Vetting & Onboarding Operations Manager

Location: Solihull (Hybrid)

Salary: Circa £40,000 PA

Security Clearance: BPSS & SC Clearance Required

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced and highly capable Vetting & Onboarding Operations Manager to lead the delivery of vetting operations for the Armed Forces Recruitment Service (AFRS). This is a critical leadership role responsible for ensuring Armed Forces candidate vetting is delivered efficiently, compliantly, and in line with MOD security requirements, recruitment demand, and operational priorities. You will lead a high-performing operational team, oversee service delivery against SLAs and KPIs, and ensure vetting activity supports candidate flow without impacting enlistment timelines. Working closely with internal AFRS stakeholders, MOD partners, and consortium teams, you will drive operational excellence, continuous improvement, and service resilience within a highly regulated and security-critical environment.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Lead the end-to-end delivery of AFRS Vetting operations, ensuring services are delivered efficiently, compliantly, and in line with MOD, Armed Forces, Serco, and contractual requirements.
• Manage and develop Team Leaders and Vetting Administrators, driving high performance, accountability, and continuous improvement across the function.
• Oversee service delivery against SLAs, KPIs, recruitment demand, and intake profiles, ensuring vetting activity supports candidate flow and enlistment timelines.
• Act as the senior escalation point for high-risk cases, security concerns, compliance issues, and operational challenges.
• Drive quality assurance, audit activity, workflow management, and operational resilience, using MI and performance data to improve service delivery and reduce risk.
• Build strong relationships with AFRS Recruitment teams, MOD stakeholders, and consortium partners to support operational priorities and candidate experience.
• Lead operational change initiatives, embedding process improvements, policy updates, and transformation activity without impacting live service delivery.

What You’ll Need

Essential Experience & Skills

• Extensive experience within vetting, screening, onboarding, or security-focused operational environments.
• Strong understanding of compliance, assurance, data quality, and security requirements.
• Proven leadership experience managing operational teams within a regulated environment.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence at all levels.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability with experience using operational data and MI to improve performance.
• Experience managing SLAs, KPIs, operational risk, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Ability to lead confidently in a fast-paced, high-accountability environment.

Additional Requirements

• BPSS and Security Clearance (SC) is required for this role.
• Willingness to travel to other Serco locations when required.
• During the initial phase of the role, regular attendance at the Liverpool office will be required to support knowledge transfer before transitioning to greater presence in Solihull.

Why Join Us?

This is an opportunity to play a vital role in supporting Armed Forces recruitment by leading a security-critical operational service with real national impact. You’ll join a collaborative environment where operational excellence, leadership, and continuous improvement are highly valued, while helping shape and develop a growing service. If you are an experienced operational leader with a strong background in vetting, compliance, and service delivery, we’d love to hear from you.

What we offer

• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays, with the option to purchase more.
• Pension – 6%.
• Life assurance.
• A company passionate about diversity and inclusion.
• Growth and development opportunities – Serco will support with a range of qualifications.
• A range of benefits to support the health and wellbeing of you and your family such as Employee Assistance Programme, Wisdom App, Simply Health Plans and more.
• A Serco benefits portal offering a wide range discount for major high street brands in Retail, Leisure & Hospitality.

About Serco

At Serco, not only is the nature of the work we do important, everyone has an important role to play, from caring for vulnerable people to managing complex public services. We are a team of 50,000 people responsible for delivering essential public services around the world in areas including defence, transport, justice, immigration, healthcare and citizen services. We are innovators, committed to redesigning and improving public services for the benefit of everyone. By joining Serco you will have unlimited access to our Global Employee Networks – SercoInspire (Gender), SercoEmbrace (Multicultural), SercoUnlimited (Disability) and In@Serco (LGBT & Networks). Serco Employee Networks, led by colleagues who are passionate about diversity, inclusion and belonging.

Apply

Please click on the apply button to complete your application. Occasionally we receive a large volume of applications for our roles and when that happens we sometimes bring the closing date forward, so please apply promptly to avoid disappointment. At Serco, we see people first and foremost for their performance and potential. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive organisation that supports the needs of all. As such we will make reasonable adjustments at interview through to employment for our candidates and strongly encourage applications from a diverse candidate pool. We are open to discussions around flexibility and flexible working. We operate a hybrid work structure in many of our business areas. We are proudly Disability Confident Leader employers and holder of the Gold Inclusive Employer Standard. Disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the job will be given the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities at an interview.

For help with your application please contact 0345 010 4000. At Serco we support fair access to employment for those with unspent criminal convictions through the ‘Ban the Box’ pledge (some may be exempt due to the nature of the role and the security clearance required). Please contact our recruitment team directly on 0345 010 4000 to discuss.