Major Incident Manager

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.

Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:

1. joining up public sector services
2. harnessing the power of AI for the public good
3. strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
4. elevating leadership and investing in talent
5. funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
6. committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.

We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.

The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.

Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need

Job description

This is an exciting opportunity to be a part of the Technical Service Desk team for the One Login programme. Reporting into the Lead Service Operations Manager, the Major Incident Manager will play a critical role in ensuring that the One Login service is operating as intended. Having responsibility for keeping Reliant Parties and internal stakeholders informed of events, actions and opportunities that are likely to impact their day-to-day activities, providing an essential interface with IT operational staff, Service Continuity and other supporting referral groups. The Major Incident Manager is responsible for leading the response to high-impact incidents, ensuring rapid restoration of services and minimising business disruption, being accountable for the maintenance of service resilience policy, guidance and co-ordination. 

As a Major Incident Manager you'll:

• take ownership of major incidents from detection through resolution, assess incident severity, determine business impact, and initiate the major incident process
• lead technical bridges, ensuring efficient collaboration and clear direction, co-ordinate cross functional teams across the One Login programme
• ensure timely escalation to senior leadership when required; and act as the primary point of contact during major incidents
• provide timely updates to customers (internal and external), vendors and senior staff
• maintain accurate incident logs, timelines and communication records and document incident timelines, root causes, impacts and recovery steps
• produce Post Incident Reports (PIRs) with actionable recommendations
• have the ability to analyse data and graphs to identify service anomalies
• review and improve incident management processes, workflows and SLAs and develop and maintain major incident procedures and runbooks
• draft, review and maintain a service resilience guidance document to ensure a consistent approach across the programme
• maintain a current view of service resilience risks and raising for SCS review and approval on a six monthly basis
• coordinate testing and exercising of service resilience plans across the live service
• participate in an on-call rotation to provide after hours support as needed

Person specification

We are interested in people who have:

• a proven track record of working in a Critical National Infrastructure (or comparable scale, profile, risk, complexity etc) live service environment and running bridge calls/war rooms during outages
• experience of reviewing, optimising and taking forward process improvements on a service that is comparable (i.e. scale, profile, risk, etc) to One Login
• a demonstrable track record of leading resilience teams, co-ordinating the response to major incidents, ensuring relevant prioritisation, focus on restoring the service and effective stakeholder engagement
• facilitated resilience workshops for technical and non-technical teams boosting organisation wide readiness. Worked collaboratively in a group, actively networking with others. Adapted feedback to ensure it is effective and lasting
• Root Cause Analysis (RCA) familiarity with the ability to document incidents and conduct Post Incident Reviews (PIRs), analyse and assess the impact of change, document change requests and action changes from change requests
• the ability to remain calm under pressure with excellent leadership and decision making. Manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and key performance indicators (KPIs)
• an understanding of the core technical concepts related to the role, an awareness of cloud computing and key components on which we build modern digital services 
• take accountability for issues that occur and be proactive in searching for potential problems effectively consulting specialists where required, strong analytical and problem solving abilities

Benefits

There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:

• flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
• a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%
• 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
• an extra day off for the King’s birthday
• an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
• career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
• a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
• job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
• advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
• death in service benefits
• cycle to work scheme and facilities
• access to an employee discounts scheme
• 10 learning days per year
• volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
• access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning

Any move to Government Digital Service from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may however be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk 

Office attendance
The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period.
DSIT does not normally offer full home working (i.e. working at home); but we do offer a variety of flexible working options (including occasionally working from home).

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

The standard selection process for roles at GDS consists of:

• a simple application screening process - We only ask for a CV and cover letter of up to 750 words. Important tip - please ensure that your cover letter includes how you meet the skills and experience listed in the “person specification” section above
• a 60 minute video interview

Depending on how many applications we get, there might also be an extra stage before the video interview, for example a phone interview or a technical exercise.

In the event we receive a high volume of applications, we will conduct the initial sift against the lead criteria which is:

• a proven track record of working in a Critical National Infrastructure (or comparable scale, profile, risk, complexity etc) live service environment

In the Civil Service, we use Success Profiles to evaluate your skills and ability. This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, increases performance and improves diversity and inclusivity. We’ll be assessing your technical abilities, skills, experience and behaviours that are relevant to this role.

For this role we’ll be assessing you against the following Civil Service Behaviours:

• changing and improving
• making effective decisions
• seeing the bigger picture
• managing a quality service

We’ll also be assessing your experience and specialist technical skills against the following skills defined in the Government Digital and Data Capability Framework for the Major Incident Manager role:

• Continual service improvement
• IT Service Reporting
• Ownership and Initiative
• Service Focus
• Technical Understanding
• Continuity management

Want to know more about who Government Digital and Data are? Click Here

Recruitment Timeline

Sift completion: week commencing Monday 2nd March 2026

Panel interviews: week commencing Monday 16th March 2026

Candidates that do not pass the interview but have demonstrated an acceptable standard may be considered for similar roles at a lower grade.

A reserve list will be held for a period of 12 months, from which further appointments can be made.

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.

Please note that this role requires SC clearance, which would normally need 5 years’ UK residency in the past 5 years. This is not an absolute requirement, but supplementary checks may be needed where individuals have not lived in the UK for that period. This may mean your security clearance (and therefore your appointment) will take longer or, in some cases, not be possible.

For meaningful checks to be carried out, you will need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time, to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. Whilst a lack of UK residency in itself is not necessarily a bar to a security clearance, and expectation of UK residency may range from 3 to 5 years. Failure to meet the residency requirements needed for the role may result in the withdrawal of provisional jobs offers.

Sponsorship

DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.

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