Business Continuity, Preparedness and Resilience Practitioner - Belfast Regional Centre - Erskine House

About the job

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HMRC Resilience is an enterprise-wide Directorate in the Chief Digital Information Officer's Group in HMRC. Our team has a strong focus on preparedness planning and service continuity that supports HMRC business areas become more resilient to disruptive events and recover effectively from them. We play a key role in strengthening HMRC's organisational resilience, including the Departments Business Continuity arrangements, ensuring the department's Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) is fit for purpose, and providing assurance over the preparedness and recovery capability of strategic third-party suppliers.

We are looking for a Senior Officer to help shape and deliver our preparedness and continuity work, embedding organisational resilience across HMRC and making a tangible difference to how we prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruption. This is an exciting opportunity to make a real difference at the heart of HMRC's resilience capability. You will help ensure critical services can withstand disruption by shaping business continuity arrangements that protect operational delivery and support the department's wider resilience ambitions.

As part of a supportive and forward-looking team, you will work on complex and strategically important priorities, engaging with senior stakeholders across HMRC to identify risks, influence decision-making and drive continuous improvement. The role offers a unique blend of challenge, visibility and the opportunity to contribute to work of national significance.

Collaboration is central to this role. You'll work closely with senior leaders, colleagues across commercial, security and business areas, as well as external partners to share insight, build capability, and strengthen organisational resilience, continuity, and preparedness across the organisation. The work is varied, sensitive, and rewarding, and calls for sound judgement, credibility, and strong relationship-building skills.

The role holder may occasionally support major incident management and wider operational resilience activity, including participation in an out-of-hours on-call rota (HMRC's Category 2 on-call allowance applies).

Successful candidates will contribute to a broad range of key resilience responsibilities including:

• Developing and continuous improvement of a modern, fit-for-purpose Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) aligned to HMRC's risk appetite, organisational resilience requirements, and strategic priorities.
• Supporting the development of tools, processes, and guidance using multiple channels to enable business areas to maintain robust business continuity documentation and preparedness plans.
• Contributing to the Department's ongoing project, as we design, develop and implement a BC Tool, including the provision of support post implementation.
• Working with Departmental colleagues to ensure resilience requirements are integrated into supplier procurement, tender and contract management activities, helping to establish a resilient supply chain capable of supporting critical HMRC services during periods of disruption.
• Designing and delivering HMRC communications to increase awareness and capability across the different strands of BC, preparedness and resilience.
• Developing and delivering assurance activity to improve the quality, consistency, and effectiveness of business continuity plans, documentation, and processes, so that business areas are better prepared for disruption and recovery.
• Interpreting and applying government and industry standards, frameworks, and policy requirements ensuring that HMRC's BC Policy is fit for purpose, making recommendations for changes and/or improvement.
• Building effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders, acting as a trusted point of contact on Strategic Continuity matters.
• Contributing to the development of contingency plans, response tools, and practical guidance that address strategic and operational risks.
• Drafting clear briefings, responses to commissions and submissions to HMRC governance forums, HMRC stakeholders and external bodies.

We're looking for individuals who can demonstrate the following:

• Experience and knowledge of business continuity, preparedness, organisational resilience, or related disciplines, and the ability to apply that knowledge in a practical organisational context.
• The ability to think strategically, challenge constructively and make proposals to strengthen organisational resilience, continuity, and preparedness arrangements.
• Confidence working in a complex, fast-moving environment, with the ability to respond effectively to ambiguity, changing priorities, and emerging risks.
• Strong communication, stakeholder engagement, and influencing skills, with the ability to write clearly, present confidently, tailor messages for different audiences, and build credibility across organisational boundaries.
• The ability to exercise sound judgement and develop clear proposals, guidance, briefings, or recommendations that support effective decision-making and continuous improvement.
• Confidence using digital tools to analyse data, identify trends and produce reports and dashboards for senior management assurance and planning activity.

Essential Criteria: Candidates must provide evidence in their Career History and Personal Statement that demonstrates their practical experience or knowledge in the areas listed below:

• Real time experience of business continuity management, organisational resilience planning including creation of strategic plans and playbooks, service continuity strategies, including supplier resilience, risk and assurance in a large and complex organisation.
• Experience of interpreting and applying recognised standards, frameworks, and government requirements (for example ISO 22301, ISO 22316, NIS2, and GovS 007), relevant to business continuity, preparedness, response, recovery, and organisational resilience, and translating them into practical guidance, policy, or controls.
• Experience of creating, reviewing, and improving contingency plans, continuity arrangements, or resilience documentation that address strategic and operational risks.
• Strong stakeholder engagement, influencing, communication, and judgement skills, with experience of building effective relationships.
• The role holder will be comfortable working with and through ambiguity, and producing clear briefings, recommendations, or advice for a range of audiences, including senior leaders.
• Experience of strengthening organisational capability and continuous improvement, for example through assurance, review, evaluation, workshops, exercises, guidance, or learning interventions related to business continuity, preparedness, and organisational resilience.

Desirable Criteria: It would also be beneficial if candidates can demonstrate experience or capability in one or more of the following areas:

• Data analysis skills, including the ability to interpret trends, interrogate datasets, identify insights, and use evidence to inform recommendations, assurance activity, and continuous improvement.
• Experience of using data visualisation and reporting tools to present complex information clearly for different audiences.

Benefits: Alongside your salary of 45,544, HM Revenue and Customs contributes 13,194 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs. We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.