Diary Manager/Executive Assistant

Job summary

The Home Office works to build a safe, fair and prosperous UK. We achieve this through our work on counter-terrorism, policing, crime, drugs policy, immigration and passports.

The Corporate Services Group works closely with the Home Office’s policy and operational commands to enable us together to deliver the department’s priorities. The group is comprised of different teams and professional functions, including Commercial, Communications, Finance, People, Portfolio and Project Delivery, Private Office, Security, Estates and Information.

The Home Office Commercial function plays a critical role in delivering key departmental priorities, managing a diverse portfolio of contracts and suppliers that support frontline operations.

We are looking for a highly organised and proactive Diary Manager to join the Commercial Executive Support Pool. This role provides diary management and administrative support to Deputy Directors across the Commercial Directorate, helping to ensure leaders can focus on delivering business priorities.

As part of a collaborative Executive Support Pool, you will work flexibly across a range of business areas, providing high-quality support, coordinating meetings and stakeholder engagement, and helping to ensure the smooth running of senior leadership offices.

Job description

This is an excellent opportunity to develop your organisational, communication and stakeholder management skills in a fast-paced and high-profile environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Managing busy and changing diaries for Deputy Directors, ensuring effective prioritisation and coordination of appointments and meetings.
• Arranging meetings, coordinating logistics and responding to competing demands on behalf of senior leaders.
• Acting as a first point of contact for internal and external stakeholders, handling enquiries professionally and efficiently.
• Supporting meetings through the coordination of agendas, papers, actions and follow-up activity.
• Managing correspondence, meeting requests and administrative tasks in a timely manner.
• Maintaining accurate records and ensuring information is handled appropriately and sensitively.
• Working flexibly across the wider Commercial Executive Support Pool to provide resilience and support where required.
• Building effective working relationships with colleagues across Commercial, the wider Home Office and external organisations.
• Supporting continuous improvement of administrative processes and ways of working.

Working Pattern

Due to the business requirements of this role, it is only available on a full-time basis.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

• Experience of providing diary management, administrative or business support in a busy office environment.
• Excellent organisational skills with the ability to prioritise competing tasks and meet deadlines.
• Strong communication skills and confidence engaging with a range of internal and external stakeholders.
• Experience of arranging meetings, managing schedules and coordinating actions.
• Good attention to detail and ability to handle sensitive information appropriately.
• Ability to work flexibly as part of a team and adapt to changing business priorities.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience working within a Commercial, Procurement, Corporate Services or similar business support environment, with an understanding of governance and organisational processes.
• Experience supporting senior leaders within a large, complex organisation, ideally within the Home Office or wider Civil Service.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Delivering at Pace
• Communicating and Influencing
• Managing a Quality Service

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

In addition to your salary, a career with the Home Office offers a range of benefits, including:

• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
• In-year reward scheme for one-off or sustained exceptional personal or team achievements.
• 25 days annual leave on appointment, rising with service to 30 days.
• Eight days of public holidays, plus one additional privilege day.
• Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in an office.

• See more of our benefits on our careers website.

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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.

Selection process details

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

This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, drives up performance and improves diversity and inclusivity.

We will endeavour to conduct the selection process in line with the dates indicated below, but cannot guarantee that these will not, where necessary, be revised.

As part of the application process, you will first be asked to confirm your eligibility by providing some basic personal information.

After submission of this first stage, you will be invited to complete the followingCivil ServiceVerbal and Judgement test(s).

1. Online Test – by Thursday 3rd September 2026.

If you successfully pass the Verbal and Judgementtest(s), you will be invited to complete the full application form. Please complete the online test(s) as soon as possible (within 24-48 hours is recommended). If you fail to complete the online test(s) or full application before the deadline, your application will be withdrawn.

Guidance for the Civil Service test(s) will be available when you are invited to take the test(s). The online tests are accessed via the Civil Service Jobs website.

Online Test Maintenance

Our online test supplier will be performing scheduled maintenance between 4pm to 7pm on 23rd August and 4pm to