Head of Secure Patents Academy

Apply before 11:55pm on Tuesday 23rd September 2025

This is a new, exciting and varied role with responsibility for technical training and capability management across Secure Patents, developing our people for a high-performing future. The role holder will establish and manage a ‘Secure Patents Academy’ to service Secure Patents (including the Private Applicant Unit and the Secure Examination Support team) i.e. circa 550+ staff with differing training/development needs.

The training/development currently includes: structured technical/legal training; informal technical training; core skills training; management training; Civil Service wide training; and specific/bespoke training for internal systems/processes.

The purpose of the role is to assess current training/development to ensure effectiveness, inclusivity, and efficiency whilst also considering scalability and sustainability for a growing directorate. As Head of the Academy, the role holder will set the Academy direction. They will be expected to design and deliver training/development programmes (to include both existing and new materials) for multiple roles; provide help, guidance, and support to our technical/non-technical people; support and develop our leaders & managers; create/establish career pathways that value breadth and depth of experience; and mature our professions. The role holder will share our commitment to strengthen our talent pipelines, improve workforce agility and adaptability and support our technical/non-technical specialists to lead and manage their teams.

Reporting to one of the Heads of Patents, the role holder will provide matrix management to trainers/programme managers to deliver a diverse training portfolio. We need someone who can see and influence the bigger picture, ensure that informed decisions are made and know when and how to engage in the detail; and who can work closely with colleagues in our central Talent and Learning team, and our Secure Patents and Secure Examination Support teams; sharing knowledge and best practice across the organisation.

This role requires commercial awareness, great stakeholder skills, and a real people focus on personal development.

Main duties consist of but are not limited to:

• To establish and manage the Secure Patents Academy, providing matrix management to trainers/training programme managers
• Strategic leadership for Secure Patents capabilities and competencies
• Development and ownership of strategies relating to technical learning and development and their implementation
• Ensuring continuous improvement and evolution of the existing Secure Patents talent management schemes
• Responsibility for the Secure personal development budget ensuring best value across a wide range of training and development activities
• Developing management information tools/solutions for training and development activities to monitor and evaluate technical learning and development, talent management and succession planning
• Part of the Secure Patents leadership team, contributing to decisions around current and future organisational make-up
• Work closely with corporate talent and learning teams to align delivery and approaches
• Work with HR colleagues to inform strategic workforce planning activities.

Working Style

This role will be carried out in-line with IPO Hybrid working arrangements where staff are currently expected to spend at least 20% of their time working onsite from one of our offices. This role is based in our Newport Office.

The requirement for attendance at an office location can vary by role so we would encourage candidates to discuss working arrangements with the recruiting manager to agree a reasonable balance between working from home and the office.