Address Salary: National ranging from £65,200 to £95,000 and London from £67,900 to £100,000
Would you like to play a leading role protecting consumers and markets from the impact of technological disruption and cyber-attacks?
The team/department
We are pleased to be offering an exciting opportunity to provide the lead technical and strategic expertise and thought leadership on the FCA’s approach to operational Incident Response and Service Continuity within regulated firms. You will build on recent developments and policies, helping to shape future thinking as part of the Technology, Resilience and Cyber Department (TRC). Over the next 18 to 24 months, you will be responsible for leading our policy development on Incident Reporting, a pivotal component of our delivery against one of the FCA’s strategic priorities - minimising the disruption from operational incidents.
What you will be doing
We are seeking an experienced and committed senior business continuity and/or incident management specialist to join TRC and provide specialist expertise and thought leadership within our work. TRC works with firms to ensure their existing systems and technologies are resilient to cyber-attacks and other disruption, and aim to protect consumers and markets and build confidence in the effectiveness of technology that underpins financial services. We work closely with the Bank of England, PRA, HM Treasury, the National Cyber Security Centre, and a range of other domestic and international authorities.
- At a time of rapid technology change and increasing cyber threats, you will have the opportunity to influence the FCA’s and industry's agenda to work in the public interest and increase the sector's operational resilience. This role covers a challenging and varied portfolio of work across all sectors of Financial Services and comprises a combination of reactive Incident Response, input into proactive firm assessment, and leadership of a significant strategic policy project
- This is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your specialist expertise and leadership, in particular on business continuity and incident management underpinning operational resilience within firms, leveraging your expertise to support the FCA’s objectives
- Be the FCA’s lead specialist expert and thought leader on firms’ business continuity and Incident Response, articulating what best practices industry should be following and where business continuity and Incident Response thinking should be going next
- Lead our policy work on Incident Reporting, ensuring that our rules and tooling on incidents enables effective and efficient reporting by industry. This work will reduce administrative burden on firms, improve our data quality, and enable more effective regulatory response to operational incidents
- Lead a “service line” of TRC specialists in developing the FCA’s thinking and driving through new initiatives on firms’ business continuity and Incident Response
What you will get from the role
- Support colleagues, including supervisors and FCA senior management, while demonstrating a recognised level of expertise in the subject matter
- Support TRC firm leads in the business continuity aspects of firm assessments (desk and/or visits based) to provide supervisors with a forward-looking judgement-based assessment, supported by the facts, on whether a firm's arrangements provide sufficient comfort and, where this is not the case, recommend action points for further review
- Be on call to manage incidents, on a periodic basis outside of normal business hours
- Provide specialist input and direction on the response to operational incidents within regulated firms, or across the sector, particularly in relation to highly complex or disruptive incidents
- Lead on key strategic initiatives across the department, ensuring a cohesive approach, linking technology issues with wider business risks and ability to articulate what these risks mean to consumers and the wider market
- Provide expert technical oversight and quality assurance for work undertaken by other team members and mentor more junior team members
Our competitive flexible benefits scheme gives you the opportunity to create a personalised benefits package, tailored to suit your lifecycle. You can use this allowance to purchase additional benefits such as dental or cycle to work or you have the option top up your base salary by taking this as cash.
Core benefits that you will receive as standard are:
- 28 days holiday per year plus bank holidays
- Private healthcare with Bupa
- A non-contributory Pension of at least 8% of basic salary each month (there are several contribution levels that increase depending on your age – up to 12% a month once you reach age 35)
- Life assurance of eight times your basic salary
- Income protection
We support hybrid working which means you will be able to work from home up to 60% of the time over a month with the remainder of your time in one of our three office locations.
The skills and experience you will have
We are a signatory to the Government’s Disability Confident scheme. This means that we will offer an interview to disabled candidates entering under the scheme, should they meet the minimum criteria for a role.
Minimum
- Experience of business continuity and incident management practices within industry (ideally in the financial sector), including experience of end-to-end incident management processes. This should include an industry recognised qualification relating to business continuity, disaster recovery and incident management (for example; ITIL (V3 or 4), CBCI, CBCP, ISO, BCM, CCIM, etc.) or appropriate equivalent work experience
- Experience of providing strategic insights on business continuity and incident management to senior stakeholders, in relation to large scale or complex projects
- Excellent written communication skills, with the experience to independently draft complex papers for executive committees within the FCA, external papers and succinct, accurate communications with regulated entities and liaise with senior internal and external stakeholders
Essential
- Deep experience across cyber and technology risk management domains, this may include one, or a number of the following; technology governance, technology risk, change management, incident/problem management, disaster recovery, business continuity, outsourcing, data governance, cyber governance, identification, situational awareness, protection, detection response, incident management, recovery and resumption of services and testing
- Calmness under pressure, with ability to analysis incidents and issues at pace with high attention to detail
- Strong oral communication skills including clear and effective presentation to both internal and external audiences
- Strong interpersonal and influencing skills with evidence of team working and confidence, credibility and ability to interact effectively with a range of both domestic and international stakeholders including senior executives at firms and within the FCA
- Experience of project management including developing and delivering against plans, managing risks and issues along the way. Experience of managing budgets as part of a project would be of benefit
- Can demonstrate taking pride in work and ensuring it is of the highest standard, with a willingness to challenge and be challenged
- Knowledge of financial markets, with a proven ability to identify key technology risks and propose strategies to manage them
- A strategic understanding of the global regulatory landscape for technology and cyber risk, and operational resilience
About the FCA
The FCA regulates the conduct of 50,000 firms in the UK to ensure our financial markets are honest, fair and competitive. We do this to make sure markets work well for individuals, businesses and the economy as a whole. For more information on what we do, our three-year strategy can be found
here.
The FCA's Values & Diversity
Our ambition is to cultivate a culture of inclusion for all employees that respects their individual strengths, views, and experiences. We believe that our differences and similarities enable us to be a better organisation – one that makes better decisions, drives innovation, and delivers better regulation.
The FCA is committed to achieving greater diversity across all levels of the organisations. Given this, we particularly welcome applications from women, disabled and minority ethnic candidates for our Technical Specialist role.
Flexible working
We welcome applications from candidates who are looking for flexible arrangements. Many of our staff work flexibly including working part-time, staggered hours, and job shares. We can’t promise to give you exactly what you want but we won’t judge you for asking.
Multi-location
As part of the FCA’s on-going commitment to develop our national presence, most of our vacancies are now open to working in our Edinburgh, Leeds, or London offices. This means that as part of the application process you will be able to select your preference of which office location you would like to work from.
Useful information
- Applications for this role close at 23.59 on 17th March 2024
- This role is graded as Technical Specialist - Regulatory
Got a question?
If you are interested in learning more about the role please contact:
For internal applicants, please contact Linda Bradley at
linda.bradley@fca.org.uk
For external applicants, please contact Chhavi Bartaria at
chhavi.bartaria@fca.org.uk
What to expect from our interview process
The interview process will be a one hour competency based interview and Case study.
Application support
We want to remove any possible barriers and are committed to providing a wide range of reasonable adjustments so that you can keep the focus on your conversations and be at your best.
If you have an accessibility requirement, disability, or condition that means you might require changes to the recruitment process, please contact your recruiter to discuss this further. Our aim is to make your application as easy and comfortable as possible, and your recruiter will be happy to work with you to make any necessary arrangements where possible.
Security Clearance/Vetting
The successful candidate will hold or will be required to obtain Security Clearance (SC) level vetting.
