Critical Chemicals Resilience Support Fund Senior Fund Managers x3

About this role

Details

National Minimum £60,732 - Maximum £67,296 London Minimum £64,732 - Maximum £71,296

A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

GBP

Job grade

Business area

DBT - BG - Industry

Type of role

Policy

Working pattern

Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

Number of jobs available

3

Contents

• Location
• About the job
• Benefits
• Things you need to know
• Apply and further information

About the job

Job summary

The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) is the department for economic growth. We support businesses to invest, grow and export, creating jobs and opportunities across the country. We operate in an increasingly dynamic international environment, with a range of forces rapidly reshaping the global economy. To meet this challenge, the Government launched a new Modern Industrial Strategy in June 2025. The Materials Directorate provides oversight of key cornerstone sectors of our economy – including chemicals, critical minerals, and other foundation industries (paper, glass, cement, ceramics), providing policy expertise to support economic growth in these sectors and ensuring that they continue to support our national resilience.

Announced in May this year, the £350m Critical Chemicals Resilience Fund will help ensure that Government can work with the most essential businesses within the chemical sector to improve their competitiveness and bolster their resilience. You will be working with industry to agree co-investments, develop robust business cases and to agree delivery plans for each of the Fund recipients.

We expect the Fund to garner strong ministerial interest and oversight given the importance of chemicals for critical national infrastructure and national security. We therefore encourage applications from candidates that are comfortable engaging senior officials and ministers.

The team you will be joining also has the remit of Government intervention and responses to market failures for the chemicals sector and other sectors that the Materials Directorate has responsibility for. You therefore may be required to work flexibly and balance these priorities.

We envisage further opportunities becoming available over the coming months to support the directorates wider portfolio, particularly with regards to the delivery of the £120m Ceramics Industry Support Scheme which will offer competitive funding across the ceramics sector to improve decarbonisation and efficiency. There may also be opportunities to support the government’s strategy for foundation sectors. The reserve list for this recruitment campaign will therefore be used to support filling those roles.

Job description

Key Responsibilities

• Advising, negotiating and overseeing business cases and investment plans with industry.
• Working closely with Cross Whitehall partners including BIST Grants Delivery Directorate, HMT, UKGI and external advisers to assess the benefits and return on investment of the projects, including ensuring delivery against HMG Value for Money principles.
• Showcase your strong negotiating skills and stakeholder management to work with businesses on project delivery, alongside external advisers.

Programme management of the Fund

• Manage virtual teams across BIST policy, grants, finance, legal and commercial colleagues to ensure effective running of the Fund.
• Ensure fast and consistent delivery across the programme of co-investment projects, including agreement of grant funding, and appropriate monitoring and evaluation.
• Implement and oversee robust governance structures to support effective evaluation of projects and senior assurance of both individual projects and the programmes themselves.

Represent the CCF**to stakeholders, seniors and across Whitehall

• Lead strategic engagement with external stakeholders, particularly successful grant applicants, but also wider industry stakeholders including trade representative organisations, to support effective delivery of the Fund.
• Lead briefing for Senior Officials and Ministers to provide oversight of economic growth and resilience in the sector, and ensure ongoing alignment of the scheme and approved projects with Departmental priorities.

Person specification

Essential criteria

The below criteria are essential and will be assessed at application stage.

• Strong policy design and delivery skills to support complex policy implementation
• Excellent project and programme management skills, to deliver and ensure appropriate oversight of significant public investments.
• Proven ability to build and manage relationships with senior stakeholders across government and industry.

Desirable criteria

The below criteria are desirable only. These will not be assessed throughout the recruitment process, but will be used in the event of tied scores between candidates.

• Experience in working to support companies that are receiving Government funding
• Experience in industrial and economic policy.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Delivering at Pace
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Leadership

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £60,732, Department for Business and Trade contributes £17,594 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides .

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

We recognise the challenges that people with (multiple) protected characteristics may experience on the job market and in their career progression. We are fully committed to being an inclusive employer and ensuring equal opportunities. We are keen to make our workforce as diverse as possible, and we hope to attract applications from underrepresented groups, including ethnic minorities, people with a disability, and people with gender diverse identities.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles , and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Interviews for this vacancy will be conducted virtually. We will, however, consider in-person interviews by exception.

Please ensure that you check your emails regularly as all updates from us will be sent to you this way.

To apply for this post, you will be asked to complete the following as part of the online application:

• A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Provide employment history that relates to the essential criteria, and that any gaps in employment history within the last 2 years are explained. The CV should not exceed more than 2 x A4 pages.
• A Personal Statement of up to 500 words, explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role in reference to the essential criteria.

Your application will be sifted against the Experience criteria of the Civil Service Success Profiles.

We aim to sift both the CV and the Personal Statement but, in the event of a large number of applicants, an initial short sift may be conducted on the Personal Statement only.

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