Deputy Director, Cyber Resilience and Growth

This is an exciting opportunity to work at the heart of Cyber Security and Digital Identity Directorate’s approach to cyber resilience and economic growth and play an important part in DCMS's ambitious agenda. The postholder will lead a team of around 35 delivering a series of policies and programmes to drive greater cyber security and digital resilience across the UK, including through the development of new legislation on secure technologies, and supporting our vibrant and regionally diverse cyber security sector. You will work with a broad range of stakeholders, including the National Cyber Security Centre, international counterparts, and people from across the cyber industry and wider tech community.

As Deputy Director for Cyber Resilience and Growth you will be leading a Unit, of three G6-headed teams: securing organisations, securing technologies, and growth, standards and delivery. You will act as the SRO for both the Growth and Resilience pillars, within the cross-government national cyber governance, with a secretariat team to support you in doing so. You will also act as the senior representative for cyber into the governance of the Industrial Strategy.

The portfolio brings together much of DCMS' work to:

• Improve cyber resilience across businesses, critical sectors and public services.
• Drive adoption of cyber security standards and good practice.
• Deliver major resilience initiatives such as Cyber Essentials, codes of practice and certification schemes.
• Develop new legislation on secure technologies and work on promoting greater regulatory alignment between UK and international regimes, such as the EU Cyber Resilience Act.
• Support growth of the UK’s thriving cyber sector through programmes, innovation and skills initiatives, and deliver on the Cyber Growth Action Plan.
• Lead implementation of the Growth and Resilience pillars of the National Cyber Action Plan.

As Deputy Director for Cyber Resilience and Growth your key responsibilities will include:

• Lead and inspire a high-performing, multidisciplinary team.
• Provide strategic leadership for the Government’s cyber resilience and cyber growth agenda including managing a budget of £15m.
• Provide governance and accountability to the Integrated Security Fund for £90m on resilience over the SR period.
• Shape and deliver long-term strategies, policies and programmes to improve cyber resilience across the UK economy.
• Lead development and implementation of policies to improve cyber resilience across critical sectors, businesses and public services.
• Lead the Government’s efforts to grow the UK cyber sector, supporting innovation, investment, skills development and export opportunities.
• Represent DCMS at senior forums across government, industry and international organisations, and engage with international counterparts.
• Ensure effective programme, budget, risk and performance management across the portfolio.

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)

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

To apply for this vacancy, you will need to submit the following, via the Civil Service Jobs portal, which will assessed against the essential criteria for the role:

➔A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements.

• Please ensure you provide employment history that relates to the essential criteria, and that any gaps in employment history within the last 2 years are explained.
• The CV should not exceed more than the equivalent of 2 sides of A4 and you should copy and paste your CV into the "Job History" section on Civil Service Jobs on the Civil Service Jobs application form.

A Statement of Suitability explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role.

• You must make direct reference to the essential criteria and back-up your statement with evidence rather than relying on assertions.
• This should be no more than a maximum of 1000 words.

For the shortlist, we will select applicants who demonstrate the best fit for the role by considering the evidence provided in your application and how this meets the essential requirements. Following the shortlist there are no further pass/fail assessment stages and all candidates shortlisted will be invited to the final interview stage.

Should you encounter any issues with your online application please get in touch with: scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Indicative Timeline

Candidates are asked to note the below timetable, exercising flexibility through the recruitment and selection process.

Advert Closing Date: 23:55 Wednesday 9th September 2026

Shortlisting: 22nd or 23rd September 2026

Interviews: w/c 5th October 2026 (to take place in person in London or Manchester)

Feedback: w/c 12th October 2026

Shortlist

The panel will assess your application to select those demonstrating the best fit with the role by considering the evidence you have provided against the criteria set out in the ‘essential requirements’ section of this pack. Failure to address any or all of these may affect your application.

Feedback

Following interview, all shortlisted candidates will receive their outcome along with some short written feedback on performance at interview.

Please note you will only receive feedback if you complete the interview stage.

Security Clearance

Level of security clearance required: This role will require the postholder to have SC clearance to start and will be required to undergo Developed Vetting (DV) once in post , therefore successful candidates will be expected to either hold this or be willing to undertake the DV clearance process once in post.

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