UK National Audit Office
Resilience Advisor
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Contract type: Permanent
Location: London with a minimum of 2 days per week in the office in line with our hybrid working policy.
Hours: 36 per week.
Salary: London Salary c£56,000 plus civil service pension.
Financial and Risk Management Insights
The National Audit Office (NAO) supports Parliament in holding government to account and improving public services. The NAO Strategy 2025-2030 sets two strategic outcomes: improving the productivity and resilience of public services and strengthening financial management and reporting across government.
The NAO’s expert insights teams provide valuable and practical insight into how public services can be improved. We draw on our extensive audit work, specialist expertise and external developments to identify innovation, recurring challenges and lessons that can be applied across government. Insights teams influence government through practical products and engagement, strengthen specialist capability across the NAO, and make it easier for colleagues and stakeholders to find and apply the knowledge generated through our work.
The Financial and Risk Management (FaRM) insights team focuses on the strategically important areas of financial management, risk management and resilience. The Hub brings together evidence, insight and action to strengthen decision-making, build capability and improve practice across government.
Purpose of the Role
This is a resilience advisor role within the FaRM Hub’s Risk & Resilience portfolio. The postholder will combine specialist resilience expertise with evidence analysis, insight generation and stakeholder engagement to help improve resilience practice across government.
The role will support high-quality audit work, develop internal knowledge and capability, contribute to strategic insight products, and translate lessons from NAO work and external developments into practical improvements. In doing so, the postholder will help the NAO deliver its strategic ambition to improve the productivity and resilience of public services.
The postholder will focus primarily on resilience while being comfortable applying core risk management concepts and understanding how risk and resilience interact in effective decision-making, planning and delivery.
Role in the FaRM Hub
As a Core Member Of FaRM, You Will Support The Delivery Of The Team’s Strategy And Programme Of Work, Which Include
- strengthening the NAO’s specialist resilience expertise and applying it to audit and insight work;
- leveraging evidence from across the NAO and external sources to identify themes, dependencies, emerging issues and transferable lessons;
- turning specialist knowledge into accessible insight, practical tools, good practice and advice;
- building resilience capability across the NAO through guidance, learning and on-the-job support; and
- influencing resilience and risk management practice across government through evidence-based products and engagement.
Key Relationships
The postholder will support the Senior Risk & Resilience Specialist, who leads the Financial and Risk Management insights team’s Risk & Resilience work. The role will also work closely with colleagues across FaRM, Value For Money teams and other NAO specialists. The role will also be required to build and maintain relationships across the resilience professional community, including government, professional bodies, academia, think tanks and other external experts.
Responsibilities
Key Objectives
Develop and deploy knowledge and insight
- Analyse and synthesise evidence from NAO audit work, stakeholder engagement, relevant research and external developments to identify cross-cutting themes, emerging issues and opportunities for improvement.
- Support the hub in turning specialist knowledge and evidence into accessible insight, usable lessons learned, good practice and practical advice.
- Contribute to the development and maintenance of strategic risk and resilience insight products, such as evidence bases, thematic analysis, briefings, tools and leadership-facing products.
- Monitor relevant developments and emerging resilience challenges, including technological, environmental, geopolitical, societal and system-level issues, and help translate these into implications for audit work and government practice.
- Produce clear, well-structured written outputs that communicate complex issues effectively to non-specialist audiences.
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Support high-quality audit and assurance work
- Provide resilience expertise and advice to Value For Money (VFM) and wider assurance teams, strengthening audit approaches, methodologies and the quality of resilience-related findings and recommendations.
- Translate resilience concepts into audit-ready approaches, including framing lines of enquiry, identifying and testing evidence, articulating what good looks like, and supporting practical, evidence-based recommendations.
- Help teams consider resilience across operational, organisational and system contexts, including dependencies, uncertainty, adaptation, recovery and learning.
- Provide advice and guidance to NAO service line colleagues, including helping teams assess the quality and sufficiency of evidence received from audited bodies.
- Work collaboratively across the NAO to identify where resilience expertise can add most value and connect colleagues to relevant knowledge, tools and expertise.
Influence and engagement
- Engage with government networks, public bodies, professional communities and other stakeholders to understand developments, challenges and opportunities to improve resilience practice.
- Contribute to and help coordinate resilience-related stakeholder engagement, including workshops, seminars, round tables, networks and communities of practice.
