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Essential Criteria
£86,000
A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
Alongside your salary of £86,000, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs contributes £24,914 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)
Senior leadership
This role is about continuing to increase the global impact of Defra's development portfolio, maximising the impact of the UK aid budget that is managed by Defra, integrating it with other programming and leveraging it to deepen partnerships globally that will both tackle the global biodiversity crisis, and also reduce poverty and tackle inequality.
The postholder will continue to mature Defra's systems, processes and programming and steward and oversee Defra's ODA portfolio - of approximately £345m over the SR period. They will ensure that programmes align with government priorities and deliver environmental outcomes and that Defra maximises the learning and the technical partnerships between international and domestic teams. They will also ensure effective financial management, risk management, assurance, accountability and results reporting is in place, drawing on their previous fraud and safeguarding knowledge and understanding.
The Deputy Director will guide the teams that oversee flagship biodiversity programmes, including the Darwin Initiative, Legacy Landscapes Fund and the Biodiverse Landscapes Fund, ensuring effective delivery and continuous improvement to support local communities and locally-led conservation.
The role will also require a strong communicator with the ability to build strong partnerships across government and lead on ODA Spending Review negotiations. The Deputy Director will be confident to represent Defra externally, and to build partnerships with international organisations, donors, foundations and the private sector to leverage additional finance and scale impact.
The leadership challenge will be to both lead a multidisciplinary team of approximately 28 FTE and also provide professional oversight, learning and development and standard setting for the wider community of approximately 100 staff working on ODA programming and promoting an inclusive, high-performing culture.
Permanent
Full-time, Job share
Bristol, London, York
483242
SCS Pay Band 1
1
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
Apply before 11:55 pm on Wednesday 14th October 2026
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.
You will be assessed on the following behaviours throughout the selection process: Seeing the bigger picture, Developing self and others, Working Together, Changing and improving
As part of the application process, candidates are asked to complete a CV and Personal Statement (no more than 1000 words) on how your relevant skills and experience meet the essential criteria. Completed applications must be submitted no later than the closing date of 23:55pm 14th October 2026.
A sift will be conducted against the key criteria in the essential criteria and will assess your experience. Applications will be assessed by the selection panel and shortlisted. (please note: feedback is not given at the shortlist stage)
Assessment - Staff Engagement Exercise
This assessment will not result in a pass or fail decision. Rather, it is designed to support the panel's decision-making and highlight areas for the panel to explore further at interview.
Full details of the assessment process will be provided to shortlisted candidates at the earliest opportunity.
For further information regarding the assessments please visit - https://scs-assessments.co.uk/
You will be asked to attend a panel interview, in order to have a more in-depth discussion of your previous experience and professional competence in relation to the essential criteria for the role. As part of the interview, we may ask you to prepare and present a short presentation or undertake a practical desktop exercise. This will be confirmed in the interview invitation. We will also ask some strengths-based questions.
Interviews will be held face to face in 2, Marsham Street London.
DEFRA - Environment - International Biodiversity & Climate
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Please let us know what adjustments we can put in place to help you through the recruitment process if you are disabled.
Candidates who pass the interview criteria but are not offered a post may be kept on a reserve list for 12 months and may be offered similar roles across the department.
Defra Is committed to 'name blind' sifting. That means that identifying characteristics such as your name, gender, age, or address are removed from your application until after shortlisting for interview has taken place.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration
is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them
to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through
building your depth of expertise.
As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above.
This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions.
Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and
conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your
personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any
absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you
to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.
Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).
See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
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