UKRI
Head of Legal - Employment
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Head of Legal - Employment
Salary: £70,752-£88,893 per annum (depending on experience).
Band: UKRI Band G
Contract Type: Fixed Term (23 Months).
Hours: Full Time - Flexible working available.
Location: Polaris House, Swindon - Hybrid Working Available.
Closing Date: Sunday 30th August 2026.
Interview Dates: Between 16th - 18th September 2026.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is an independent, non-departmental public body, which brings together the UK’s seven Research Councils, Innovate UK, and Research England. The UKRI Legal function is located within UKRI’s corporate centre and provides advice on a wide range of legal areas from commercial and IP law, subsidy control, procurement and public law; to regulatory law, information governance, property and employment.
Working closely with the Heads of Legal for Regulatory Law/Litigation, and Commercial and Property Law, the Head of Legal - Employment will be jointly responsible for the day-to-day leadership and management of the Legal team, deputising for the UKRI General Counsel/Director of Legal in all legal casework and team management matters as required. As a senior legal professional and the Employment Law subject matter expert for UKRI, you will advise on a range of contentious and non-contentious employment law issues, managing your own case load of complex matters and taking a lead role for UKRI Legal by contributing expert employment law advice and insights to support central initiatives, programmes projects as well as UKRI’s business as usual. You will lead and line manage a small team of employment lawyers and be responsible for controlling and managing the Employment Law team’s workflow to ensure the delivery of timely, high-quality, pragmatic legal advice to UKRI clients.
Note that there may be a requirement to travel to various UKRI locations as part of this role.
Your Responsibilities:
Provision of Legal Advice:
- Oversee and ensure the provision of high-quality, timely, risk-based and pragmatic employment law advice to support the business of UKRI, providing updates and insights into relevant legal developments to support compliance and best practice.
- Supervise and be responsible for the effective and efficient management of cases and workloads in your team, ensuring that case management records are updated and maintained in accordance with team policy.
- Exercise sound judgment when balancing key legal and commercial risks and benefits, making appropriate recommendations aligned with the organisation’s risk appetite.
- Provide advice as required on complex, strategic and/or technical legal issues, which may have significant impact on UKRI.
Leadership and Management:
- Jointly lead and run the day-to-day operation of the UKRI Legal Team, working closely with the other Heads of Legal, to ensure effective operational delivery of Legal services to the wider organisation.
- Lead and empower a small team of qualified employment lawyers, ensuring they have the skills, flexibility and agility to deliver in a changing environment.
- Enhance learning and development and career progression opportunities for legal staff, and support the acquisition of professional qualifications and ongoing professional development.
- Engage as necessary with legal working groups in HR and in other areas of UKRI operations, where employment law advice is required.
Stakeholder Engagement and Relationship Management:
- Positively and proactively engage with senior managers throughout the organisation, building credibility, trust and respect by demonstrating consistent professionalism and expert knowledge in all interactions.
- Lead by example, actively promoting cooperation and commitment to achieve goals and results.
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Continuous Improvement:
- Support the General Counsel/Director of Legal in driving the development and implementation of new legal capability for the organisation, actively seeking input of senior stakeholders across the organisation.
- Review, identify and embed best practice policies, processes and protocols to drive efficiency in legal spend and enhance internal controls ensuring that the organisation is legally compliant and able to access expert legal advice where required.
Key Dimensions:
Budget:
- Work with the Legal Practice Manager to support the General Counsel/Director of Legal in managing the legal budget, to drive efficiency through UK Research and Innovation’s annual legal expenditure, in particular in relation to procurement of external legal support and application of the Legal Training Budget.
Management:
- Reporting to: UKRI General Counsel/Director of Legal.
- Line management: Up to 5 legal professionals.
About You
- Strong technical expertise in employment law, ability to think strategically, see legal issues in their wider context and advise accordingly.
- Substantial experience of advising a wide range of clients on employment law issues particularly at senior leadership level.
