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We use technology for good by ensuring new and existing technologies are safely developed and deployed across the UK, with the benefits more widely shared.

We are driving forward a modern digital government which gives citizens a more satisfying experience and their time back.

We do all this to enable the Government’s 5 national missions: kickstarting economic growth, making Britain a clean energy superpower, taking back our streets, breaking down barriers to opportunity and building an NHS fit for the future.

Above all, we focus on improving people’s lives. Whether it’s researching new treatments for disease, developing better batteries, reducing burdens through better public services, keeping children safe online, and much more, outcomes for citizens are at the heart of what we do.

Our Inclusive Environment

We offer flexible working benefits, employee well-being support and a great pension. We are enormously proud to be a Disability Confident Leader employer. We support candidates with adjustments throughout our recruitment process. Information about disability confidence and just some examples of the adjustments that you can request can be found in the reasonable adjustment section below.

Find Out More

We regularly run events where you can find out more about the department and tips for the application and interview process. You can sign up for upcoming events here: https://forms.office.com/e/Jae3B4w7xm

You can also follow our LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/dsitcareers/

Job description

Build the hiring engine that powers the UK’s most ambitious technology programmes.

DSIT is the department behind the UK's AI strategy, semiconductor investment, and digital public services. We're hiring the people who build the technology that runs the country. This role puts you at the heart of that.

We’re hiring engineers, data scientists, AI specialists, cyber experts and more, to deliver some of the most important digital work in the country. As Head of Talent Operations (Grade 6), you will lead the team that will make sure we find them, land them, and keep them, all the while offering a best-in-class service and experience.

Why now?

We're in a race for scarce technical talent against some of the most innovative companies in the world, and we think government should be winning more of those battles.

Over the past year, we've started building something different. New tooling, new processes, and a team that's hungry to raise the bar.

There’s genuine momentum, and we need someone to take the wheel and turn early progress into a hiring machine that rivals the best in tech. We’re building a hiring operation that genuinely competes with places like Monzo, Octopus and Stripe, and DSIT’s senior leadership is fully behind it.

Person specification

Key Responsibilities

What you’ll do:

Run hiring like a product: Understand user pain points. Ship continuous improvements. Measure what matters. Repeat.

Own the whole journey: You own the technical hiring process end-to-end. From launching the role to a candidate’s first day.

Champion user experience: "Nobody falls into a black hole." Candidates get updates and hiring managers get support. Things move at pace and you set the standards that make this real.

Be the hiring expert in the room. When directors and programme leads need to build teams, you're the person they come to. You'll know the market, the pipeline, and what's realistic.

Build a high performing talent team: You'll lead a team of talent partners and talent coordinators working with key stakeholder and hiring managers to build our technical teams. Help them do their best work.

Own the bar: Hiring quality isn't negotiable. You'll run a process that ensures we identify the strongest candidates, whilst making sure we are inclusive, fair and secure. No corners cut.

Move fast and close the loop. Clear handoffs. Clear owners. No excuses. You'll create a culture where things get done, not discussed.

Make onboarding seamless: You’ll partner with Integrated Corporate Services (ICS) to make onboarding seamless.

Push the tools forward. We're rolling out a new ATS and exploring how we implement AI. You'll lead the charge.

Measure everything that matters: Build dashboards, set alerts, spot bottlenecks. You'll be able to quickly show what’s working well and where we need additional improvements.

As a line manager, you will be responsible for working with your members of staff to define their objectives, as well as managing their development and performance.

Essential Criteria

This role is for you if:

You've built or rebuilt a hiring operation from the inside. You've owned the outcomes, not just the process. You've shipped real improvements (not made slide decks about improvements!), and you can point to the metrics that prove it. You will thrive in this role if:

You have personally owned end‑to‑end technical recruitment operations in a fast‑moving or high‑pressure organisation.

You’ve operated at meaningful scale or complexity. You’ve hired at scale (hundreds of technical roles a year), in competitive markets (engineers, product, data, AI, cyber) or across complex organisations with multiple stakeholders and parallel pressures.

