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Civil Service Higher Executive Officer (HEO) jobs

There are currently 237 HEO vacancies open across the Civil Service.

Higher Executive Officer is the grade the Civil Service treats as its professional core. HEOs run teams, own policy or delivery areas, and write the material that senior officials rely on. It is the first grade at which your work is routinely read by people several levels above you, and the first at which being wrong is expensive.

The substantive change from EO is the audience and the ambiguity. An EO is usually given a problem; an HEO is usually given a situation and expected to work out what the problem is. Drafting is a much larger part of the job — submissions, briefings, business cases, board papers — and a great deal of it is about compressing something complicated into something a busy senior person can act on.

HEO is the most competitive grade on the board. It attracts internal EOs who are ready to step up, external applicants who see it as the first Civil Service role that matches their private-sector experience, and people moving across from other departments. The volume of applicants is why sift criteria at HEO are applied strictly and why a lead behaviour sift is common: departments will cut on a single behaviour before reading anything else.

On assessment, HEO shares its behaviour level with SEO, which surprises people. The difference the panel is listening for is scope rather than level — an HEO example should show you influencing beyond your own team and handling competing priorities that you had to reconcile yourself. Examples that stay inside your immediate team, however well told, tend to score at the bottom of the band.

Live vacancies

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

Common questions

What is the difference between EO and HEO?
EO roles own a defined piece of work; HEO roles own an area and are expected to define the work within it. HEOs draft material for senior officials, manage teams or complex projects, and operate with considerably more ambiguity.
Is HEO a management grade?
Usually, but not always. Many HEO posts lead a team of EOs and AOs; specialist and analytical HEO roles may have no direct reports and lead through expertise instead. The advert will say which.
Why are HEO vacancies so competitive?
HEO attracts internal candidates ready for promotion and external candidates whose experience maps onto it, so application volumes are high. Departments frequently sift on a single lead behaviour first, which means one weak answer can end an otherwise strong application.
How should I prepare for an HEO interview?
Prepare specific examples for each behaviour named in the advert, pitched at HEO scope — influencing beyond your own team, reconciling competing priorities, and making decisions where the right answer was not given to you.

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