Profession Lead

Job summary

We are seeking an experienced People professional for the role of Profession Lead. Following the launch of the Government Grants Profession in September 2025, for grants professionals in government, ALBs and the wider public sector, we are looking for someone to lead the continued development of the profession. Working closely with the Head of Profession and Capability, you will lead on embedding the Grants Professional Standards across government. Along with developing the Government Grants Professions talent, careers and community initiatives for government and the wider public sector.

As part of the role, you will lead on standardising job families, roles and competencies, along with delivering and aligning member benefits, ensuring government-wide adoption and demonstrable value. You will develop talent-management strategies for acquisition, retention and development. You will be responsible for overseeing the profession's EDI, ensuring all provisions align to the professions strategy, are accessible, fair and inclusive, and foster a positive professional culture.

Job description

As Profession Lead you will work closely with the Head of Capability to establish the Grants Profession and align initiatives with the broader strategy.

The Profession and Capability team comprises three areas—Profession, Capability & Training, Engagement—working in close partnership with colleagues, you will lead on Profession.

You will lead on Professional Standards and develop new approaches for talent management, reward, recognition and progression, whilst defining clearer career pathways and lead on member experience - ensuring the Grants Profession is a great place to work and build a career.

The role will involve contributing to the broader profession strategy. Professional Standards will underpin your work and you will be responsible for socialising and championing the standards across government, articulating value and embedding them in grant-making policy, training and best practice.

The role will require you to design and deliver brand new initiatives including generating clearer career pathways, talent strategies, recognition and cross-government profession value - this will require you to collaborate internally with colleagues and consult across government and into the wider public sector to capture diverse input, understand needs and build strong collaborative relationships - your aim being to ensure the profession serves members, departments and the grants functions strategic objectives. You will also build links with other professions and the centre professions team to learn from other professions.

You will lead oversight of compliance across the team - including accessibility, GDPR, fairness and equalities duties, ensuring we are maintaining a diverse environment with fair progression opportunities.

In this role you will be responsible for:

• Professional Standards: Lead and maintain the Grants Professional Standards; socialise and embed them across government; partner with departmental Heads of Profession to champion jointly defined standards and ensure they underpin grant-making policy, training and best practice.
• Member Experience: Manage a comprehensive calendar of events, networks, and forums to facilitate knowledge sharing and professional connection. Foster an active community where members can collaborate, access news, and see clear value from their membership.
• Talent, Career Pathways and Progression: With the Head of Capability,develop talent strategies,define clear career pathways and progression; collaborate with departments to establish advancement routes and guidance on capabilities, accreditations and experience at all levels.
• Stakeholder Management and Consultation: Engage cross-government and wider public sector; use a consultative approach to shape initiatives; ensure alignment with function needs and secure broad buy-in via diverse input.
• Equity, Inclusion and compliance: Oversee accessibility, GDPR, fairness, inclusivity and equalities duties; lead EIAs, DPIAs and accessibility assessments; ensure robust policies and procedures across the team.
• Networks and Connections to Other Professions: Develop links with other professions and central HR/GSU to enable learning transfer
• Continuous improvement and evaluation- Work with analytics to assess value and enable evidence-based continuous improvement.
• Local Government/Non-Government grants learning - responsibility for ensuring a clear and defined profession approach for LG/non-government members
• Line management - Manage one direct report.

Person specification

Essential criteria

• Extensive People Practice and/or L&D experience - with experience delivering talent management strategies, and delivering large scale, organisation-wide people initiatives.
• Experience successfully designing and launching initiatives or programmes that help employees grow their careers, improve their skills, and meet professional standards.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills - with proven ability to tailor communication to varying audiences and deliver complex information
• Ability to quickly grasp unfamiliar domains or policy areas and apply expertise effectively to that context.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence and build purposeful, collaborative relationships
• Experience developing and implementing new policy, guidance, standards or procedures.

Desirable criteria

• Experience and/or understand of grant-making and the grants landscape
• Experience designing, implementing and embedding professional standards or competency frameworks across a multi‑agency/public sector environment/large organisation
• Experience working government-wide and across departmental boundaries
• Experience working across the public sector and/or within local government

Additional information:

Cabinet Office policy is that a minimum 60% of your working time should be spent at your principal workplace. For some roles, due to their nature and the business need, this may be up to 100%. Requirements to attend other locations for official business will also count towards this level of attendance.

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £57,204, Cabinet Office contributes £16,571 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 which provides an attractive pension, benefits for dependants and employer contributions of 28.97%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by one day per year up to a maximum of 30.

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, Strengths and Experience.

Application process

As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and a statement of suitability (max: 1250 words).

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

At application stage, candidates will be assessed on their CV and a statement of suitability.

Selection process

At interview, there will be some strength-based questions and candidates will be assessed on the following behaviours:

Communicating and Influencing
Changing and Improving
Seeing the Bigger Picture
Delivering at Pace

Expected timeline (subject to change)

Expected sift date – w/c 11 May 2026

Expected interview date/s – w/c 1st June 2026

Interview location - Your interview will either be conducted face to face or by video. You will be notified of the location if you are selected for interview.

Reasonable adjustments

If a person with disabilities is put at a substantial disadvantage compared to a non-disabled person, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should:

Contact Government Recruitment Service via cabinetofficerecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.

Complete the ‘Assistance required’ section in the ‘Additional requirements’ page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.

Further information

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'contact point for applicants' section.

Please note terms and conditions are attached. Please take time to read the document to determine how these may affect you.

Any move to Cabinet Office from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare; for further information visit the Childcare Choices website.

A reserve list will be held for a period of 12 months, from which further appointments can be made.

If successful and transferring from another Government Department a criminal record check may be carried out.

In order to process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service/Disclosure Scotland on your behalf.

However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct. If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk stating the job reference number in the subject heading.

For further information on the Disclosure Scotland confidential checking service telephone: the Disclosure Scotland Helpline on 0870 609 6006 and ask to speak to the operations manager in confidence, or email Info@disclosurescotland.co.uk

New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment.

A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5-year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.

This role is full time only. Applicants who wish to work an alternative pattern are welcome to apply however your preferred working pattern may not be available and you should discuss this with the vacancy holder before applying.

Feedback

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.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.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).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 : Faye Austin
• Email : Faye.Austin@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : cabinetofficerecruitment.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 in the first instance you should contact Government Recruitment Service by email at : cabinetofficerecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission at info@csc.gov.uk. For further information on the Recruitment Principles and bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission, please visit their website at: https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/.

Attachments

Cabinet Office Employee Offer (1) Opens in new window (pdf, 302kB)Cabinet Office Terms and Conditions - External 2025-02-20 Opens in new window (docx, 83kB)