- Ability to work on own initiative and be comfortable in taking and standing by difficult decisions.
- Ability to manage and effectively prioritise a personal caseload of complex legal matters, delivering high-quality work to tight deadlines.
- Strong experience of line management and professional supervision of qualified lawyers, developing staff capability to meet evolving demands for legal advice.
- Ensure resource levels and skills meet fluctuating workloads throughout the year.
- Excellent written and oral communication skills and ability to communicate complex legal issues with clarity, and ability to influence, build and maintain strong working relationships with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders at all levels.
- Ability to work flexibly and adapt working style in a changing environment.
Additional Information:
- Understand drivers affecting the operation of a legal services function within the public sector and sectoral issues impacting legal advice.
- Understand the links and dependencies between the Legal function and other corporate services functions (particularly Board Secretariat, Strategy, and Governance, Assurance and Risk) promoting a culture of teamwork and helping to break down silos if they emerge.
- Act as the point of escalation for complex queries for employment law matters.
Personal Specification
The below criteria will be scored during Shortlisting (S), Interview (I) or both (S&I).
Essential
- Minimum of a 2:1 honours degree in your first degree (in any subject) or equivalent high level academic and/or professional achievement where satisfactory evidence can be provided (e.g. via relevant experience and results achieved for the Graduate Diploma in Law (GLD)/CPE, Legal Practice Course (LPC), Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC)) (S).
- Qualified to practise as a Solicitor, Barrister or Chartered Legal Executive in England and Wales (S).
- Substantial post-qualification experience of advising on a range of contentious and non-contentious employment law matters (S&I).
- Experience of leading and managing a legal team, providing professional supervision and developing staff (S&I).
- Skilled and experienced employment lawyer with the ability to understand public sector policy drivers and work effectively within the statutory framework applicable to a non-departmental public body (S&I).
- Ability to provide effective quality assurance of the team’s legal advice on employment matters (I).
- Demonstrable technical proficiency and strong experience of advising clients at a senior level, acting as trusted advisor (I).
- The ability to think strategically and creatively, see legal issues in their wider context and advise accordingly (I).
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to influence and work collaboratively (I).
- 'Can-do' individual who is self-motivated and able to plan and manage a varied workload, meeting deadlines and effectively prioritising and managing competing demands (I).
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At interview, all shortlisted candidates are required to bring with them identification documents and original documents that prove they hold or can obtain the right to work in the UK.
Online applications only. Please submit a covering letter and CV ensuring that the IRC reference is included in the filename description of each document uploaded. Please note that failure to address the above criteria or submitted without a covering letter may result in your application not being considered.
Benefits
We recognise and value our employees as individuals and aim to provide a favourable pay and rewards package. We are committed to supporting employees' development and promote a culture of continuous learning!
A list of benefits below:
- An outstanding defined benefit pension scheme.
- 30 days' annual leave in addition to 10.5 public and privilege days (full time equivalent).
- Employee discounts and offers on retail and leisure activities.
- Employee assistance programme, providing confidential help and advice.
- Flexible working options.
Plus many more benefits and wellbeing initiatives that enable our employees to have a great work life balance!
For further information on our benefits please see: Benefits of working at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) [https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/work-for-us/working-at-ukri/benefits-of-working-for-ukri/]
UKRI is an Equal Opportunity & Disability Confident Employer.
Please apply online, if you experience any issue applying, please contact Recruitment@ukri.org [Recruitment@ukri.org]
We encourage candidates to apply as soon as possible, as we reserve the right to close this vacancy early.
Please note, if you will require sponsorship to work in the UK, as part of your sponsorship application, you and any dependants travelling with you, will be required to pay costs directly to The Home Office for the application before you start your role with us. UKRI is normally able to reimburse some, or all of these fees after you have become an employee and this can be discussed with the Hiring Manager. For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/how-much-it-costs or contact Recruitment@ukri.org.
UKRI - UK Research and Innovation
UKRI is an organisation that brings together the seven disciplinary research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. Together, we build an
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