**Private Secretary for Director General

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.

Immigration Enforcement is responsible for enforcing the government’s immigration laws, tackling illegal migration, removing foreign national offenders and immigration offenders from the UK. We also aim to disrupt the organised criminal groups that exploit the vulnerable for their personal gain. Learn more on our careers pages.

This is an exciting time to join the Director General for Immigration Enforcement’s Private Office as the area grows in response to Immigration Strategy commitments.

Job description

This role provides strategic leadership support to the Director General and their senior management team, ensuring effective delivery of the command’s strategic objectives. You will play a pivotal role in managing executive communications, facilitating high-level decision-making, and overseeing multiple high-priority projects to ensure timely and effective outcomes for Ministers and cross-government stakeholders.

You may be required to undertake the same or a similar role within a different team or teams (where possible, at your base location or within reasonable travel distance), depending on business priorities. With appropriate training and support, this will provide opportunities to broaden both your experience and skill set.

Responsibilities

Duties include but are not limited to:

• Acting as a trusted advisor to the Director General and senior leadership, providing strategic insight, advice, and high-quality briefings.
• Leading communications on behalf of the Director General, including reports, correspondence, presentations, and handling sensitive FOI matters.
• Supporting and covering for the Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Business Support Manager as required.
• Coordinating decision making by commissioning briefings and returns, managing critical correspondence, and ensuring timely escalation of key issues.
• Facilitating and minute taking in senior meetings, setting agendas, tracking actions, and supporting effective governance.
• Overseeing key portfolios (Strategic Services and Transformation, IE Competent Authority, Foreign National Offenders Returns Command and leading workforce planning for the DG’s Private Office).
• Coordinating strategic risk management for the DG Executive Committee, liaising with risk teams and Central Resilience Command.
• Managing key external relationships and representation, including oversight bodies, Ministerial and SCS Private Offices, and acting as the DG’s empowered deputy on the IE Transformation Programme Board.

Working pattern

Due to the business requirements of this role, it is only available on a full-time basis and requires 100% office attendance.

Travel

Occasional domestic travel may be required.

Person specification

Essential criteria

You must be able to demonstrate:

• Ability to work collaboratively and flexibly within a team dynamic, often to short deadlines, to achieve common goals.
• Ability to deliver efficiently, work independently and prioritise effectively in a fast-paced environment, whilst maintaining a high level of service.
• Awareness of current and emerging political and illegal migration policy issues, (direct experience in this area is not essential).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Confidence to engage personally on a daily basis with the department’s most senior leaders, including Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, and Director Generals.
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to build strong and lasting relationships with working-level and senior stakeholders, both internal and external.
• Excellent judgement and risk management approach to situations, tasks and problems.

Desirable criteria

• Previous experience in Private Office (SCS or Ministerial)
• Experience supporting organisational change or transformation projects and an understanding of the immigration systems and processes.

Behaviours

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

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Delivering at Pace
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together

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

• Seeing the Big Picture

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.

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 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.

1. Application – by 1st September 2026.

As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete:

• a CV.
• Personal Statement (maximum 1000 words).
• Evidence of the Behaviour Seeing the Big Picture (maximum of 250 words).

Your CV should consist of your career history. Your CV will be scored against the experience required for the role as noted within the essential criteria.

The Personal Statement should be aligned to and demonstrate how you meet the skills and experience set out in the essential criteria, detailed in the job description.

For guidance and information on how to construct your application (CV, Personal Statement and Behaviours), you are encouraged to visit Civil Service Careers website.

2. Sift – from 3rd September 2026.

The sift will be held on the Personal Statement, CV, and the Behaviour Seeing the Big Picture.

Should a high volume of applications be received, an initial sift will be conducted on the Personal Statement and the CV. Candidates who pass the initial sift will then be progressed to a full sift that will consist of all the remaining elements submitted (Lead Behaviour Seeing the Big Picture). Candidates who fail to meet the minimum pass score for the initial sift will