Strategic External Communications Lead Ref. 3718

Job Description

Flexible working: Full time, part-time, and compressed hours are available, with a minimum requirement of at least four days a week. We also offer flexible start and finish times, to help support a healthy work-life balance, and we encourage conversations about working patterns that suit both you and the team. Homeworking isn’t possible due to the nature of the work, which must be done on site.

About us

MI5 keeps the country safe from serious threats like terrorism and attempts by states to harm the UK, its people, and its 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 on 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

As a Communications Lead, you’ll play a vital part in supporting MI5’s mission to protect the UK through your work for the National Protective Security Authority (NPSA), contributing to the organisation’s strategic engagement with external partners and audiences. NPSA leads national efforts to strengthen physical and personnel security against terrorism and state-based threats.

At its core the purpose of this work is to ensure NPSA’s expertise makes a meaningful difference. This is achieved by using creativity, initiative and communication skills to shape how NPSA shares its expertise on high-priority issues, to build relationships with partners across Whitehall, UKIC and industry to amplify its messages, and to ensure expert guidance reaches – and resonates with – the people who need it.

This role brings strategic communications expertise to NPSA in designing and delivering effective, high-impact communications. By taking a thoughtful and coordinated approach, you’ll deliver increased and measurable impact across a wide range of audiences seeking to strengthen their resilience to terrorism and state threats.

Working closely with communications, outreach, and research colleagues, you’ll deliver multiple impactful, integrated campaigns across social media, web, and national, trade, and specialist press, and help identify new ways to best reach NPSA’s audiences. Alongside this, the role supports NPSA to better understand and demonstrate the impact of its communications, while continuing to build solid and recognisable brand presence.

Balancing creativity with care, you’ll manage reputational risks while keeping a close eye on emerging opportunities and challenges. By sharing clear, practical advice on communications policies, channels, and best practice, you’ll help colleagues feel confident and empowered, contributing to the development of robust, long-term external communications capability across NPSA.

About you

You’ll bring extensive experience in an external-facing communications role, with experience in strategic planning and delivering effective communications strategies. You’ll have delivered impactful engagement activity and digital campaigns, often in environments where priorities can change and you’ll feel confident shaping messages for a wide range of audiences. You’re able to translate complex or sensitive information into clear, engaging content.

You’ll also have experience identifying and building productive partnerships with other organisations, using these relationships to reach new audiences and deliver mutually beneficial communications outcomes. This includes managing relationships thoughtfully when perspectives do not fully align, applying sound judgement, political awareness, and diplomacy to find constructive ways forward.

A proactive and collaborative approach is essential, with the ability to work effectively with others while also feeling comfortable progressing work independently when required. Experience supporting colleagues with less communications experience to develop their skills is important, alongside the ability to anticipate risks, spot emerging trends, and identify opportunities that may
influence future communications activity.

Training and development

From your first day, you’ll receive a comprehensive induction to MI5 and the NPSA, giving you a clear understanding of our work, our priorities, and the colleagues you’ll be working with. Support is available from your line manager, wider teams and a peer network, creating space to ask questions, build confidence and settle comfortably into your role.
As part of your ongoing development, you’ll have access to training through the Government Communications Service (GCS), as well as wider government learning and accreditation opportunities, helping you grow your skills, broaden your experience, and develop professionally throughout your time with us.

Rewards and benefits

You’ll receive a starting salary of £59,028, plus other benefits including:

• 25 days’ annual leave, automatically rising to 30 days after 5 years' service, plus an additional 10.5 days of public and privilege holidays
• opportunities to be recognised through our employee performance scheme
• a dedicated development budget
• an interest-free season ticket loan
• an excellent pension scheme
• a 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: people 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, people 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:

https://www.MI5.gov.uk/careers/diversity

We’re Disability Confident

MI5 is proud to have achieved Leader status within the Department for Work and Pensions’ Disability Confident scheme. The scheme encourages employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people. As a Disability Confident Leader, we aim to ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants who best meet the essential minimum criteria for this position will be offered an interview, if it is practical for us to do so. This is known as Offer of an Interview. To secure an interview for this role, the minimum criteria (in order of application process) are:

• you’ll be required to reach the minimum pass mark for the Organisational Situational Judgement Test, which looks at your ability to problem-solve. meet the minimum pass mark in the questions on the application form about your motivation for the role and the organisation

There is a wide range of extra support available throughout the recruitment process to enable you to do your best, see our website for information on reasonable adjustments we can offer.

What to expect

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

1. Eligibility questions – you’ll answer a number of questions based on the requirements for the role.
2. Initial form – you’ll create a personal account and complete our equal opportunities monitoring questions. If you do not feel comfortable completing equal opportunities monitoring, there is a ‘prefer not to say’ option for each question.
3. Online Situational Judgement Test (SJT) - you will be asked to complete the SJT online, rating the appropriateness of responses to a series of short scenarios. The SJT tests criteria which are important for all roles in our organisation. Successful candidates will be asked to complete the application form.
4. Application form – you’ll be asked to complete an application form covering relevant experience and your motivation for applying. To process your application, it is essential that all requested information is provided.
5. Application sift – our recruitment team will complete an application sift, and successful applicants will be invited to the next stage.
6. Telephone Interview – you will be invited to a short telephone interview to discuss your motivation for the role.
7. Assessment Centre, including an interview and a presentation.
8. Conditional offer - if successful you will receive a conditional offer of employment.

Please note, you must successfully pass each stage of the process to progress to the next. Your application may take around 6 to 9 months to process including vetting, so we advise that 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.

Before you apply, we advise you to consider setting up a separate email address for your contact with us, to ensure your personal and application correspondence remains separate. Try to avoid including identifying features in your email address, such as your first and/or surname and date of birth. This is good practice and will help you manage your application with us more securely.

The role is based in Central London, so you’ll need to live within a commutable distance. Please consider any financial implications and practicalities before submitting an application. An interest-free loan is available to assist with relocating into privately rented accommodation to take up the offer of employment.

We offer reasonable reimbursement of travel costs for candidates attending in person interviews or assessments during the recruitment and vetting process. Full details will be provided with your interview or assessment invitation.

Reimbursement is discretionary and will only be made in line with the Candidate Expenses Policy, as amended from time to time. Candidates must book their own travel using the most economical option and provide original hard-copy receipts for reimbursement.

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 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 reserve the right to bring forward the closing date for this role 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.