Psychologist (Occupational Psychology) Ref. 3736

Flexible Working: We support full time, part time, compressed hours and other flexible working patterns. This is an office based role and, due to the nature of the work, home or remote working are not available.

About Us: MI5 keeps the country safe from serious threats like terrorism and attempts by states to harm the UK, its people and way of life. We carry out investigations by obtaining, analysing, and assessing intelligence, and then work with a range of partners including MI6 and GCHQ to disrupt these threats. Through our protective security arm, we provide advice and guidance to government, businesses and other organisations about how to keep themselves safe. A role in MI5 means you will do unique and challenging work in a supportive and encouraging environment, making a real difference to UK national security.

The Role: As a Psychologist, you will apply your specialist knowledge, skills and experience to support MI5 and its people. This is an applied, delivery focused role operating within an internal consultancy model, where psychological evidence is used pragmatically to address real organisational needs. You will deliver defined consultancy projects and pieces of work, supporting scoping activity with customers, managing delivery, and providing clear, evidence based advice and guidance. Working with stakeholders across the organisation, you will build effective working relationships and act as the primary point of contact for allocated work, ensuring outputs are high quality and appropriate to the organisational context. On a day to day basis, you will engage with customers to understand their needs, design and carry out data collection activities, and translate findings into practical tools, guidance and recommendations. You will contribute to the development, evaluation and continuous improvement of people processes, ensuring learning from your work is captured and applied to future activity.

About You: You are a psychologist with a grounding in applied occupational psychology and experience in using your psychology knowledge and skills to address real organisational challenges. You hold a postgraduate qualification in Occupational Psychology (or equivalent) with eligibility to complete Stage 2 of the Qualification in Occupational Psychology. You have experience working on occupational psychology related projects within the public or private sector or a consultancy setting. You are comfortable using evidence to inform decisions that are fair, proportionate and defensible. You understand the importance of professional standards and ethical practice, and you are an accredited test user or eligible for accreditation, recognising assessment quality and governance. Your consultancy skills are credible but developing, and you enjoy working with customers to understand complex people and organisational issues. You can scope and deliver defined pieces of work, gather and analyse data, and translate psychological evidence into clear, practical recommendations that add value. You have applied occupational psychology across areas such as job analysis, skills frameworks, assessment or wider people processes, balancing methodological rigour with pragmatic delivery. You communicate clearly with non specialist audiences and value teamwork, knowledge sharing and ongoing professional development within a supportive occupational psychology team.

Training and Development: We are committed to supporting your development as an applied occupational psychologist and helping you build confidence delivering high quality consultancy work in complex organisational environments. On joining, you will receive an induction to the team, organisational context and the areas of work you will be contributing to, giving you a clear understanding of how your role supports wider objectives. You will be supported through close working with more senior occupational psychologists, with access to coaching, feedback and reflective practice. This support will help develop consultancy skills, professional judgement and applied delivery capability as you take increasing ownership of defined pieces of work. Alongside on the job learning, you will have access to continuing professional development aligned to progression towards chartership. Development at this level focuses on building strong foundations for long term practice, within a collaborative and supportive professional team.

Rewards and Benefits: You will receive a starting salary of £50985 plus other benefits including: 25 days annual leave, automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years of service, and an additional 10.5 days public and privilege holidays, a dedicated development budget, opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme, an interest free season ticket loan, an excellent pension scheme, a cycle to work scheme, facilities such as a gym, restaurant and on site coffee bars (at some locations), and paid parental and adoption leave.

Equal Opportunities: At MI5, diversity and inclusion are critical to our mission. To protect the UK, we need a truly diverse workforce that reflects the society we serve. This includes diversity in every sense of the word: those with different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, ways of thinking and those with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including those from groups that are under represented in our workforce such as women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and those from low socio economic backgrounds.

Disability Confidence: MI5 is proud to have achieved Leader status within the UK Department for Work and Pensions Disability Confident scheme and is committed to offering fair and proportionate interviews to candidates who self identify as disabled and meet the essential criteria for the role.