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Civil Service Executive Officer (EO) jobs

There are currently 140 EO vacancies open across the Civil Service.

Executive Officer is the first grade where the Civil Service expects you to own something. An EO is trusted with a piece of work rather than a queue of cases: a small project, a reporting cycle, a supplier relationship, a team of AOs. The shift from AO is a shift from doing the work well to being answerable for whether it gets done.

EO is also the widest grade in the Civil Service in terms of what the job actually is. The same grade covers operational team leaders in DWP and HMRC, junior analysts, project support officers, HR and finance specialists, and the first rung of most professions. Two EO adverts from different departments can describe almost unrelated jobs, which makes the profession filter more useful at this grade than at any other.

For applications, EO is where Success Profiles behaviours step up a level, and it is the step candidates most often underestimate. Panels want examples where you took responsibility for an outcome, not just for your own task — where you noticed something needed doing, decided how to do it, and dealt with what went wrong. Answers that would have scored well at AO frequently fail at EO for exactly this reason: the story is competent but nothing in it was yours to decide.

It is also the grade where the STAR structure starts to matter. At EO the panel is scoring a specific example against defined indicators, and an answer that describes what you generally do rather than what you once actually did has nothing for them to score. Being concrete about a single situation beats being impressive about several.

Live vacancies

Search and filter all 140 vacancies

The full board also shows how many posts each campaign is filling, which the official results list does not.

Common questions

What behaviour level is assessed at EO?
EO sits a level above AA and AO in the Success Profiles framework. In practice the panel is looking for evidence that you took responsibility for an outcome and made decisions about how to reach it, rather than that you carried out a task well.
Do EO roles involve managing people?
Many do — EO is the standard first line-management grade in operational departments — but plenty do not. Analytical, project and specialist EO roles often have no direct reports. Read the job summary on the advert rather than assuming either way.
Can I apply for EO roles from outside the Civil Service?
Yes. A large share of EO campaigns are external and open to all. The board defaults to showing every live vacancy, and each advert states who it is open to.
What salary can I expect as an EO?
EO pay varies by department and by London weighting, and the range across departments is wide. Filter this board by minimum salary to see what live EO vacancies are currently paying.

Read the full guide — what the grade involves, how it is assessed, and worked answers.