Deputy Director, Organisational Capability

Home Office

Hybrid

Expires: Expiring in less than 2 weeks

Flexible

£86,000 - £96,000 per year

Job summary

The Deputy Director for Organisational Capability is a pivotal senior leadership role within Home Office HR, accountable for ensuring the department has the capability, leadership, talent and culture required to deliver its priorities today and in the future.

Reporting to the Director of HR Transformation, you will provide strategic leadership and end-to-end accountability for capability, talent and organisational development across the Home Office. You will set the vision, shape departmental strategy and lead delivery at scale, ensuring the organisation has the skills, leadership and behaviours needed to meet future challenges.

This role is central to delivering the Home Office's ambitions through the Future Home Office transformation programme. You will lead a step change in organisational capability, designing and delivering evidence-led interventions across learning, leadership, talent, culture, organisational development, equality, diversity and wellbeing. Through this, you will strengthen organisational performance, build workforce resilience and enable the successful delivery of departmental objectives.

As a highly visible and influential senior leader, you will work with colleagues at the most senior levels to drive change across a complex and operationally critical organisation. You will bring strategic insight, sound judgement and a relentless focus on outcomes, sustaining pace and impact across a broad and high-profile portfolio.

Job description

Key responsibilities

Lead the development and delivery of the Home Office’s organisational capability strategy, spanning learning, talent, leadership, organisational development, culture, equality, diversity and wellbeing.
Shape the department’s future workforce capability, translating strategic priorities into evidence-led interventions that build the capability, leadership and culture needed to deliver departmental objectives.
Drive a step change in organisational performance through the design and delivery of high-impact capability programmes, ensuring investment is targeted, scalable and delivers measurable outcomes.
Lead the integration of diversity, inclusion and wellbeing into the department’s organisational capability agenda, ensuring they drive workforce performance, employee experience and long-term organisational effectiveness.
Lead the organisational development and culture agenda, embedding high-performance and adaptive ways of working across a complex and changing organisation.
Lead the department’s talent, succession and leadership agenda, from early careers and apprenticeships through to senior leadership pipelines, ensuring a sustainable flow of diverse talent for critical roles now and in the future.
Build and influence relationships at the most senior levels, across government and with external partners, to strengthen capability outcomes, drive collaboration and secure value for money.
Play a leading role in the Future Home Office transformation programme and the HR Senior Leadership Team, shaping the department’s wider transformation and organisational effectiveness agenda.

Person specification

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate:

A proven track record of leading large-scale organisational transformation and delivering strategic capability interventions that strengthen organisational effectiveness, build workforce capability and improve readiness for future challenges.
Strong analytical and strategic capability, with experience using data, evidence and insight to identify priorities, target investment and evaluate impact.
Exceptional stakeholder leadership skills, with the ability to influence senior decision-makers and translate organisational priorities into clear, deliverable capability strategies.
Strong commercial expertise, including holding suppliers and delivery partners to account for quality, impact and value for money.
An accomplished and visible people leader, with a track record of building high-performing teams and leading through ambiguity, complexity and change.
Chartered Fellow of the CIPD (FCIPD), or a willingness to work towards accreditation.

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 21st July 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.

For more information on how to write a personal statement, click here.

Guidance on the use of AI

Please review the guidance Artificial intelligence and recruitment to understand the acceptable use of AI for your application.

Before you submit an application, we will ask you to confirm the information you provide is true and accurate. More details about this will be provided in the application form and we may reject applications where AI is used inappropriately at any stage of the process.

Once submitted, applications cannot be amended, so please ensure you are content with your submission before applying.

Interviews and any Ministerial meetings will take place in central London.
Expenses incurred during the recruitment process will not normally be reimbursed. In exceptional circumstances, this may be considered where agreed in advance with the SCS Recruitment Team.

If you’re interested in learning more, we will be hosting a Town Hall event for prospective candidates on Monday 13 July 12:00 - 12:30.
Whilst this is an optional event, all candidates are encouraged to join the panel to gain an insight into the role(s).
You can join this event by registering at Candidate Information Session - Please see the Candidate Pack for further information

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

Salary range

£86,000 - £96,000 per year