Deputy Director, Cyber Resilience and Growth

Job summary

This is an exciting opportunity to work at the heart of Cyber Security and Digital Identity Directorate’s approach to cyber resilience and economic growth and play an important part in DCMS's ambitious agenda. The postholder will lead a team of around 35 delivering a series of policies and programmes to drive greater cyber security and digital resilience across the UK, including through the development of new legislation on secure technologies, and supporting our vibrant and regionally diverse cyber security sector. You will work with a broad range of stakeholders, including the National Cyber Security Centre, international counterparts, and people from across the cyber industry and wider tech community.

As Deputy Director for Cyber Resilience and Growth you will be leading a Unit, of three G6-headed teams: securing organisations, securing technologies, and growth, standards and delivery. You will act as the SRO for both the Growth and Resilience pillars, within the cross-government national cyber governance, with a secretariat team to support you in doing so. You will also act as the senior representative for cyber into the governance of the Industrial Strategy.

The portfolio brings together much of DCMS' work to:

• Improve cyber resilience across businesses, critical sectors and public services.
• Drive adoption of cyber security standards and good practice.
• Deliver major resilience initiatives such as Cyber Essentials, codes of practice and certification schemes.
• Develop new legislation on secure technologies and work on promoting greater regulatory alignment between UK and international regimes, such as the EU Cyber Resilience Act.
• Support growth of the UK’s thriving cyber sector through programmes, innovation and skills initiatives, and deliver on the Cyber Growth Action Plan.
• Lead implementation of the Growth and Resilience pillars of the National Cyber Action Plan.

Job description

As Deputy Director for Cyber Resilience and Growth your key responsibilities will include:

• Lead and inspire a high-performing, multidisciplinary team.
• Provide strategic leadership for the Government’s cyber resilience and cyber growth agenda including managing a budget of £15m.
• Provide governance and accountability to the Integrated Security Fund for £90m on resilience over the SR period.
• Shape and deliver long-term strategies, policies and programmes to improve cyber resilience across the UK economy.
• Lead development and implementation of policies to improve cyber resilience across critical sectors, businesses and public services.
• Lead the Government’s efforts to grow the UK cyber sector, supporting innovation, investment, skills development and export opportunities.
• Represent DCMS at senior forums across government, industry and international organisations, and engage with international counterparts.
• Ensure effective programme, budget, risk and performance management across the portfolio.

Person specification

The ideal candidate would have the following key skills and experience, please note that desirable skills will only be used in the event of tied candidates.

Essential Requirements:

• Strategic leadership: Proven ability to lead in a complex environment, taking a strategic approach to identifying growth opportunities and anticipating future challenges, juggling short-term pressures with long-term goals.
• Policy and strategic acumen: High degree of comfort working in a broad policy environment that spans economic growth, national security, science and technology. You must have a record of developing evidence-based policy and working closely with ministers.
• Delivery of complex cross-sector programmes: Evidence of effectively delivering complex programmes or initiatives that span multiple sectors or delivery partners. You must be able to adjust priorities swiftly as situations change, enabling the organisation to remain focused on core priorities.
• Collaboration and stakeholder management: Excellent ability to engage, influence, and partner with a broad range of senior stakeholders in the private sector, academia, and across government. You need to be adept at brokering collaborations and addressing stakeholder concerns. Strong negotiation and relationship skills are essential.
• Inclusive leadership: Track record of building a team that prizes inclusion, values diversity, and promotes a positive culture both within and outside the organisation. You must ensure the wellbeing of all individuals is valued, with evidence of confronting issues and challenging assumptions at the highest levels in an assertive yet constructive way. You will be a role model for Civil Service values

Desirable Skills

• Experience of working on cyber security and/or digital resilience.
• Experience and understanding of economic growth policies or programmes to boost industry innovation, investment, and competitiveness.
• Experience in the private sector - in industry or in an investment role – or of working closely with the private sector from government.
• Experience working with international stakeholders.

Behaviours

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

• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Working Together

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £86,000, Department for Culture, Media and Sport 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).

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

• A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
• Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
• An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
• Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.
• A hybrid office/home based working model where staff will spend a norm of 40-60% of their time in the office (minimum of 40%) over a month with flex dependent on balancing business and individual need.

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

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

To apply for this vacancy, you will need to submit the following, via the Civil Service Jobs portal, which will assessed against the essential criteria for the role:

➔A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements.

• Please ensure you provide employment history that relates to the essential criteria, and that any gaps in employment history within the last 2 years are explained.
• The CV should not exceed more than the equivalent of 2 sides of A4 and you should copy and paste your CV into the "Job History" section on Civil Service Jobs on the Civil Service Jobs application form.

A Statement of Suitability explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role.

• You must make direct reference to the essential criteria and back-up your statement with evidence rather than relying on assertions.
• This should be no more than a maximum of 1000 words.

For the shortlist, we will select applicants who demonstrate the best fit for the role by considering the evidence provided in your application and how this meets the essential requirements. Following the shortlist there are no further pass/fail assessment stages and all candidates shortlisted will be invited to the final interview stage.

Should you encounter any issues with your online application please get in touch with: scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Indicative Timeline

Candidates are asked to note the below timetable, exercising flexibility through the recruitment and selection process.

Advert Closing Date: 23:55 Wednesday 9th September 2026

Shortlisting: 22nd or 23rd September 2026

Interviews: w/c 5th October 2026 (to take place in person in London or Manchester)

Feedback: w/c 12th October 2026

Shortlist

The panel will assess your application to select those demonstrating the best fit with the role by considering the evidence you have provided against the criteria set out in the ‘essential requirements’ section of this pack. Failure to address any or all of these may affect your application.

Feedback

Following interview, all shortlisted candidates will receive their outcome along with some short written feedback on performance at interview.

Please note you will only receive feedback if you complete the interview stage.

Security Clearance

Level of security clearance required: This role will require the postholder to have SC clearance to start and will be required to undergo Developed Vetting (DV) once in post , therefore successful candidates will be expected to either hold this or be willing to undertake the DV clearance process once in post.

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 undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check.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 : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

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

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the recruitment principles, and wish to make a complaint, then you should contact in the first instance dsitresourcing.GRS@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages at: https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/contact-us/

Attachments

2026-08-19 DCMS Deputy Director for Cyber Resilience and Growth Candidate Information Pack Final Opens in new window (pdf, 1104kB)475649 - Deputy Director, Cyber Resilience and Growth - accessibility pack (1) Opens in new window (docx, 4723kB)