Senior Sponsorship Officer

Contents

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

Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London, Salford

About the job

Job summary

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) is the department for economic growth. We support businesses to invest, grow and export, creating jobs and opportunities across the country. 

DBT is recruiting for an exciting and stretching SEO role, working to support the UK’s policy on trade remedies, which protects UK business from unfair trading practices. The Sponsorship Team work to support the UK’s current and future interests in trade remedies by managing the relationship between Government and the Trade Remedies Authority, an arm’s length body. 

The Sponsorship team sits within the wider Trade Defence team in DBT, which is a friendly, collaborative, and supportive team, with high People Survey scores in engagement in our work, and a consistent focus on inclusion and L&D. In our team we are working to a hybrid model and support flexible working where possible and in line with delivering business outcomes.

This is an exciting time to be joining DBT’s Sponsorship Team. We are responsible for building, improving, and maintaining a highly effective relationship with one of the department’s arms-length bodies, the Trade Remedies Authority. The TRA investigates whether new measures are needed to defend UK economic interests against unfair international trade practices. They are a vital component of the UK’s trade policy framework – ensuring a high-functioning relationship between DBT and the TRA is critical to the delivery of our mutual objectives. 

The successful candidate will split their time between the Sponsorship team and the recently created Trade Defence Strategy team. This new team has been formed in order to look across Trade Defence as a whole, with a specific focus on identifying where trade defence tools could be brought to bear across key strategic sectors in the UK. This includes analysing areas of vulnerability and placing that analysis within a better understanding of the geo-political context and considering therefore how we should be using and adapting our current system. This will require close working with teams across DBT both in trade policy and business sector teams, as well as many different teams across Whitehall. 

The successful candidate will join a friendly, inclusive and proactive team. They will find opportunity to both better understand UK trade policy and build on recent policy successes in this unique area. We look forward to welcoming you as part of our team. 

Job description

The role will involve:

• Assisting in the development of DBT’s sponsorship governance capability, ensuring it meets HM Government’s standards and code of practice and keeping up to date on developments in the broader sponsorship work area. 
• Supporting our engagement with the Trade Remedies Authority to build a highly-functioning relationship with DBT and wider Government, aiding the troubleshooting of policy issues where necessary. 
• Developing the UK’s future trade remedies and broader trade defence strategies across key sectors of interest and depending on ministerial steers. 
• Building relationships across DBT and Whitehall and to understand the specific needs of the sector, working closely with economic analysts to ensure this. 
• Working flexibly across the team on projects as they arise. 

Person specification

Essential Criteria

• Good stakeholder and relationship management skills, with the ability to build and maintain effective relationships across organisational boundaries. 
• An ability to think strategically and creatively across a range of priorities to find solutions to complex problems.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate complex matters to different audiences.
• Organisational ability and independence, with the ability to pursue strategic projects on your own initiative.

Desirable Criteria

• An interest in, and understanding of, international trade and/or the sponsorship of arm’s length bodies. 

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Delivering at Pace
• Working Together

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £39,384, Department for Business and Trade contributes £10,633 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 average employer contribution of 27%

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.

Please refer to the attached candidate pack for further information on our benefits.

The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).

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Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Declan McClean
• Email : [email protected]

Recruitment team

• Email : [email protected]

Further information

Our recruitment process is underpinned by the principle of appointment on the basis of fair and open competition and appointment on merit, as outlined in the Civil Service Commissioners’ Recruitment Principles.

If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with these principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should in the first instance contact DBT by email: [email protected].

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you can contact the Civil Service Commission, which regulates all Civil Service recruitment.

For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages: Click here to visit Civil Service Commission/Complaints

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