Department: Specialist Roles

Location(s): Central London

Contract Type: Permanent

Hours of Work: Full Time

Salary: £45,094 (with an opportunity to qualify for additional allowances and a skills-related payment under the CTF (Cyber Technical Framework).

Flexible Working: There is the opportunity to work compressed hours. This is primarily an office-based role but there may be occasional opportunities to work from home e.g., when focusing on Learning and Development

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’ll do unique and challenging work in a supportive and encouraging environment, making a real difference to UK national security.

The Role

Our team supports MI5’s mission by designing, installing and maintaining solutions to gather intelligence against MI5’s most technically aware target set. You will be working across a number of exciting areas in a growing team, as we deliver against an expanding remit supporting a number of mission areas and assisting the work of MI6 and GCHQ. Building strong relationships across MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the wider industry is therefore an integral part of this role.

This role involves working out how to retrieve data from large and complex networks. Part of this role will be to design bespoke solutions for high priority requirements, alongside making sure we can continue to scale our operations and automate more of our standard work.

This role can be undertaken by focusing on individual project work, collaborating with internal and external partners, or a combination of both.

A key responsibility of this role is managing a small number of staff and providing technical mentoring to operators within the team. There is the opportunity for national and occasional international travel within this role.

You’ll be working under the CTF framework, which recognises and rewards specialist expertise.

There are physical requirements to the role including carrying and moving equipment.

About You

You have a solid foundation in network engineering and an understanding of global datacentre interconnection. Ideally you have experience configuring, installing and maintaining networking infrastructure from a vendor such as Cisco/Arista/Juniper.

We are looking for someone who can provide technical direction to others within the team to create a supportive and collaborative environment for learning. We want someone who is able to build strong relationships with technical contacts, including wider industry.

You either have an engineering degree or equivalent experience in a technical role in industry. You are confident coding in high level languages (e.g. Python/Go) to automate routine network engineering functions and you have an understanding of network configuration in any GNU/Linux-based system.

Preferred but not essential is a deeper understanding of optical networks with experience of ROADMs, coherent transponders and long-haul optical connectivity. You are comfortable working on projects in cross-functional teams and can explain technical concepts related to internet infrastructure to non-technical audiences

Training and Development

The role also offers a unique opportunity to work with colleagues in industry, often at the cutting edge of research and development on new technologies. Internally, the organisation offers multiple training courses to help you develop over the course of your career with a particular focus on core skills, management and leadership, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

The successful applicant will be able to take on project work that best suits their skillset and aspirations for development within their role. We can also offer anyone who joins the option to more deeply specialise by taking on technical project work to suit the candidate’s interests and skillset, and we support staff in our team with ongoing technical training to ensure their skills are kept up to date and to ensure they have the support they need to achieve any professional qualifications they are working towards.

Recognising the skills and abilities of our staff now and as they progress through their careers is central to our culture, we do this by encouraging our staff to join the Cyber Technical Framework (CTF). The CTF has been developed to allow us to assess the knowledge, skills and attributes of our cyber technical specialists, while providing support to enable them to progress their career further whether this is growing as a leader or an individual with deep technical knowledge and ability. Membership of the CTF is on application basis via skills-based assessments and allows us to fully recognise and reward our specialists.

The starting salary for this role is £45,094. This is a role that qualifies for a specialist capability-based pay approach that recognises and rewards cyber technical specialist expertise. Therefore, based on our assessment of skills and experience at interview, you may be eligible for additional skills payment, potentially increasing the salary to between £52,804 and £56,826.

To retain the higher salary, you will need to demonstrate and accredit your skills based on our Cyber Technical Framework, within the first year of employment. If you are unable to evidence the required skills, you will be given the opportunity and support to rectify this. If this is not achieved by the end of your first year of employment, it may involve reverting to a lower pay level, within the stated range.

As you develop, grow and maintain your technical skills, you will have the opportunity to progress through a further pay point at this grade. Employees are able to apply for recognition that their skills have reached a higher level at regular intervals, when they and their line manager deem they are ready.

We run a multi-vendor network and you will be given the opportunity to develop your technical skills as far as you desire on the Juniper and Arista certification tracks. Alternatively, you may want to focus on Linux and we will support you in studying towards Red Hat certifications.

There is an organisation-wide Induction Roadmap and the successful candidate will also be given the opportunity to meet with our key partners, customers and stakeholders to understand how our team helps the organisation meet its wider goals.

Rewards and Benefits

You’ll receive a starting salary of £45,094 plus other benefits including:

• 25 Days Annual Leave automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years' service, and an additional 10.5 days public and privilege holidays

• Opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme

• Personal Learning Budget

• Interest-free season ticket loan

• Excellent pension scheme

• Cycle to work scheme

• Facilities such as a gym, restaurant and on-site coffee bars (at some locations)

• 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, those from an ethnic minority background, people with disabilities and those from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Find out more about our culture, working environment and diversity on our website here.

We’re Disability Confident

MI5 are proud to have achieved Leader status within the DWP’s Disability Confident scheme. This is aimed at encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people. Being Disability Confident, we aim to offer a person-to-person interview to any candidate who self-identifies as disabled and meets the essential criteria for the role. This is our ‘Offer of Interview’ (OOI). To secure an interview for this vacancy, the essential criteria (in order of application process) are:

• Passing a sift of your application to test your motivation for this role.

What to Expect

Our recruitment process is fair, transparent, and based on merit. Here is a brief overview of each stage, in order:

• Application sift, looking at your motivation for the role and the organisation.

• Competency based interview with additional technical questions based on the role you are applying for.

• If successful, you will receive a conditional offer of employment, subject to vetting

Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 - 9 months to process including vetting, so we advise you continue any current employment until you have received your final job offer.

Before You Apply

To work at MI5, you need to be a British citizen or hold dual British nationality. You can read our full eligibility criteria here.

This role requires the highest security clearance, known as Developed Vetting (DV). It’s something everyone in the UK Intelligence Community undertakes. You can find out more about the vetting process here.

Please note we have a strict drugs policy, so once you start your application, you can’t take any recreational drugs and you’ll need to declare your previous drug usage at the relevant stage.

The role is based in London, so you’ll need to live within a commutable distance. Please consider any financial implications and practicalities before submitting an application. A loan is available to support people relocating to London.

Please note, you should only launch your application from within the UK. If you are based overseas, you should wait until you visit the UK to launch an application. Applying from outside the UK will impact on our ability to progress your application. You should not discuss your application, other than with your partner or a close family member.

Right to Withdraw Statement:

Please be aware that we withhold the right to bring forward the closing date for this role from the original closing date once a certain number of applications have been received. Please be mindful of this and submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.

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