Head of Security Risk

Head of Security Risk (434934)

Birmingham, Blackpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield

Pay: £75,026 salary plus £7,000 pa recruitment and retention allowance. Department for Work and Pensions contributes £21,735 towards the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Hybrid working, flexible hours, and a great work‑life balance.

This rare opportunity allows the successful candidate to shape security risk at national scale, influencing decisions that directly protect millions of citizens and the UK’s most critical public services. The Head of Security Risk leads the DWP strategic security risk function, operating at enterprise scale across all security domains: cyber, personnel, physical and supply chain security. The role involves providing authoritative, organisation‑wide security risk insight to senior leaders, enabling confident, well‑informed decisions that protect departmental objectives, services and UK citizens.

• Own and lead DWP’s enterprise‑level security risk function, setting direction, standards, and methodology for how the department conducts security risk analysis.
• Define, maintain and continually improve the security risk framework, including structured analytical techniques and consistent reporting approaches.
• Lead the creation and maintenance of DWP’s strategic security risk assessments, covering all security domains.
• Produce risk insights for Director Generals, the Executive Team and the Departmental Audit & Risk Assurance Committee (DARAC).
• Provide regular (monthly/quarterly) senior‑level briefings on cyber, personnel and supply chain security risks.
• Act as a trusted advisor to DG‑level decision‑makers, articulating complex technical risks in plain English with clear implications for departmental objectives.
• Provide actionable, board‑ready narratives, recommendations and insights.
• Deliver bespoke risk assessments to inform security policy, standards and strategic direction for the department.
• Provide expert risk support to parts of the organisation without their own embedded capability.
• Build a modern, credible risk profession aligned with cross‑government analytical standards and industry‑recognised frameworks.
• Strengthen cross‑government collaboration on security risk, supporting initiatives such as the Government Cyber Action Plan and shared security risk models.
• Collaborate with a range of DWP stakeholders, such as Digital Security, Commercial and Estates to collectively deliver against DWP’s Security Strategy for 2030.
• Shape assurance priorities based on risk findings, ensuring risk and assurance functions work closely together, sharing insight and driving continuous improvement.

• Leadership of an enterprise‑level risk function with demonstrable experience directing strategic risk activity in a complex or regulated organisation.
• Strong analytical leadership with proven ability to lead analytical work, apply structured analytical techniques, and develop analytical capability within a team.
• Broad security domain knowledge with credible understanding across physical, personnel, cyber and supply chain security, able to represent cross‑domain risk professionally at senior level.
• Senior stakeholder influence and communication experience engaging, advising and influencing executive‑level stakeholders, presenting complex security risks in clear, business‑focused language.
• Delivery of strategic risk assessments with diverse stakeholders, evidence of producing organisation‑wide or multi‑stakeholder risk assessments requiring negotiation, influence and cross‑functional engagement.
• Transformational leadership of functions or teams, a track record of building or maturing a function, including establishing operating models, improving processes, or upskilling and developing people.

• Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term‑time working, flexi‑time and compressed hours.
• Generous annual leave of at least 26 days on entry, increasing up to 31 days over time (prorata for part‑time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
• Support for financial wellbeing, including interest‑free season ticket…