty rota with overtime and/or TOIL available. Developed Vetting status is required or must be obtained as part of the role.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a small, dynamic team located across London, Manchester, and Cardiff within the Performance, Projects, Inquiry & Response division of the Project Delivery and Major Events directorate.

Experience
- Experience in a national security, resilience or crisis management role within government, armed forces, emergency services, NGOs, or similar.
- Ability to work independently and manage a broad range of policy areas and sector interests, reprioritising work as situations evolve.
- Proven leadership of complex work and initiative within broadly defined areas.
- Skilled at assessing information from diverse sources and building coherent positions.
- Strong relationship-building skills with partners inside and outside government.
- Confident communicator capable of engaging senior leaders, producing clear, concise, well-argued written work, and presenting at senior-level boards.

About you
- Proactive and adaptable with the ability to operate effectively in a fast-changing environment.
- Collaborative and able to build impactful working relationships across multiple stakeholders.
- Committed to public service values and working within a government context.
- Prepared to participate in an out-of-hours duty rota and undertake Developed Vetting.

Qualifications
- Desirable: Familiarity with the Central Government Concept of Operations (Responding to Emergencies) or its successor, the Amber Book.
- Desirable: Experience in risk assessment and contingency planning within a resilience context.
- Desirable: Relevant resilience or crisis management training or qualifications from recognised bodies such as the Cabinet Office’s Crisis Management Excellence Programme, Business Continuity Institute, Institute for Strategic Risk Management, or Security Institute.