Technology Risk Capability Lead - Government Digital Service - G7
Government Digital & Data -
Location
Bristol, London, Manchester
About the job
Job summary
As the Government Cyber Unit, our mission is to protect public services and the wider Government from cyber threats by setting strategic direction, managing programmes that implement the strategy across central government, establishing standards and policies, supporting secure digital service delivery, assuring cyber security, and leading operational response to threats, vulnerabilities and incidents.
The risks facing government and the public sector mirror the scale and complexity of government. Some risks exist in aggregate across government and need active management to stop them impacting multiple areas or becoming a national security issue.
This role is pivotal in defining and implementing a cross-government approach to address these challenges, strengthening our ability to manage and respond to complex technology risks across our organisation and 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.
You will be joining the Technology Risk team, part of the Cyber Accountability Deputy Director area, helping to drive consistent, effective technology risk management across government.
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
The Technology Risk team sits within the Cyber Accountability area and works across central teams and departments to improve how technology risks are identified, understood and acted on—using frameworks, data and targeted engagement to drive accountability and investment.
Job description
This role focuses on building capability within departments, improving risk management practices, driving remediation efforts, and ensuring technology risk is considered in decision-making and investment.
If you’re motivated by national-scale impact, this is a chance to shape how government understands and manages technology risk. You’ll work with departments and central teams to strengthen risk capability, create consistent approaches to assessing and reporting risk, and use insights to help leaders make better decisions—so issues like legacy IT, resilience, supply chain vulnerabilities and emerging technologies are managed before they become incidents.
You’ll work across organisational boundaries, bringing together policy, assurance and operational perspectives to help drive consensus and action. Using evidence from data, assessments and engagement, you’ll help departments prioritise remediation and investment, and support maturity uplift in technology risk management.
You’ll also contribute to capability building across the risk profession—developing and sharing guidance, training and peer learning—to support consistent implementation at scale.
As a Technology Risk Capability Lead you’ll:
- work with departments to improve their capability to assess, manage and report technology risks, including articulating, setting and monitoring risk appetites
- develop consistent methods for identifying, categorising and measuring technology risks, including legacy IT, digital resilience, supply chain vulnerabilities and new technologies
- create and share guidance, training and peer learning to build capability across the risk profession
- use data and insights to support decision-making, governance and performance monitoring for technology risk
- support consistent approaches to controls management and driving remediation across government
- work with central teams and departments to uplift maturity in technology risk management
- coordinate with assurance, policy and operational leads so technology risk is embedded in decision-making and portfolio planning
Person specification
We’re interested in people who have:
- experience managing technology or operational risk in a complex environment, including use of appropriate risk assessment methods
- strong understanding of organisational risk appetite, risk assessment and risk treatment, and the ability to interpret risk in relation to corporate governance, strategic direction, and planning
- confident influencing and advising senior stakeholders, including boards and executive teams, with the ability to communicate tailored security and risk information
- ability to work across organisational boundaries, providing meaningful security, and risk communication to support alignment, decision making, and action
- experience designing policy, frameworks, or guidance that combine external information and organisational context to support a holistic and proportionate understanding of risk
- experience creating and implementing risk management frameworks and applying them to complex or non-standard scenarios
- understanding of digital service delivery challenges including legacy systems, resilience, and technical debt, and how security measures might impact on users or business needs
- ability to use data and insights from a range of relevant sources, to support security or risk related decision making, governance and performance monitoring
