Head of Security

Location: Devonport, Plymouth, GB, PL1 4SG

Onsite or Hybrid: OnSite

Role Type: Full time / Permanent

Lead a Transformation That Protects the Nation’s Future

At Babcock we’re working to create a safe and secure world, together, and if you join us, you can play your part as Head of Security at our Devonport Royal Dockyard site.

The role:

• As Head of Security, you’ll lead one of the most significant cultural and operational security transformations in the UK defence and engineering landscape.
• This is more than maintaining systems; it’s about shaping behaviours, strengthening accountability, and embedding a proactive security culture across a complex, multigenerational workforce.
• Day-to-day, you’ll influence how people think about and respond to security every day, ensuring that Devonport remains resilient against evolving threats while supporting the safe delivery of world-class engineering programmes.
• Lead and develop the consolidated Security team, fostering accountability, inclusion, and continuous improvement.
• Drive cultural change, influencing behaviours across engineering, operations, and corporate functions.
• Strengthen incident and emergency preparedness, ensuring roles, expectations, and behaviours are clearly embedded.
• Oversee the modernisation, inspection, and maintenance of security systems, ensuring compliance and operational readiness.
• Work closely with senior leaders and key stakeholders, championing a strong security culture across the site.

This role is full time, 35 hours per week and is based onsite at Devonport Royal Dockyard.

Essential experience:

• Experience in security management or an equivalent senior security leadership role, with strong expertise in security risk analysis and mitigation.
• Proven ability to lead large teams and drive behavioural or cultural change in highly regulated environments.
• Skilled in influencing senior stakeholders and constructively challenging established norms.
• Strong financial and commercial acumen, including oversight of budgets and operational expenditure.
• Proven track record delivering complex operational services or transformation programmes, with a defence, government, nuclear, or armed forces background desirable.

Qualifications:

• Ideally, membership of a professional body such as the Register of Chartered Security Professionals, the Security Institute, or the Institute of Leadership & Management.
• Certified Nuclear Security Professional with WINS certification - Desirable.

Security Clearance:

The successful candidate must be able to achieve and maintain Security Check (SC) security clearance for this role. Many of the positions within our company are subject to national security clearance and Trade Control restrictions. This means that your eligibility for certain roles may be affected by your place of birth, nationality, current or former citizenship, and any residency you hold or have held.

What we offer:

• Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance.
• Access to a Digital GP, annual health check, and nutritional consultations through Aviva DigiCare+.
• Employee shopping savings portal.
• Payment of Professional Fees.
• Reservists in the armed forces receive 10-days special paid leave.
• Holiday Trading is a benefit that allows UK Babcock employees to buy additional leave or to sell up to one working week of annual leave from their annual entitlement.
• ‘Be Kind Day’ enables employees to take one working day’s paid leave a year (or equivalent hours) to undertake volunteering work with their chosen organisation or registered charity.

Babcock is a global FTSE 100 organisation with over 26,000 people working together to make a difference. Here, you’ll be part of something bigger. From initial design to final decommissioning, your work will contribute to products and services that are essential to national security and public infrastructure. Together, we’re building a future that lasts — not just through the impact we make, but through meaningful careers that respect your work-life balance. We call that lifetime engineering. Join us and see how far we can go, together.

We are a disability confident committed employer. If you have a disability or need any reasonable adjustments during the application and selection stages, please email careers@babcockinternational.com with the subject header ‘Reasonable adjustments requirement’. We’re committed to building an inclusive culture where everyone’s free to thrive. We are happy to talk about flexible working – please ask about alternative patterns of work at interview.