- Support the translation of NAO evidence into practical messages and products for senior leaders, Audit and Risk Assurance Committees, Boards and other strategic decision-makers.
- Represent and communicate the NAO’s resilience thinking confidently and credibly, helping extend the reach and impact of NAO insight.
- Use engagement to test and enrich the evidence base, identify good practice and feed learning back into audit and insight work.
Develop capability and deliver
- Support resilience capability across the NAO through guidance, briefings, learning initiatives and opportunities for colleagues to gain relevant on-the-job experience.
- Lead discrete pieces of knowledge and insight work to deliver high-quality, high-impact products and outputs, such as tools, guidance, briefings, presentations and workshops.
- Plan and prioritise a varied portfolio of work, working flexibly across immediate advisory requests and longer-term strategic products.
- Contribute to continuous improvement in how the Hub captures evidence, measures influence and impact, and uses technology and AI responsibly to improve the quality and accessibility of its work.
How to Apply
To apply, you should submit no more than one side of A4, clearly outlining your suitability against the key criteria below. Applicants are also required to submit a CV alongside their supporting statement.
Key Criteria
- Resilience subject matter expertise: Demonstrate depth of expertise in resilience and the ability to apply it across different organisational, operational or system contexts to support audit work and influence government practice.
- Prioritisation and delivery: Balance competing tasks and priorities to deliver a complex portfolio of advisory, insight and capability-building work, including leading or supporting discrete projects.
- Technical expertise and judgement: Use technical knowledge and sound judgement to deliver high-quality work and reach clear, proportionate and evidence-based conclusions.
- Analysis, synthesis and insight: Analyse large and varied bodies of evidence and complex concepts to identify patterns, dependencies and emerging themes, and turn them into meaningful insight, recommendations and practical advice.
- Communication and influence: Communicate complex issues clearly and confidently across written, verbal and visual formats, engage non-specialist audiences and build credible relationships with senior stakeholders.
- Strategic awareness: Ability to understand and respond to changes in government structures, priorities and the wider operating environment, applying this knowledge to identify implications and opportunities for the NAO’s risk and resilience work.
- Collaboration, initiative and continuous improvement: Work collaboratively and flexibly in a fast-paced, supportive and inclusive environment, demonstrating initiative, creativity and a strong commitment to personal and professional development.
- Technology and AI: Use digital tools and AI thoughtfully and responsibly to support research, analysis, knowledge management and the production of accessible, high-quality outputs.
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Selection Process
We will shortlist based on your CV and suitability statement. If successful, you will be invited to an interview that will include a short presentation followed by a competency and values-based interview. The presentation topic will be provided in advance.
1st Stage interviews will take place over TEAMS WC Monday 2nd November and second stage interviews will take place at our offices in Victoria WC Monday 9th November at BPR. A presentation topic will be provided to successful candidates taking part at the 2nd stage interview.
Skills Required
Essential Skills
- Demonstrable, relevant resilience experience, for example in business continuity, emergency management, crisis management, operational resilience, organisational resilience or system resilience, including applying resilience concepts to improve decision-making, planning and delivery.
- Working knowledge of recognised resilience and/or business continuity standards and frameworks, for example ISO 22301, and a clear understanding of how resilience interacts with risk management.
- Confidence applying core risk management concepts, including risk identification, assessment, appetite, tolerance, controls and assurance, in support of resilience thinking and audit work.
- Strategic and systems thinking: Ability to look beyond individual organisations or events, understand how services, risks and dependencies interact across complex systems, and use this understanding to identify wider and longer-term implications, priorities and practical opportunities to strengthen resilience and public service outcomes.
- Ability to engage constructively with a range of stakeholders and translate technical concepts for non-specialist audiences.
Desirable Skills
- Professional certification or membership in a relevant discipline, for example the Business Continuity Institute, Emergency Planning Society, Institute of Crisis Management, Institute of Risk Management or equivalent.
- A relevant postgraduate qualification or other evidence of continued professional development in resilience, risk or a related discipline.
- Experience of working in or with the public sector, central government or arm’s-length bodies, or experience in sectors with mature resilience practice, such as infrastructure, financial services or utilities.
- Experience of horizon scanning, insight generation, knowledge management, applied research or developing thought leadership and practical products.
- Experience of using digital tools, data or AI to support analysis, knowledge sharing or improved business outcomes.
Equal Opportunities and Diversity
Disability and Reasonable Adjustments
Applicants with a disability who wish their application to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme should confirm this when submitting their
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