Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
Head of Talent Operations
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Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Salford
Job Summary
DSIT
At DSIT we’re all about improving people’s lives by maximising the potential of science & technology.
We accelerate innovation, investment and productivity through world-class science, research and development.
We use technology for good by ensuring new and existing technologies are safely developed and deployed across the UK, with the benefits more widely shared.
We are driving forward a modern digital government which gives citizens a more satisfying experience and their time back.
We do all this to enable the Government’s 5 national missions: kickstarting economic growth, making Britain a clean energy superpower, taking back our streets, breaking down barriers to opportunity and building an NHS fit for the future.
Above all, we focus on improving people’s lives. Whether it’s researching new treatments for disease, developing better batteries, reducing burdens through better public services, keeping children safe online, and much more, outcomes for citizens are at the heart of what we do.
Our Inclusive Environment
We offer flexible working benefits, employee well-being support and a great pension. We are enormously proud to be a Disability Confident Leader employer. We support candidates with adjustments throughout our recruitment process. Information about disability confidence and just some examples of the adjustments that you can request can be found in the reasonable adjustment section below.
Find Out More
We regularly run events where you can find out more about the department and tips for the application and interview process. You can sign up for upcoming events here: https://forms.office.com/e/Jae3B4w7xm
You can also follow our LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/dsitcareers/
Job Description
Build the hiring engine that powers the UK’s most ambitious technology programmes.
DSIT is the department behind the UK's AI strategy, semiconductor investment, and digital public services. We're hiring the people who build the technology that runs the country. This role puts you at the heart of that.
We’re hiring engineers, data scientists, AI specialists, cyber experts and more, to deliver some of the most important digital work in the country. As Head of Talent Operations (Grade 6), you will lead the team that will make sure we find them, land them, and keep them, all the while offering a best-in-class service and experience.
Why now?
We're in a race for scarce technical talent against some of the most innovative companies in the world, and we think government should be winning more of those battles.
Over the past year, we've started building something different. New tooling, new processes, and a team that's hungry to raise the bar.
There’s genuine momentum, and we need someone to take the wheel and turn early progress into a hiring machine that rivals the best in tech. We’re building a hiring operation that genuinely competes with places like Monzo, Octopus and Stripe, and DSIT’s senior leadership is fully behind it.
Person specification
Key Responsibilities
What you’ll do:
- Run hiring like a product: Understand user pain points. Ship continuous improvements. Measure what matters. Repeat.
- Own the whole journey: You own the technical hiring process end-to-end. From launching the role to a candidate’s first day.
- Champion user experience: "Nobody falls into a black hole." Candidates get updates and hiring managers get support. Things move at pace and you set the standards that make this real.
- Be the hiring expert in the room. When directors and programme leads need to build teams, you're the person they come to. You'll know the market, the pipeline, and what's realistic.
- Build a high performing talent team: You'll lead a team of talent partners and talent coordinators working with key stakeholder and hiring managers to build our technical teams. Help them do their best work.
- Own the bar: Hiring quality isn't negotiable. You'll run a process that ensures we identify the strongest candidates, whilst making sure we are inclusive, fair and secure. No corners cut.
- Move fast and close the loop. Clear handoffs. Clear owners. No excuses. You'll create a culture where things get done, not discussed.
- Make onboarding seamless: You’ll partner with Integrated Corporate Services (ICS) to make onboarding seamless.
- Push the tools forward. We're rolling out a new ATS and exploring how we implement AI. You'll lead the charge.
- Measure everything that matters: Build dashboards, set alerts, spot bottlenecks. You'll be able to quickly show what’s working well and where we need additional improvements.
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No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
As a line manager, you will be responsible for working with your members of staff to define their objectives, as well as managing their development and performance.
Essential Criteria
This role is for you if:
About
You've built or rebuilt a hiring operation from the inside. You've owned the outcomes, not just the process. You've shipped real improvements (not made slide decks about improvements!), and you can point to the metrics that prove it. You will thrive in this role if:
- You have personally owned end‑to‑end technical recruitment operations in a fast‑moving or high‑pressure organisation.
- You’ve operated at meaningful scale or complexity. You’ve hired at scale (hundreds of technical roles a year), in competitive markets (engineers, product, data, AI, cyber) or across complex organisations with multiple stakeholders and parallel pressures.
- You have been directly accountable for outcomes, not just activity. You can point to specific improvements you’ve driven, such as time‑to‑hire, offer acceptance, candidate experience, or hiring quality, and explain what actually moved the dial.
- You obsess over the details that candidates actually notice: response times, feedback quality, and how the process feels.
- You think about hiring as a product and an operating system. You start with user needs (candidates and hiring managers), you ship improvements, you measure impact, and you iterate; even when the environment is messy or constrained.
- You’ve built, implemented, or significantly redesigned recruitment tooling or systems in a live environment (for example ATS, scheduling, assessment flows, automation, or data dashboards), and you’ve had to make real trade‑offs between speed, fairness, quality, and experience.
- You are comfortable making judgement calls under pressure. You know that perfect alignment rarely exists, and you can balance pace, fairness, and hiring bar without letting any of them collapse.
- You’ve led and coached teams doing hands‑on delivery work, setting a clear bar, creating urgency and ownership, and helping people operate at their best in demanding conditions.
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Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Leadership
- Making Effective Decisions
- Managing a Quality Service
- Changing and Improving
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Your approach to problem diagnosis, prioritisation, and delivery.
- Systems you’ve built and iterated, metrics you’ve improved, hiring bar and assessment quality, tooling, how you handled resistance and constraints, and how you championed the candidate experience.
Alongside your salary of £69,675, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £20,184 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).
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:
- A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
- Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
- A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
- An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
- Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.
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.
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.
As part of the application process you will be asked to complete a CV and personal statement. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Please use your personal statement (in no more than 750 words) to provide an evidence statement covering the following:
- Why you’re interested in the role
- One recruitment system or hiring process you personally owned
- What problem it was solving
- The context and scale (e.g. type of roles, volume, organisational complexity)
- Your role and level of accountability
- One metric you materially improved
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