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Contracted to our Wilmslow, London, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast office, however, we offer flexible home and office-based working opportunities. There will be times when you will be expected to attend the office to collaborate with colleagues or travel due to business need. Please note, from Autumn 2026 our head office will relocate from Wilmslow to Manchester city centre.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is the UK regulator for information rights, and our purpose is to empower you through information. As an employer, we are enthusiastic about making a positive difference to the lives and careers of our people, and we empower you to be curious, collaborative, impactful, and inclusive.

We are looking for an experienced Cyber Security Operations Lead with great leadership and technical skills to work in a high profile and dynamic environment. You will play a key role in protecting our network and information systems, which is essential to enable our organisation to successfully achieve its objectives.

Job description

As part of a growing Cyber Security team, you will provide subject matter expertise on cyber security risks and opportunities and use your skills and experience to detect and respond to threats and vulnerabilities.

Reporting to the Cyber Security Operations Manager, you will work closely with colleagues across our Digital, Data and Technology department, as well as relevant authorities and support partners, to drive and deliver effective cyber security.

Key responsibilities:

Cyber Security Operations can be fast paced and will require a degree of flexibility, but your key responsibilities will include:

Responding to alerts from monitoring/detection systems within defined SLAs
Using configured tools and scripts to identify potential cyber security breaches
Following procedures to analyse, respond to, and/or escalate cyber security incidents
Monitoring security appliance health, performing basic troubleshooting of security devices, and escalating severe problems to engineers
Contributing to the development of incident response capabilities, policies, and procedures
Maintaining logs of all actions taken

Person specification

Essential criteria assessed at application stage:

Demonstrable skills and knowledge of security operations and incident management, including configuration, operation, and maintenance of secure systems, detection and response to incidents, and collection and use of threat intelligence..
Demonstrable skills and knowledge of security management systems and organisational security controls, including standards, best practices, and approaches to risk assessment and mitigation.

Essential criteria assessed during interview:

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,297, Information Commissioner's Office contributes £12,832 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).Please visit ico.jobs for full details, including salary and benefits.

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

Why work for the ICO?

Further details can be found on the benefits section of our website .

Equality, diversity, and inclusion

The ICO is committed to promoting and enhancing equality, diversity, and inclusion. We are focused on developing a workforce that is representative of the communities we serve and together we are building an inclusive workplace where all of our colleagues have the opportunity to make a real difference. We are championing this through our Equality Diversity and Inclusion Board together with a number of staff networks. Read more about our commitment on our website.

Candidates with a disability who meet the minimum criteria for this vacancy will be invited to interview as part of the ICO’s commitment to the Disability Confident Scheme.

As part of the ICO’s commitment to our EDI objectives and creating a workplace that represents the communities and societies we serve, we guarantee an interview to candidates who declare they identify as belonging from an ethnic minority background and who meet the minimum criteria for this vacancy

If you are disabled or have an impairment and require an alternative application method, please email the HR team at recruitment@ico.org.uk

Security vetting

In addition to the standard pre-employment checks all candidates must also obtain National Security Vetting at Security Check (SC) clearance for this vacancy. You will normally need to meet the minimum UK residency period, which for SC is five years prior to your vetting application.

Closing Date

Please submit your CV and cover letter by 23:59 on Monday 17th August 2026. Your cover letter should be no more than 1,000 words and should clearly demonstrate how you meet the essential criteria for the role.

Please note that interviews for this role are scheduled to take place in mid-September 2026.

We may close this vacancy early if we receive a high volume of applications. To ensure your application is considered, we encourage you to apply as soon as possible. If you require any reasonable adjustments to support your application, please contact us at recruitment@ico.org.uk.

In the event of a high volume of applications, we may not be able to invite all candidates who meet the minimum criteria to interview. However, we encourage you stay in touch and apply for future roles that match your interests.

All candidates who meet the minimum criteria and apply in-line with our guaranteed interview scheme for disabled and ethnic minority applicants will be interviewed

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.

Medical

Successful candidates will be expected to have a medical.

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

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.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.

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

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 : recruitment@ico.org.uk
Email : recruitment@ico.org.uk

Recruitment team

Email : recruitment@ico.org.uk

Salary range

£44,297 - £49,813 per year