HR Deputy Director - Immigration Enforcement

Job summary

Why this role matters

Immigration Enforcement (IE) is one of the Home Office’s highest profile operational commands, working in fast paced, complex and politically sensitive environments. With a workforce of around 6,800 colleagues, strong, strategic, people focused leadership is essential to delivering modern, high performing services that earn public trust.

Reporting to the Chief People Officer and leading a team of 12, you will be the senior people leader to the Director General for IE and their Executive Committee . You will shape IE’s people strategy, champion culture and capability, and lead organisational design and workforce transformation across one of the department’s most demanding operational areas.

This is a senior, influential and outward facing role that requires strategic clarity, sound judgement, and the ability to translate organisational intent into practical, scalable people solutions. You will play a central role in shaping the future IE workforce, driving cultural change and strengthening leadership capability across the directorate.

Job description

As the senior HR partner for Immigration Enforcement, you will:

Provide decisive, trusted senior counsel

• Act as the Director General’s primary HR adviser, shaping decisions on workforce, culture and talent.
• Provide clear, evidence-based insight and challenge, enabling confident decision making at pace.

Lead system wide people strategy for a major operational command

• Develop and deliver workforce, capability, organisational development and talent strategies aligned to IE’s operational priorities and the wider Home Office strategy.
• Use data, insight and modelling to anticipate future workforce needs and build sustainable long-term solutions.

Drive leadership capability and cultural transformation

• Build leadership capability at all levels, strengthening performance, accountability, inclusion and engagement.
• Champion the Home Office values Compassionate, Respectful, Courageous and Collaborative, and support delivery of the Future Home Office ambition.

Lead a high performing HR Business Partnering team

• Provide strong, visible leadership to a team of around 12, creating a culture of professionalism, collaboration and continuous improvement.
• Partner across the wider HR function to influence and shape corporate HR services so they are designed around the current and future needs of Immigration Enforcement.

Enable modern, effective HR delivery

• Identify and embed best practice across organisational design, talent management, succession planning, workforce planning and performance management.
• Work with the HR Deputy Director for Border Force to improve alignment, consistency and efficiency across the operational HR system.

Contribute as a corporate leader

• Play an active role in the HR Directorate’s senior leadership community and the wider Home Office corporate leadership agenda.
• Lead cross departmental initiatives relating to Civil Service professions, capability and talent pipelines.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

You will be an exceptional HR leader, able to influence at the most senior levels in a complex, high pressure environment. You must demonstrate:

• Extensive senior HR partnering experience, building high trust relationships and providing credible, strategic counsel to senior leaders.
• Proven expertise in leading people centred transformation, with a track record in organisational design, workforce modernisation and cultural change.
• Ability to use workforce insight, evidence and data to inform strategic decisions and develop long term people solutions.
• Inclusive, confident and resilient leadership, with experience of developing high performing HR teams that deliver professional, high quality and evidence-based outcomes.
• Professional credibility, CIPD Fellow or equivalent (or working towards).

Desirable Criteria

• Experience working in or enabling large scale operational delivery environments.

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

Online Application

Please follow the Job Advert instructions on the Civil Service Jobs website to apply online, no later than 23:55hrs on Thursday 19th March 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.

Important: Your CV and Statement will be assessed against the essential criteria listed in the candidate pack. Ensure your evidence is clear and demonstrates positive impact. If you do not submit both a CV and a Supporting Statement, the panel will have limited evidence on which to assess your application against the essential criteria.

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 : Kerry Franklin
• Email : ps.hrdirectors@homeoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : SCSRecruitment@homeoffice.gov.uk

Further information

The 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

HR Deputy Director IE - Candidate Pack Opens in new window (pdf, 429kB)