Senior Strategy & Assurance Advisor

This is an exciting leadership opportunity within the National Security and Response (ESR) team, supporting high profile cross-cutting risk, strategy and assurance work at the forefront of seniors' and ministers' priorities. You will provide critical expertise and build links between DESNZ and other partners across Government to guarantee the Department has the capabilities to respond to incidents affecting our diverse sectors. This role leads work to understand and articulate the department's overall capability and level of preparedness to effectively respond to crises, via adherence to a cross-government leading Assurance Framework and Standards. Working closely with DESNZ sector teams, you will oversee the strategic management and implementation of lessons identified from responses to emergencies, such as Covid-19 or incidents caused by severe weather, as well as exercises such as those to determine government preparedness for catastrophic risks. You will build confidence and expertise in managing emergencies as and when they occur, leading on the management of the departmental Concept of Operations and contribute to the delivery of crisis management excellence across DESNZ and Government.If you would like to play a role in shaping the preparedness of both DESNZ and Government, we would love to hear from you! About the team: Our friendly, welcoming and supportive team ensures the risks of significant disruption to energy supplies and Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) are understood, prepared for and responded to effectively. We work across Whitehall and industry on the mitigation, prevention and reduction of risks, including severe weather (floods, storms, space weather), supply chain issues, cyber-attacks, terrorism, state actors and industrial action. Our team works reciprocally to improve the resilience of sectors, in particular the oil, gas and electricity sectors, leading on the development of contingency plans and mitigation policies.Our team also provides emergency response coordination across DESNZ's broad portfolio. We bring together the different strands of complex response operations and feed into cross-government COBR response structures and activity. We collaboratively develop and exercise plans and provide bespoke emergency response training to make sure that government is ready to respond effectively to incidents that threaten our areas of interest.Crisis management might sound complicated, but effective response and preparedness comes down to understanding and communicating the risk and effective training and exercising to build capability. It is also about actively learning from past experiences to know what we need to do to be prepared to respond and working with our key partners to ensure we collectively act at the right time according to the practised and integrated processes we have in place. We are looking for an outstanding senior executive officer (or someone ready for promotion) to provide leadership and build positive and productive relationships with the full range of partners to deliver our objectives.Working in our Emergency Response: Capabilities and Operations (ERCO) Team, you will focus on ensuring the continued development and delivery of a government leading Assurance Framework programme across risk owning teams in DESNZ and beyond. This work is vital in assuring our preparedness to deal with incidents and in how we provide assurances to seniors and ministers, industry and across Government.