Senior HR Advisor

Job summary

As a Senior HR Advisor you will deliver high-quality, business-aligned HR advice and support across HR Business Services.

You will work flexibly across key areas of the employee lifecycle, including Reward, Learning and Development, Recruitment, Employee Relations, Wellbeing, Talent, Emerging Talent and Employee Engagement.

You will provide generalist HR advice and support to managers, employees and stakeholders, enabling effective people management, organisational performance and consistent service delivery.

Dstl recognises the importance of diversity and inclusion as people from diverse backgrounds bring fresh ideas. We are committed to building an inclusive working environment in which each employee fulfils their potential and maximises their contribution.

Job description

You will contribute to the design, delivery and continuous improvement of HR activity, ensuring services are inclusive, legally compliant, aligned to Civil Service frameworks and responsive to business need.

In this you will be involved in the following:

• HR advice and service delivery
• Programme, project policy support
• Stakeholder engagement and relationship management
• Data insight and continuous improvement
• Service quality and delivery

For more information on the job responsibilities, please see the job profile attached below.

Person specification

We are looking for someone who has strong stakeholder engagement, sound judgement, the ability to manage competing priorities and a commitment to delivering a consistent, high-quality HR service across Business Services.

You will have previous experience providing generalist HR advice and support across a range of people-related matters.

For more information on the essential criteria, please see the job profile attached below.

Important Information:

Our work in defence, security and intelligence requires our employees to be UK Nationals who are able to gain a high level of security clearance to undertake the projects we are involved in to protect us from security threats.

For this reason, only UK Nationals will be able to apply for this role. If you are an international or dual-national candidate, and you think you have the skills we need, please consider applying to any of our government, security or defence partners.

This role will require full UK security clearance and you should have resided in the UK for the past 5 years. For some roles Developed Vetting will also be required, in this case you should have resided in the UK for the past 10 years.

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace
• Changing and Improving
• Making Effective Decisions

Technical skills

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

• Describe your experience providing HR advice and support across different areas of the employee lifecycle.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £40,224, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory contributes £11,652 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).

Benefits

Dstl’s full range of great benefits can be found in the information pack which includes:

• Financial: An excellent pension scheme starting from 26% employer contribution (find out more here). In Year Rewarding Achievement bonuses and thank you vouchers. Rental deposit scheme and cycle to work scheme.

• Flexible working: Options include alternative working patterns such as; compressed hours, job shares and annualised hours (agreed number of hours per annum paid monthly i.e. working term-time only).

• Working hours: Flexibility around your working day (e.g. start time, finish time). Ability to bank hours in a 12 month reference period including the ability to accrue and use 3 days per calendar month.

• Where you work: Depending on your role, blended working may be available including remote working to suit you and your team. This can be discussed at interview.

• Annual leave: 25 days pro rata (rising to 30 after 5 years) plus 8 public holidays with the ability to buy/sell 5 additional days per annum.

• Family: Maternity, adoption or shared parental leave of up to 26 weeks with full pay, an additional 13 weeks statutory pay and a further 13 weeks unpaid

• Learning and Development: Dstl encourages and supports charterships, accreditations and provides employees access to fully funded apprenticeships up to level 7 (Masters Degree). Dstl will pay for 2 memberships with relevant bodies/institutions. Employees also have access to Civil Service Learning.

• Facilities: Onsite parking, EV Charging points, restaurants, cafés and gyms.

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, Experience and Technical skills.

We want you to have your best chance of success in our recruitment process, so If at any stage of the application process you would like help or assistance please contact the Dstl Recruitment Team [email removed] and we will do all we can to support you.

At the application stage, we will assess your submitted application against the essential criteria set out in the job profile.

Sifting will take place week commencing 12th October 2026 with interviews to held face to face at Dstl Porton Down between 2nd - 4th November 2026. Interviews will consist of behavioural and technical competency-based questions.

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

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check.Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).