Chief Risk Officer (PB1)

Job summary

Why this role matters

The Home Office operates in a complex and high-profile environment, delivering work that has a direct impact on the public, the Department and wider government.

Strong risk management is essential to ensuring that senior leaders can make well-informed decisions, anticipate challenges early and maintain confidence in the Department’s ability to deliver its priorities.

This role is central to strengthening that capability: leading the Department’s approach to strategic risk, improving assurance and controls, and supporting the Accounting Officer, Executive Committee, Director Generals and Ministers with clear insight on the risks that matter most.

By embedding high-quality risk management across the organisation, the postholder will help improve delivery, strengthen governance and support better outcomes for the public.

Job description

Key accountabilities

• Leading and developing a team to deliver a broad portfolio across risk, assurance and improvement - positioning the team as expert advisors to the business, our Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee and senior leaders across the department.
• Communicating the importance and value of risk management and being visible as its senior sponsor.
• Facilitating and driving management discussions, decisions and strategies on risk and assurance with Directors General, the Executive Committee, and Audit Committee.
• Leading the Home Office’s risk framework and strategy, ensuring robust identification, management and reporting of organisational risks through proactive engagement with the business.
• Overseeing cross-departmental programmes to enhance risk controls and to ensure best-practice delivery.
• Being a core member of the Performance, Risk, Assurance & Governance directorate’s senior leadership team, contributing to our collective leadership of the team and cross departmental governance.
• Engaging with other Government Departments, internal and external auditors, and industry to develop insight and best practice on risk management.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate:

• Professionally qualified in risk management, audit, assurance, governance or a related discipline, or able to demonstrate equivalent senior professional expertise.
• Practitioner experience of leading strategic risk management and assurance processes and reporting, in a complex organisation, including influencing multiple senior stakeholders.
• Proven ability to lead high performing teams and deliver complex portfolios of work.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with credibility at senior official and board level.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex and technical issues clearly.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £86,000, Home Office contributes £24,914 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

• 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 employer contribution of 28.97%

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

Please follow the Job Advert instructions on the Civil Service Jobs website to apply online by 23:55hrs on 5th October 2026.

You will be asked to provide:

• A CV – (2 pages max) setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role. Please provide reasons for any gaps within the last two years.​​
• A Statement of Suitability – (limited to 1250 words) providing examples of how your experience meets the essential criteria.​​ This is your opportunity to give examples and show how your skills and experience fit the job requirements.

When writing a supporting statement, it is important that you:

• Read the job specification so you are clear about the job requirements. Structure your personal statement to reflect the essential criteria listed in the advert.
• Make sure you provide evidence against each of the listed criteria - i.e. ‘experienced in leading high performing and diverse teams and promoting inclusivity.’ When have you led a team, how large, what did you do to promote inclusivity, how did you handle diversity?
• Ensure any evidence you provide demonstrates the impact of your actions in that situation, provide statistical evidence where relevant.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.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.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : SCS Recruitment Team
• Email : SCSRecruitment@homeoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : SCSRecruitment@homeoffice.gov.uk

Further information

Complaints should be sent in writing to:
Civil Service Commission, Room G8, 1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ.

Attachments

Chief Risk Officer - Candidate Pack Opens in new window (pdf, 3132kB)