Senior tech professional sought to oversee transformation process

Credit: PA

GCHQ is seeking a senior technologist to lead a transformation across “no ordinary IT department”.

The intelligence organisation is recruiting for a deputy director of its IT capability group. The role, which offers an annual pay packet of up to £92,049, comes with the responsibility of leading “a substantial part of our IT organisation through the transformation to a modern, digital platform provider”.

“With a major portfolio of products and services already on offer, you will motivate and inspire a large team to successfully support today’s mission, whilst rapidly adapting to take advantage of cloud platforms,” the job advert sad.

In addition to leading these internal reforms, the successful candidate will also play a key role in “the transformation of our nation’s unique intelligence capabilities for the digital age”. 

“You will enjoy a range of opportunities, from the familiar to the unusual, and will be operating across a global enterprise,” GCHQ added.

The tech unit that the chosen applicant will spearhead – the Enabling Infrastructure Capability Group – “a relatively new organisation”, comprised of a few hundred people.

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“You will be supporting a team who have been converging our IT… to build and support these vital capabilities,” the advert said. “Part of your remit will be to sustain and improve our levels of engagement as we chart the path towards a more digitally-literate and distributed workforce. You will be building on strong foundations and be working with a team who are embarked on a major transformational shift in our ways of working. There is plenty we’ve already achieved, with plenty more space to use your own ideas and experience to inspire our next generation of technology leaders.”

The chosen candidate can choose to base their role in either London or Cheltenham – home of GCHQ’s headquarters (pictured above), popularly known as The Doughnut, due to its distinctive shape.

“The job will require weekly in-person office time to access high-side systems and brief senior stakeholders and some face-to-face time to build and sustain key networks,” GCHQ said. “The job will require a willingness to undertake some travel across our sites as required. Low-side work can be done flexibly from a range of office or remote locations.”

Applications for the role are open until 11pm on 26 April. The basic salary of the role is £83,856, to which may be added a “concessionary payment of £2,963 per annum”, as well an extra £5,500 in London-weighted pay.

Providing digital and communications intelligence information to the government and Armed Forces, GCHQ is the largest intelligence service in the UK, employing almost 6,000 people.