Location
Aberdeen, Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, Salford, London. UK and international travel will be required for this role.
About The Job
Job summary
About The Role
This is a fantastic Deputy Director role at the heart of International Net Zero. It offers the opportunity to help realise our Ministers’ ambition of restoring UK global climate leadership and driving the UK’s mission to become a clean energy superpower as well as clear ownership of priority deliverables that will demonstrate and build the UK’s credibility.
You will provide excellent team management and leadership to a high-pressured, fantastic team of policy officials; in particular through supporting their capability and personal development individually and as a high performing team. As well as people leadership, you will champion diversity and inclusion within your direct responsibility and through the culture you foster more widely.
You will leverage relationships with senior counterparts across government and externally on international climate and energy. So you will need to have excellent interpersonal, influencing and communication skills to build and maintain strategic relationships. You will be working in a very dynamic and fast paced environment and so must be comfortable dealing with change and new and novel issues, be able to show excellent judgement, able to provide robust advice, and identify key issues quickly and confidently.
The International Climate, Energy and Trade Strategy Unit is a new Deputy Director team, at the centre of International Net Zero. The Unit brings together interests across energy, climate and trade, sets shared vision and priorities and ensures coherence with domestic net zero, other departments (e.g. FCDO, Defra and Cabinet Office) and wider thinking from external stakeholders (including business and civil society). The Unit is pivotal in supporting new Ministers with their vision of restoring the UK’s global leadership on tackling climate change and deploying clean energy. It will work closely with the new Special Representative on Climate.
Job Description
Key Responsibilities
You will lead three high performing Grade 6 led teams, comprising around fifteen people in total. You will be responsible for:
- DESNZ’s cross cutting International Net Zero (ie covering all areas of climate, energy and trade) strategy. Building up through horizon scanning, planning and implementing a more strategic and prioritised approach to our interventions. This will include strong engagement across a variety of actors both within government and beyond and within the UK and abroad. Importantly you will work closely with domestic and international colleagues to ensure there is a coherent approach and narrative between the UK’s leadership in both areas.
- The UK’s overall strategy on international climate change and international climate commitments including our strategic approach to COPs and the UK’s Nationally Determined Contributions, reporting on the UK’s climate action to the UNFCC and our involvement in international legal cases on climate change.
- Delivering strategically through major moments including at key international summits (UNGA, Climate Week New York, COP29 COP30) and with the Palace.
You will also be responsible for a DESNZ staff member, loaned to FCDO who will run the new Climate Special Representative’s office, ensuring that DESNZ’s strategic priorities are fed into their objectives and engagements. In addition to this, you will lead the set-up of a new joint virtual unit between DESNZ, FCDO and DEFRA to ensure views and priorities of Ministers are aligned across climate and nature.
You will get significant exposure to Ministers, other senior officials across Government, international processes and counterparts. You will also need to closely collaborate with colleagues from a variety of expert areas such as policy teams, lawyers, domestic net zero, the negotiations team, analysts, inventory specialists and others.
Person specification
Skills And Experience (Essential)
Essential skills and experience include:
- Seeing the big picture – think strategically, weigh up conflicting pressures and plot a way forward in an ambiguous and challenging context.
- Leadership – set direction, manage upwards and get the best out of others in your team and beyond, whilst supporting personal development.
- Excellent interpersonal and stakeholder engagement skills – reach out to engage and influence others within Government and beyond.
- Delivery at pace – respond proportionately to emerging priorities, get the best out of your team and deliver high quality products on time.
- Having a good awareness of international climate change, energy and trade issues and systems.
Useful skills and experience include:
- Good understanding of the wider strategic context on international climate, energy and trade.
- Some understanding of the Paris Agreement and broader UNFCCC processes.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Leadership
- Seeing the Big Picture
- Delivering at Pace
- Communicating and Influencing
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £76,000, Department for Energy Security & Net Zero contributes £22,017 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero 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. Senior Civil Servant (SCS) staff are expected to aim for closer to 60% of the time at an office or non-home based location over the accounting period.
Things you need to know
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.
How To Apply
To apply for this post please follow the instructions on the CS Jobs website by no later than
23:55, Monday 3rd February 2025 . As part of the application process you are asked to complete the following:
- A CV setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role, relevant achievements in recent posts, together with reasons for any gaps within the last two years.
- A Statement of Suitability (no more than 1,250 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.
- Shortlisted candidates may be invited to undertake a series of psychometric assessments including a Staff Engagement Exercise (SEE) as part of the recruitment process prior to the final interview. This assessment will not result in a ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ decision. Rather it is designed to support the panels decision making and highlight areas for the panel to explore further at interview.
- Final Interview which will include a presentation exercise. Full details will be shared with shortlisted candidates nearer the time. Shortlisted candidates will have the opportunity to have an informal discussion with one of the leading Directors.
Overview Of The Process
Government Recruitment Service will acknowledge your application and advise you of the outcome of the sift meeting. Depending on the number of applications received there may be a second stage sift.
Applications will be sifted to select those demonstrating the best fit with the post against the criteria set out in the person specification. Please ensure you keep this in mind when writing your CV and supporting statement.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview.
Arrangements for interview
The final selection panel interview will be virtual.
Candidates will be required to prepare a presentation which will form part of the final interview. Full details of the assessment process will be provided to shortlisted candidates.
At interview you will be assessed against the Essential Criteria in the person specification and the following Civil Service Behaviours:
- Leadership
- Seeing the Bigger Picture
- Delivering at Pace
- Communicating and Influencing
Expenses incurred by candidates during the recruitment process will not be reimbursed by the Department except in exceptional circumstances and only when agreed in advance.
Indicative Timeline
Please note that these dates are only indicative at this stage and could be subject to change. If you are unable to meet these timeframes, please let us know by contacting scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk . Please ensure you quote the job title and reference number in your email.
Interviews will be held v irtually. Candidates are asked to note the timetable, exercising flexibility through the recruitment and selection process. The anticipated timetable is as follows:
Advert Closing Date: 23:55, Monday 3rd February 2025
Shortlist Announcement: Week commencing 10th February 2025
Assessments: Week commencing 17th February 2025
Interview: Tuesday 4th March 2025
Security Clearance
Before the appointment of the successful candidate can be confirmed, the Department will undertake background security checks. If successful you must hold a minimum of SC clearance and a willingness to move to DV would be preferred.
Further Information
Reasonable Adjustment
We are proud to be a disability confident leader and we welcome applications from disabled candidates and candidates with long-term conditions.
I nformation about the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and some examples of adjustments that we offer to disabled candidates and candidates with long-term health conditions during our recruitment process can be found in our DESNZ Candidate Guidance . A DESNZ Plain Text Version of the guidance is also available .
We encourage candidates to discuss their adjustment needs by emailing the job contact which can be found under the contact point for applicants section.
If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.
As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is developed vetting (opens in a new window) . See our vetting charter (opens in a new window) .
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality Requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window) .
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
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 (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window) .
Apply and further information
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : SCS Recruitment Team
- Email : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Further information
Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the recruitment principles, and wish to make a complaint, then you should contact in the first instance scsrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages at: https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/contact-us/
