Chief Technology Officer, Home Office Digital (3 posts)

Job summary

We are looking to recruit 3 Portfolio Chief Technology Officer (CTO) roles. Two of which will support our Migration and Borders Digital Group, and the remaining role will support our Enterprise Services teams.

As a key member of the Home Office Government Digital and Data Profession leadership team, you will play a critical role in providing Government Digital and Data services at the Home Office, supporting vital national infrastructure and Home Office services. Your role will involve supporting a user-base of 35,000+ Home Office users, over 400 public-facing services used by millions, and diverse critical business areas including UK Visa & Immigration, Border Force, HMPO and policing.

As a Deputy Director Portfolio CTO, you will be accountable for leading the technical strategy for the Portfolio, and the wider technology professional community. You will provide technical direction for the delivery of government services, leading design, build and management activity across all areas of architecture, infrastructure, security and engineering. You will identify underlying technology requirements to support business platform capability and lead a team of technology specialists to create cutting-edge services.

You will be required to build strategic, collaborative and constructive relationships with a growing ecosystem of digital and third-party technology suppliers. This will include championing emerging standards, principles or policies to support with this collaboration.

You will identify how technical teams can become leaner by removing unnecessary overheads and advising on how they can deliver more with existing capabilities. Through establishing effective ways of working, you will ensure that we meet our commitments, increasing the certainty of the outcomes we achieve. You will be accountable for ensuring that we deliver to cost and quality standards and managing risks and dependencies across multiple teams.

We are looking for someone who is strategic and forward thinking in terms of how we engage with the business, use technology and achieve our long-term goals. You will strive to deliver better outcomes and value for money by encouraging and embedding a culture of continuous improvement within the portfolio and across wider technology teams.

As a leader within Home Office Government Digital and Data Profession and the Portfolio, you will inspire others and establish a team and a culture that individuals feel proud to be apart of.

Job description

For full details of all three roles, please see the Candidate Pack attached at the bottom of the advert.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate experience of:

• Providing clear technical leadership and authority across technology, platforms and architecture within a large, complex organisation.
• Setting and owning enterprise-level technology and platform direction, translating organisational goals into coherent strategy, priorities and investment decisions.
• Leading and influencing across a matrixed, federated organisation, building trusted relationships with stakeholders at all levels (including senior leaders and non-technical audiences).
• Understanding cyber security, risk management and assurance in a highly regulated enterprise context, and assessing and clearly articulating technical risk and architectural maturity to senior stakeholders.
• Embedding architecture governance, standards and assurance into business-as-usual delivery to improve consistency, quality and pace.
• Driving innovation and continuous improvement to increase the efficiency, resilience and value for money of platform and technology services.

Desirable Criteria

It would also be desirable to demonstrate experience of:

• Operating at executive or senior leadership level within a large or highly regulated organisation, including managing substantial technology investment and making value‑for‑money decisions across complex portfolios.
• Leading significant technology, platform, or digital transformation at scale, including modernisation of legacy and mission‑critical systems, using modern product‑led and Agile approaches.
• Driving cross‑portfolio collaboration, convergence or reuse of platforms, services, or standards in a multi‑team environment, with accountability for delivering and operating live services/products that meet user needs and performance expectations.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £81,000, Home Office contributes £23,465 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 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, no later than 23:55hrs on Sunday 24th May 2026.

Provide some basic personal information;

1. A CV - setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role, including details where budgets and numbers of people managed, relevant achievements in recent posts, together with reasons for any gaps within the last two years;
2. A Statement of Suitability – (limited to 1250 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience, provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.
3. Diversity Monitoring - as part of the online application process, you will be asked a number of diversity-related questions. If you do not wish to provide a declaration on any of the characteristics, you will have the option to select 'prefer not to say'. See the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy: 2022 to 2025 (HTML) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) for more information.

It is essential that in your written application you give evidence, using specific examples, of proven experience. These responses will be developed and discussed with the candidates invited for interview. Failure to submit both a CV and Supporting Statement will mean the panel only have limited information on which to assess your application against the criteria in the person specification.

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 : Home Office Digital Recruitment
• Email : hodigitalscsrecruitment@homeoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : SCSRecruitment@homeoffice.gov.uk

Further information

he Commission publishes a guide that outlines its approach to handling a complaint under the Recruitment Principles. This can be accessed at http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/civil-service-recruitm…. We would recommend you read this guidance before submitting a complaint.
Complaints should be sent in writing to: Civil Service Commission, Room G8, 1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ.

Attachments

Candidate pack - Chief Technology Officer (CTO) x 3 Opens in new window (pdf, 700kB)