Training and Operations Adviser

Job summary

The Incident Response Team (IRT) is responsible for DCMS’s crisis response planning and preparation. We work on a varied and exciting range of issues across the department and Whitehall.

We frequently engage with a range of cross-Whitehall resilience fora and deal with smaller responses in-house where we coordinate activity across the department to represent DCMS interests.

We have developed a volunteer cadre of staff from across the department who can be called upon to respond to more significant issues. We are developing our capability to plan and deliver exercises to test and improve both our people and our plans.

We also run the Resilience Oversight Board to generate strategic oversight and drive resilience work across the department.

Part of the Performance, Projects, Inquiry & Response division in the Project Delivery and Major Events directorate, we are a small team located across offices in London, Manchester and Cardiff.

Job description

This is a fast paced and challenging role that would suit someone with excellent organisation and communication skills.

The team acts as the first port of call for DCMS on resilience and emergency response issues. You will triage and manage information flows, prioritise requests, ensure that the right people are engaged and that DCMS is appropriately represented at cross-government fora.

You will work with the SEO to manage the relationship with a cadre of crisis volunteers across the department, producing regular communications and supporting the delivery of training courses and exercises.

In crisis response, you will play an important role in the Department Operations Centre as the lead information manager, contributing to the maintenance of situational awareness and tracking response activities.

You will play an essential role in the administration of the Resilience Oversight Board including agreeing agendas, managing participants, putting into place the necessary logistics and producing the minutes.

As part of this role you will also provide ad hoc support for residual Covid Inquiry work, reporting to the Head of Policy and Planning G7. This includes, but is not limited to, leading on invoicing and budget monitoring, as well as scrutinising Inquiry reports for DCMS interests.

Person specification

The ideal candidate would have the following key skills and experience, please note that desirable skills will only be used in the event of tied candidates:

Essential Requirements:

• Confident at managing a number of priority pieces of work at the same time. Quickly able to progress and resolve issues independently and remain calm under pressure.
• Adept at reviewing a wide range of information and applying critical thinking to solve problems.
• Ability to engage with complex work, maintain a broad understanding and make sensible decisions on actions and positions.
• Confident and capable communicator who is able to effectively engage a varied range of officials inside and outside of the department to achieve the desired result.
• Strong organisational skills, able to follow defined processes while also identifying opportunities to improve or develop entirely new options.
• Excellent written and oral briefer who can get important information across quickly and easily.

Desirable Skills:

• Previous exposure to crisis management or resilience work in central or local government, the armed forces, police, NGO or business.
• Experience of secretariat duties for a department board

We are running an information session where prospective applicants can find out more about the role. This will be hosted by David Evans, and will take place on:

• Tues 2 June, 14:00

The session will be an opportunity to hear more about the role, the team and wider directorate and the department. It will also be an opportunity for you to ask any questions.

Please register your interest before 1st June 2026 by 4pm by filling out this Registration form and you will be sent an invitation. Invites will only be sent after this deadline has passed.

Please note that the session will not be recorded and will not focus on the DCMS recruitment process - please direct any queries that you have on this topic (timelines, reasonable adjustments, onboarding etc) to resourcing.team@dcms.gov.uk

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Delivering at Pace

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Making Effective Decisions