About the job

Job summary

Our Change Delivery directorate, established in 2022, is responsible for scoping, designing and delivering the major change programmes and projects across SFO that allow us to deliver on our strategic priorities. The Senior Project Support Officer role is a hybrid role between a Project Support Officer and a Project Manager, purposefully designed to provide a more structured career path through the division, giving colleagues in the Project Support team the skills and experience they need to successful step into a full Project Management role. Reporting into the Senior Project Manager, you will both lead and support a range of business change projects as part of SFO’s Change Portfolio, working closely with our Project Managers and Senior Responsible Owners and in partnership other key roles in our Change Delivery, IT and Commercial teams.  This is an exciting opportunity to play a key part in SFO’s wider transformation. The projects within the Change Portfolio will change over time, but currently include implementing enterprise document and records management (SharePoint and MS Teams implementation), introducing a new technologies for managing our investigations and prosecutions and investing in an integrated HR and Finance system to improve the way we manage our key business processes and associated corporate data. Looking to the future, SFO needs to keep pace with the changing nature of technology and financial crime, exploring technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. We are looking for someone with a real passion for business change and the desire to work as part of a team that shares this drive and energy. You will have started your journey to becoming a highly skilled project management professional, having experience in the project environment, particularly in delivering IT enabled change and of working with  multi-disciplinary projects to ensure changes are successfully delivered. In this role you will have the opportunity to work on a range of projects, with management of less complex ones, in line with the make up of the Change Portfolio and broader team capacity.

Job description

As a Senior Project Support Officer you will be responsible for:

Project Management

• Working in partnership with the SRO as your key project decision maker, establishing project governance, ensuring that reporting requirements are met, and that the project is managed in line with SFO’s Change Framework and governance
• Managing the project’s relationship with the SRO, ensuring the SRO has all the information and support they need to strategically guide the project, chair the Project Board and make key decisions relating to the direction of the project
• Leading on the procurement of required services working closely with the Commercial team

Project Support

• Providing administrative support, which will include arranging and attending Project meetings, liaising to pull together reports for meetings, taking minutes including capturing decisions, risks, and actions required and following up outstanding actions to ensure prompt completion
• Managing all logistical matters relating to Project meetings i.e. room bookings and refreshments, any travel or accommodation requirements, equipment needs, security passes, agreeing all meeting dates in advance, etc.
• Working under the direction of the Project Manager to ensure project documentation is produced, revised and maintained to a high standard.

For more information about the role and for a full list of key responsibilities, please see the attached Job Pack.

Person specification

See above and attached Job Pack.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £41,796, Serious Fraud Office contributes £11,285 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

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Application stage

As part of the application process you will be required to provide:

• A personal statement of no more than 750 words that explains how your skills and experience meet each of the essential and desirable experience and technical criteria as listed in the Job Pack.

Please note, desirable experience will only be taken into account if there is a large volume of applications and there is a need for further shortlisting for interview.

• A supporting CV outlining your job history and qualifications.

It will not be possible to provide feedback to applicants who are unsuccessful at the application stage.

Interview stage

Behaviours, essential experience and essential technical criteria as outlined in the job pack will be tested at interview.

Full details of the interview process will be made available to shortlisted candidates in the invite to interview.

Sift to take place from 27 March 2024.

Interviews are expected to take place from w/c 15 April 2024.

All dates are indicative and subject to change.

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

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.