Manager – Incident Response and Engagement Team

Salary: National from £67,100 to £109,000 and London from £73,700 to £119,800

Would you like to play a pivotal role protecting consumers and markets from the impacts of technological disruption and cyber attack?

The Team/Department

Are you capable of leading a high performing team that responds to operational incidents affecting the UK financial services sector and manages our engagement with the financial services industry and domestic and international stakeholders?

We are looking for a talented and committed people manager to lead the Incident Response and Engagement (IR&E) Team in our Technology, Resilience and Cyber (TRC) Department.

The FCA has made a strategic commitment to minimise the impact of operational disruptions. We want firms to respond to, recover and learn from and prevent future operational disruptions. When firms can’t, customers can lose access to essential services and confidence in financial services generally.

What you will be doing

• Lead and manage the FCA’s response to operational incidents in firms, including contributing to meetings with C-suite and SMFs within firms on their responses to operational disruptions and cyber attacks
• Lead the FCA’s response to the most significant operational incidents through the Authorities Response Framework (ARF), with PRA, BoE, HMT, and other UK authorities such as NCSC, ICO, PSR, Cabinet Office, and others
• Lead the department’s ongoing active engagements with domestic and international partners on operational and cyber resilience issues, including supporting a continuous programme of senior speaking engagements
• Manage the delivery of new FCA approaches and policy initiatives to improve what, when and how firms report operational incidents to us, working closely with PRA, BoE, HMT and colleagues across the FCA
• Play a collaborative role in the TRC Leadership Team, contributing to the delivery of the department’s strategy as we deliver on the FCA’s agenda to protect consumers and markets from harm
• Line manage, coach and support your team to deliver against its objectives
• Produce briefings, internal papers and contribute to speeches for FCA seniors, and external reports for public and regulated firms
• During live incidents affecting a firm or sector, be on call to respond out of hours and provide specialist input to the FCA’s response

What you will get from the role

• In this role, you will be making a significant contribution to minimise the impact of operational disruptions , with specific responsibility for our reactive work in response to operational incidents affecting firms, at a time of rapid technology change and increasing cyber threats
• You will also lead our proactive work to gather the right data on operational incidents, understand emerging threats and patterns, run our ongoing engagements with domestic and international stakeholders, and manage our department’s delivery risks
• This is an excellent opportunity to influence the FCA’s, firms’ and the international agenda to work in the public interest and increase the sector’s operational resilience
• You will be a capable strategic thinker with extremely strong team management capabilities, and a highly accomplished influencer with excellent stakeholder management skills

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

Minimum

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.

• Significant experience leading the response to operational/cyber incidents or other time-critical reactive events
• Substantial experience working with financial services firms or in another Critical National Infrastructure sectors
• The successful candidate will hold or will be required to obtain Security Clearance (SC)

Essential

• Strong judgement, especially under time pressure – can demonstrate making challenging, risk-based decisions in a complex and changing landscape
• Excellent oral and written communication skills including clear and effective presentation to both internal and external audiences, with the ability to explain complex issues succinctly and with clarity
• Exceptionally high levels of diligence and organisational skills – highly developed capability to push forward progress against a range of competing tasks and issues, prioritising appropriately and escalating where necessary
• Strong people management capabilities – previous experience having managed teams, or extensive experience having mentored individuals successfully
• Extremely strong interpersonal skills with evidence of team working, confidence and credibility, and an ability to interact effectively with a range of stakeholders including senior executives at firms, within the FCA and government
• A keen desire to learn more and support others’ learning in the fields of cyber, technology risk, and emerging challenges such as AI and quantum

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 Manager 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 27th October 2024
• This role is graded as Manager – Regulatory
• First Interviews will take place w/c 11th November 2024

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 

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What to expect from our interview process  

The process will involve three separate stages: 

• A competency-based interview
• Psychometric Assessment
• Final Interview

Your Recruiter will discuss the process in detail with you during screening for the role.  

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.

  

Please note that all applications must be submitted through our online portal, applications sent via email will not be accepted.