Description

Head of Service Resilience

Location: National*

Closing Date: 10th September

Interviews: From 19th September

Grade: 6

(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)

Salary: 75,674 - 84,825 which may include an allowance up to 9,151 (London); 71,381- 78,842 which may include an allowance up to 7,461 (National)

Working pattern: Full-time, Flexible working

Contract Type: Permanent

*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found ON THIS MAP

The Role

We re recruiting for a Head of Service Resilience here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative Technical Operations team.

This role aligns against Head of Command and Control from the Government Digital and Data Framework

As Head of Service Resilience, you will lead the strategic and operational delivery of resilience across Technology Operations. This includes overseeing incident response, continuity planning, and service optimisation to protect critical platforms and ensure uninterrupted delivery.

You will lead a team responsible for coordinating resilience across all services, acting as the senior escalation point for major incidents and driving the development of a command-and-control model to support rapid decision-making and clear communications. Your expertise in service management and real-time performance data will enable you to identify improvement opportunities, enhance service maturity, and support informed decision-making.

Working closely with senior leaders, service teams, suppliers, and operational partners, you ll ensure services are resilient, high-quality, and continuously improved. You ll also influence and align with Cabinet Office and wider government standards to strengthen resilience across the organisation.

As a member of the Technical Operations Senior Leadership Team, you will be expected to model the MoJ values ofPurpose, Humanity, Openness, and Together, while protecting the Ministry s mission and ensuring uninterrupted delivery of vital public services.

To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and lead the vision, mission, and objectives for Service Resilience, ensuring alignment with Cabinet Office, CDDO, GDS, and DSIT standards.

• Manage budgets and resources to deliver excellent user outcomes and minimise operational risk.

• Contribute to the development and delivery of MoJ strategic objectives.

• Implement and maintain availability, capacity, and continuity management standards and procedures.

• Oversee the development and testing of runbooks to ensure service continuity.

• Champion continual service improvement and refine incident management practices in line with industry best practice.

• Act as the senior escalation point for major incidents, ensuring swift resolution and proactive risk mitigation. Build strong working relationships with digital delivery, policy, and operational stakeholders.

• Lead post-incident reviews and embed lessons learned to prevent recurrence.

• Take ownership of issues and proactively identify potential problems to improve user outcomes.

• Build strong relationships with senior civil service leaders, internal delivery teams, external suppliers, and operational stakeholders.

• Provide regular updates to Justice Digital s senior leadership on service health, risks, and performance.

• Manage and develop the team.

• Foster a culture of recognition, talent development, and succession planning.

• Embed performance management practices and address underperformance.

• Champion diversity, inclusion, and equality in team management and service delivery.

• Demonstrate deep knowledge of service management frameworks and their application across varied environments.

• Maintain strong technical understanding and its relevance to the wider digital and operational landscape.

• Analyse service groups to optimise underlying services and improve overall performance.

• Represent Ministry of Justice in cross-government operational planning or crisis coordination forums.

• Look for ways to continually refine and iterate the incident management practice in line with industry best practice.

• Represent Ministry of Justice in negotiations with external suppliers.

• Champion continual service improvement across live operations.

• Provide regular updates to Justice Digital s senior leadership team on service health and risks.

This role may occasionally require work outside standard hours due to the unpredictable nature of major incidents. Flexibility is important to ensure timely response and service continuity.

If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply!

Benefits

• 37 hours per week and flexible working options including hybrid working.

• A 1k per person learning budget is in place to support all our people, with access to best in class conferences and seminars, accreditation with professional bodies, fully funded vocational programmes and e-learning platforms.

• Staff have 10% time to dedicate to develop & grow.

• Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 28.97% from April 1st 2024 (Contribution Rates)

• 25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the King s birthday. 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service.

• Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!

• Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app.

• Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Carers & Childcare, Gender Equality, PROUD and SPIRIT.

• Bike loans up to 2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location).

• Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye-care vouchers.

• 5 days volunteering paid leave.

• Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym.

Person Specification

Essential

• Incident management - lead the investigation and resolution of incidents, ensuring lessons are learned and knowledge is shared for the avoidance of future incidents or problems.

• Continuity management - manage runbooks and processes around service continuity and test the runbooks to ensure that service availability is maintained.

• Ownership & initiative - take accountability for issues that occur and be proactive in searching for potential problems; achieve excellent user outcomes.

• Service focus - see the bigger picture by taking groups of services and investigating how to get the best of underlying services.

• Service management framework knowledge - demonstrate an industry understanding of how to implement the framework into numerous environments.

• Technical understanding - show a thorough understanding of the technical concepts required for the role and can explain how these fit into the wider technical landscape.

• Availability & capacity management - ensure the correct implementation of availability and capacity management standards and procedures; identify capacity issues and implement the required changes; initiate remedial action.

• Change management - manage high impact, complex change requests; ensure that release policies, procedures and processes are applied.

Willingness to be assessed against the requirements for SC clearance

We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate based on culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor.

Our values are Purpose, Humanity Openness and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace.

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.

How to Apply

Candidates must submit a CV and Personal Statement. Your Personal Statement* (no more than 1250 words) should highlight your relevant experience and skills, supported by clear examples of work you have undertaken. It must address the following five criteria, listed within the Person Specification, along with the single behaviour outlined below. Please structure your response using a separate paragraph for each:

• Incident management

• Ownership & initiative

• Service focus

• Service management framework knowledge

• Technical understanding

• Seeing the Big Picture (Behaviour)

*Personal Statements which have not adhered to the application process, of providing examples to the points above, may be rejected at sift.

A diverse panel will review your application against the criteria listed above. Please note applications submitted without a Personal Statement will not be considered.

Please access the following link for guidance on how to apply and how to complete a Personal Statement

Application Guidance

In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:

• Working Together

• Seeing the Big Picture

• Managing a Quality Service

• Delivering at Pace

Candidates who meet the required standard will be invited to a one-hour panel interview conducted via video conference. Those who are successful at this stage will then be invited to a shorter second interview.

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift focussing on your experience of Incident management and your knowledge of Service management frameworks will be conducted before the sift.

Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application.

A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made.

Use of 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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Terms & Conditions

Please review our Terms and Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact [email protected]