National Crime Agency

Contents

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

National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) locations: Birmingham, Bristol, London*, and Warrington.

DDaT ( SOS) locations: Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester, London*, Stevenage, Warrington, and Wakefield.

• For London based roles your contractual place of work will be Stratford. It is likely that site will be operational from Summer 2025, in the interim period you will be required to carry out your contractual duties from Vauxhall, or such other reasonable location, on a temporary basis. For the avoidance of doubt as your contractual place of work is Stratford, the move from any temporary place of work will not give rise to any entitlement to payments for travel time or costs under the Relocation and Excess Travel Policy.

Successful applicants currently employed by NCA for this post may request to remain in their current contractual location. This should be discussed and agreed prior to proceeding with pre-employment checks. Please note this is dependant on business needs, please commence discussions with the hiring manager at the earliest opportunity.

About the job

Job summary

NCCU Roles

Join the National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) and bring your unique skills to lead the UK’s fight against cybercrime!

Our software development, data engineering, TR&D (Tactical Research and Development), and DevOps teams harness cutting-edge cloud technology to disrupt serious and organised crime.

Specialist Operational Services Roles

The Specialist Operational Services (SOS) is a critical function within the DDaT Enterprise Services (ES) Department. It provisions specialist digital capabilities and technical support to operational officers, assisting them in tackling the highest serious and organised crime threats.

The function is key to realising the new NCA Strategy by maintaining specialist capabilities as well as developing new cutting-edge tools in fight to keep pace with criminal exploitation of emerging technologies.

The team combines IT professionals and operational law enforcement experts to ensure that specialist services are operationally fit for purpose, legally compliant and delivered 24/7.

• Please note that successful candidates may be offered a role in either the National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) or the Specialist Operational Services(SOS) teams

Job description

NCCU Roles

The National Cyber Crime Unit's Tactical Research & Development team (TR&D) are a hybrid team of operational deployment specialists and technical capability developers who support both national and international investigations. Working in this team, you will design, develop and deploy using Targeted Equipment Interference warrants to support and enhance intelligence collection for investigations into high-end serious organised crime including Cyber Crime, Child Sexual Exploitation, Firearms, Controlled Drugs and Organised Immigration Crime. As a TR&D officer, you will work closely with NCA investigation teams, UK police and international law enforcement agencies to offer specialist advice and innovative niche capabilities involving areas such as malware analysis, cryptocurrency tracking, incident response network infrastructure investigations and covert device monitoring.

Working in the National Cyber Crime Unit’s DevOps, software development, and data engineering teams, you will harness cutting-edge cloud technology to disrupt serious and organised crime, and develop innovative solutions to complex technical challenges to combat existing and new threat areas of cybercrime. Within these teams, you will be expected to keep up to date with current techniques and adopt new approaches by applying these to NCCU operational problems, working closely with colleagues in other technical teams.

In all our NCCU technical teams, we are looking for:

• Team players, keen to build internal and external relationships to improve our collaboration
• Enthusiasm and interest in emerging technology (and how to apply this to solve technical problems)

Within this role you may be exposed to images of Child Sexual Exploitation.

You may also be required to be part of an on call 24/7 rota

• NCCU - To be considered, you will need to successfully complete SC Enhanced clearance before commencing the role

Specialist Operational Services SOS Roles:

As a Senior Engineer you will work within one of the SOS Engineering functions to develop, maintain and enhance the Agency’s specialist technical capabilities. You will work collaboratively with the service support, infrastructure teams and non-technical user groups to identify issues and support fault resolution and project handover. You will play a key part in building our new services on multiple platforms. 

You’ll be working at the cutting edge of law enforcement on next-generation projects to help catch the criminals that pose the biggest threat to the UK. 

This role is vital in ensuring our operational staff have the right tools, software, systems and platforms to exploit the latest serious and organised crime threats. 

SOS is a fast-paced environment and our teams work collaboratively and creatively to build software that solves exciting, unique and challenging problems. 

We are looking for:

• Team players, keen to build internal and external relationships to improve our collaboration 
• Confident communicators - able to provide input and summarisation to technical and non-technical partners

Within this role you may be exposed to images of Child Sexual Exploitation.

You may also be required to be part of an on call 24/7 rota.

• SOS role - To be considered, you will need to successfully complete SC Enhanced clearance before commencing the role and achieve DV clearance within the first 12 months in post

To learn more about this role, please register for the following event: On Wednesday 19th February 2025 from 18:00, we are hosting a MS Teams event where you can hear from officers working within the NCA and be given the opportunity to ask questions about the role.

Attendance is by invitation only. Please click here to register your interest.

Registration will close on Monday 17th February 2025 10:00am– you will be asked for your name and email address. 

Person specification

NCCU Roles:

• Lead development and deployment of custom capabilities.
• Recommend novel approaches to existing problems, making use of emerging technologies.
• Champion best practice and governance.
• Provide mentoring and upskilling to more junior team members.

Specialist Operational Services (SOS) Roles:

• Team-working: Work in multi-functional teams to design, develop and maintain systems to support intelligence-led enforcement activity through new tools and ways of working with data.
• Technical Leadership: Support the development, maintenance and enhancement of technical capabilities.
• Building new services: Help develop and build new services on multiple platforms, maintaining core functionality and providing technical guidance for colleagues across DDaT and the wider NCA.
• Projects: Gather, record and document customer requirements within the agency for development of specialist applications, defining detailed requirements including use cases, and feature specifications.
• Defects: Manage software defects, ensuring they are tracked, investigated and corrected.
• Service Support: Maintain and support SOS services, providing first and second-line support to DDaT customers for any incidents or issues.
• Communication: Build working relationships with colleagues across the technical community to develop skills and cross-functional working.
• Collaboration: Share and disseminate knowledge and findings across the broader technical and NCA community as appropriate.

Behaviours

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

• Delivering at Pace
• Communicating and Influencing

Technical skills

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

• Expertise using Python or another object-oriented language.
• Strong problem-solving skills, e.g. troubleshooting data/software/cloud/digital forensics problems.
• Expertise working with cloud-based platforms and technologies, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and/or Linux/Windows operating systems and/or databases (e.g. SQL).

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £43,415, National Crime Agency contributes £12,577 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

All officers in the NCA are members of the UK Civil Service. You will be eligible for:

• Civil Service pension scheme
• 26 days annual leave rising to 31 on completion of 5 years continuous service
• If qualifying criteria is met new joiners to the NCA from UK Police Forces or UKIC will have service with those employers taken into account for continuous service purposes for Annual Leave entitlement only, this will be up to a maximum of 31 days leave (including 1 privilege day).
• Training and development opportunities
• Special leave 
• Flexible working and family friendly policies
• Cycle to work scheme
• Blue Light scheme 

For further details on benefits please visit https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/careers/benefits-and-support

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : NCA Recruitment Team - GRS
• Email : ncarecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : ncarecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Further information

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint in relation to any stage of the recruitment and selection process please email Central.recruitment@nca.gov.uk. please ensure that you refer to the campaign reference number. If you remain dissatisfied following the outcome of your complaint you have the right to contact the Civil Service Commission to pursue it further.

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission: https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/recruitment/recruitment-complaints/

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