About the job

Job summary

The Home Office is central to UK life. Our work extends from devising drugs policies and ensuring the immigration system is not being abused, to delivering an accountable policing service. Join us in this important role and you’ll be an key member of the Borders and Aviation Security Unit (BASU) which is part of the Homeland Security Group. BASU is responsible for developing and leading the government’s counter-terrorism and counter-state threat strategy for borders, as well as Home Office-led aspects of aviation security and the cross-government Counter-Drone Unit.

These are exciting times at the Home Office, and when you join us as Deputy Director of BASU you’ll play a vital role as we coordinate activities across a wide range of partners in Whitehall, law enforcement and the UK Intelligence Community, and work closely with our international allies to deliver national security outcomes. Sitting at the heart of HM Government’s response to domestic and international crises, and often working alongside our operational partners to deliver national security outcomes, you’ll have a unique opportunity to deliver long-term strategic goals.

 You’ll have a number of key responsibilities, including owning and delivering border security commitments relating to HMG’s counter-terrorism strategy, and working closely with the Department for Transport and the aviation sector to deliver improvements to aviation security in the UK and overseas.​ You’ll also be responsible for ports powers legislation, and provide national security input across a range of migration and borders policy issues.​ In addition, we’ll expect you to work on the development and delivery of the cross-HMG counter-drone strategy, and provide crisis response and system leadership across a range of other areas.

Job description

BASU is made up of three G6-led teams – the first of these focuses on terrorist travel and ports powers, the second on aviation security and national security migration policy, and the third on counter-drone policy. You’ll be responsible for 30 staff, so with this in mind you’ll be a collaborative and inspirational manager, with a highly motivating leadership style. You should also have the ability to use your excellent communication and interpersonal skills to influence at the highest levels both in the UK and internationally.

We’ll expect you to possess strong strategic awareness of UK domestic and international policy and engagement, and have well developed experience of leading in a complex environment and across government to deliver key strategic priorities and plans. In addition, you’ll be responsible for a budget of £4.5m, so you should have well developed financial management skills.

In turn, we can offer you a truly great career within one of the Government’s most interesting and inclusive departments. With ongoing training and development opportunities and a competitive benefits package, there is no saying where your career will take you in the Home Office.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:​

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate their knowledge, experience, capability and behavioural approach to a high standard against the following key criteria: ​

• Proven leadership abilities, creating an effective team culture, providing direction on key policies, prioritising and managing resources. To develop talent and play a key role in the leadership of the team of the Directorate.
• The Successful Candidate will also need to show effective line management skills to develop and support those that work directly to this post. Demonstrate a clear commitment to, and promotion of wellbeing of your team, peers and the wider leadership team including by working collectively and collaboratively outside of your area of responsibility. Creating a diverse and inclusive culture within the Unit and supporting the Home Office Diversity and Inclusion strategies.
• Demonstrate excellent communicating, influencing, and stakeholder management skills, to work across complex government and private sector stakeholders and create strong relationships with them, to listen to them, challenge them, and conduct business with them to drive forward your policy priorities with stakeholder agreement, and to effectively advise Ministers and senior officials.​
• Creative policy development skills and judgement, demonstrating ability to generate robust, innovative and balanced policies on complex issues that will stand up to scrutiny.​

Desirable Criteria:​

• Experience of working in government, border security, aviation or intelligence would assist any candidate in making an impact more quickly.​
• Experience of leading policy teams with knowledge of how to formulate and deliver legislation. ​

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £75,000, Home Office contributes £20,250 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

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. ​

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is developed vetting (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

Open to UK nationals only.

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.