Information Security Governance, Risk & Compliance Manager; GRC)

As the Information Security Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) Manager, you will serve as the departmental subject matter expert on cyber risk management, security policy, and enterprise assurance. Reporting directly to the Head of Information Security, you will lead and develop the GRC team to drive the departmental cyber governance strategy, ensuring critical systems and digital services remain resilient against evolving threats.

Bridging the gap between executive strategy and technical implementation, you will provide authoritative risk advice to System Owners, Senior Information Risk Owners (SIROs), and Risk Committees. You will oversee central compliance with the Government Functional Standard for Security (GovS 007), lead the Gov Assure programme across the department, and embed Secure by Design (SbD) principles across all digital initiatives, while leveraging frameworks such as the NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF), ISO/IEC 27001, and NIST.

This role offers an exceptional opportunity to shape cyber resilience at the centre of government, leading high-impact assurance initiatives and fostering a culture of proactive risk management across dynamic digital transformation programmes.

Drive the delivery of the departmental cyber security governance strategy, establishing frameworks that support the organisational risk appetite while ensuring direct alignment with GovS 007 and the NCSC CAF.

Manage Gov Assure across the Cabinet Office, directing the central programme for the whole department and providing practical support and guidance to service owners.

Embed Secure by Design (SbD), ensuring security is integrated across the entire lifecycle of departmental digital and data projects.

Represent Cyber Security on key governance boards (e.g., Departmental Risk Committee), presenting complex risk trade-offs to non-technical leadership.

Manage commercial requirements, owning the allocated budget and acting as the contract manager for all GRC tooling and security education platforms.

Own the cyber risk framework, defining and maintaining the methodologies, standards, and thresholds that departmental teams must work within.

Lead GRC platform engineering, driving the administration, configuration, and continuous maturity of the central GRC tool to automate workflows and improve risk visibility.

Mature the departmental Cyber Risk Register, ensuring risk owners accurately identify, accept, or treat exposures in a timely manner.

Drive third-party and supply chain assurance, establishing cyber risk protocols across the enterprise and high-value procurement contracts.

Provide actionable risk intelligence, delivering regular insights on threat trends and control effectiveness to the Head of Information Security and senior leadership.

Facilitate risk workshops, leading regular sessions with technical and business leads to identify emerging threats and maintain high-quality risk data.

Author and enforce departmental cyber security policies, ensuring they remain practical and mapped against GovS 007, CAF, ISO 27001, and NIST CSF.

Track and integrate audit findings, working closely with operational security teams to record outputs from IT Health Checks (ITHCs), penetration tests, and external audits, ensuring remediation is tracked.

Govern cyber compliance and threat frameworks, leading on cyber-specific legislation and enterprise vulnerability management standards. Work alongside Data Privacy to support UK GDPR/DPA 2018, ensuring operational alignment with CIS Controls and MITRE ATT&CK.

Lead the security awareness programme, ensuring staff understand current threats and secure data handling practices through effective,…