Director of Resilience

Job summary

Reporting to the Director General, CDIO, the Director of Resilience provides enterprise leadership across HMRC, ensuring that resilience, business continuity, contingency planning and crisis management are embedded within governance, operations and decision-making across the department. Working closely with the Chief Security Officer, the role forms part of HMRC’s wider Security and Resilience leadership arrangements.​

The Director will lead the Resilience Directorate, responsible for enterprise resilience, business continuity, crisis management and organisational preparedness across HMRC.​

Job description

Strategic Leadership & Accountability ​​

Lead and Mature the Operating Model: Provide strategic leadership for business continuity, crisis management and resilience arrangements, ensuring governance and accountability remain effective.​

Strengthen Organisational Capability: Develop the processes, tools, systems and professional expertise needed to support preparedness and response.​

Drive Continuous Improvement: Use insight, threat intelligence and lessons learned to strengthen resilience capability and address emerging risks.​

Promote a Culture of Resilience: Lead engagement and awareness activity to ensure resilience ownership and accountability is embedded across HMRC.​

Provide Assurance of Maturity: Oversee internal and external assurance activity, including alignment with ISO 22301 and other recognised standards.

Crisis Management Leadership: Provide strategic leadership during crisis situations, ensuring effective activation of business continuity, recovery and response arrangements.​

Command Arrangements: Maintain, develop and oversee Gold, Silver and Bronze command structures, ensuring clear responsibilities, escalation pathways and effective mobilisation of resources.​

Integrated Resilience Framework: Lead the continued development and embedding of contingency planning, business continuity, disaster recovery and crisis response arrangements.​

Scenario Planning and Testing: Oversee resilience exercises, playbooks and assurance activity to strengthen organisational readiness and response capability.​

Business Continuity Assurance: Ensure critical business services are supported by effective and regularly tested continuity arrangements.​

Strategic Leadership: Provide expert advice and assurance to Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, ExCom and the HMRC Board on resilience risks, preparedness and organisational capability.​

Strategic Influence and Collaboration: The Director of Resilience operates at the strategic centre of HMRC’s resilience capability, providing expert advice and assurance to senior leaders and governance forums.​

Internal Influence: Work with Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, ExCom, the HMRC Board and senior leaders across lines of business to embed resilience within strategic planning, operational delivery and enterprise risk management.​

External Collaboration: Represent HMRC in cross-government resilience and crisis management forums, building trusted relationships with government departments, agencies, suppliers and delivery partners and contributing to wider resilience capability across government.​

Communication and Impact: Translate complex resilience issues into clear, credible advice that supports effective decision-making before, during and after disruption.​

Person specification

The successful applicant will need to demonstrate the right senior-level experience, relevant qualifications and effective delivery against the following essential criteria:​

Strategic Leadership and Delivery: Proven ability to lead complex organisations through change and deliver sustainable outcomes across organisational boundaries.​

Resilience, Crisis, Contingency and Continuity Leadership: Experience of leading resilience, crisis management, business continuity or recovery arrangements in a complex operational environment.​

Building Organisational Capability: Experience of strengthening organisational capability through planning, preparedness, assurance, continuous improvement and organisational learning.​

Stakeholder Engagement and Influence: Exceptional communication and influencing skills, with the ability to build credibility and secure commitment from Ministers, boards, senior leaders, operational teams and external partners.​

Government and External Collaboration: Experience of building effective partnerships across government, industry and external organisations to deliver strategic outcomes.​

Qualifications, Frameworks and Assurance: Relevant professional qualifications, or equivalent expertise, and knowledge of recognised resilience, continuity, risk management or assurance frameworks.​

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £105,000, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £30,418 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Pension

Your Civil Service pension is a valuable part of your total reward and is one of your biggest benefits.

When you join the Civil Service, you get access to the alpha pension with a generous employer contribution of 28.97% and some of the lowest member contributions in the public sector.

Please visit Civil Service Pension Scheme for more information.

Annual Leave and Bank Holiday Allowance​

25 days annual leave, increasing to 30 days after 5 years’ service (allowance pro-rata for part-time colleagues).

This is complemented by one days paid privilege leave to mark the King’s Birthday and is in addition to your public holidays.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion ​

The Civil Service values and supports all its employees. At HMRC we want to create great places to work that are welcoming to all – where there is a strong sense of belonging and community.​

We embed inclusion in everything we do. Senior Civil Servants play a crucial role in promoting and maintaining inclusive behaviours, addressing disparities and reporting progress.

Our HMRC equality objectives 2024-2028 describe how we are working to become a more inclusive and representative organisation reflective of our values.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

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