You have been directly accountable for outcomes, not just activity. You can point to specific improvements you’ve driven, such as time‑to‑hire, offer acceptance, candidate experience, or hiring quality, and explain what actually moved the dial.

You obsess over the details that candidates actually notice: response times, feedback quality, and how the process feels.

You think about hiring as a product and an operating system. You start with user needs (candidates and hiring managers), you ship improvements, you measure impact, and you iterate; even when the environment is messy or constrained.

You’ve built, implemented, or significantly redesigned recruitment tooling or systems in a live environment (for example ATS, scheduling, assessment flows, automation, or data dashboards), and you’ve had to make real trade‑offs between speed, fairness, quality, and experience.

You are comfortable making judgement calls under pressure. You know that perfect alignment rarely exists, and you can balance pace, fairness, and hiring bar without letting any of them collapse.

You’ve led and coached teams doing hands‑on delivery work, setting a clear bar, creating urgency and ownership, and helping people operate at their best in demanding conditions.

Behaviours

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

Leadership
Making Effective Decisions
Managing a Quality Service
Changing and Improving

Technical skills

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

Your approach to problem diagnosis, prioritisation, and delivery.
Systems you’ve built and iterated, metrics you’ve improved, hiring bar and assessment quality, tooling, how you handled resistance and constraints, and how you championed the candidate experience.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £69,675, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £20,184 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).

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.

Office attendance

The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.

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, Experience and Technical skills.

As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and personal statement. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Please use your personal statement (in no more than 750 words) to provide an evidence statement covering the following:

1. Why you’re interested in the role

2. One recruitment system or hiring process you personally owned

What problem it was solving
The context and scale (e.g. type of roles, volume, organisational complexity)
Your role and level of accountability

3. One metric you materially improved

What the metric was (e.g. time‑to‑hire, offer acceptance, candidate experience)
What changed (before and after, where possible)
What actions you took that led to the improvement
How did you embed any changes needed to improve the metrics.

3. One hard trade‑off you had to make

For example: speed vs quality, fairness vs pace, automation vs human judgement
What decision you made, why you made it, and what you learned.

Applications will be sifted on CV and Personal Statement.

In the event of a large number of applicants, applications will be sifted on the personal statement only.

Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift, or progressed straight to assessment/interview.

There will be two interview stages for this campaign:

Stage 1: Technical assessment

The first interview stage will consist of two technical assessments. One will be a Live recruitment operation scenario where details will be provided in advance and you will be asked questions around your approach to problem diagnosis, prioritisation, and delivery. The second assessment will be on systems you have built and iterated.

Stage 2: Behaviours

The second interview will consist of questions on the following behaviours:

Leadership
Making effective decisions
Managing a Quality Service
Changing and improving

Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.

Further Information

Reasonable Adjustment

We are proud to be a disability confident leader and we welcome applications from disabled candidates and candidates with long-term conditions.

Information about the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and some examples of adjustments that we offer to disabled candidates and candidates with long-term health conditions during our recruitment process can be found in our DSIT Candidate Guidance. A DSIT Plain Text Version of the guidance is also available.

We encourage candidates to discuss their adjustment needs by emailing the job contact which can be found under the contact point for applicants section.

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

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

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

A location based reserve list of successful candidates will be kept for 12 months. Should another role become available within that period you may be offered this position.

Candidates who meet the minimum benchmark may be placed on a Reserve List for consideration for similar roles, including those at a lower grade. Candidates who narrowly miss the benchmark and are not placed on the Reserve List may still be considered for an offer in a similar role at a lower grade.

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

Any move to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology 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.

DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).

DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.

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

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.

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 : Azmi Sbaiti
Email : azmi.sbaiti2@dsit.gov.uk

Recruitment team

Email : dsitresourcing.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 you should contact in the first instance DSITrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk . If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: Click here to visit Civil Service Commission/Complaints.

Attachments

DSIT T&Cs v1.2 Opens in new window (docx, 179kB)

Salary range

£69,675 - £82,860 per year