Head of Operations: Visitor Services and Security

Head of Operations: Visitor Services and Security
Visitor and Security Services
Full-time, 41 hours per week (including one hour paid lunch break)
Permanent
£75,185 per annum
Application deadline: 12pm (midday) on Wednesday 7 May 2025

We are seeking an exceptional professional to oversee all visitor services and security activities and provide strong leadership and culture change.

The British Museum's collection is the most remarkable in the world. The first public national museum in (and about) the world, the Museum's eight million artefacts make it the largest and most comprehensive collection, spanning two million years of human history and art across all cultures, from prehistory to today.

This is an exciting time for the British Museum. We are embarking on our Western Range project - one of the biggest museum redevelopment projects anywhere in the world. This physical transformation is in the service of an intellectual transformation. We are rethinking how we display our collection - the most holistic and ambitious redisplay in the Museum's history.

You will be responsible for developing a visitor experiences strategy to embed a visitor centric culture which delivers brilliant visitor experience, whilst keeping visitors, colleagues, the collection and building safe and secure.

You will be an inspirational, inclusive and collaborative leader with senior management experience in a similar role in a customer-facing industry, and the ability to successfully lead and motivate diverse teams. You will have achieved outstanding results and be able to demonstrate a resourceful and flexible approach when faced with obstacles.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the visitor services and security teams to deliver excellent visitor experience, and a safe and secure provision.
• Maintain a clear understanding of the security threats to the Museum, liaising with the external security services as necessary in order to keep abreast of changing security threat levels and risks, and ensuring that the Museum's processes and procedures are adapted accordingly and regularly tested.
• Take responsibility for the communication of security issues across the Museum ensuring that colleagues at all levels are appropriately aware of changing circumstances and specific risks.
• Lead a programme of cultural change across the Museum with regard to visitor services and security.

Benefits

The Museum offers a competitive benefits package including:

• Generous annual leave allowance of 25 days (rising to 30 days after 10 years' service) plus 2.5 privilege days and plus bank holidays.
• Membership of the civil service defined benefit pension scheme.
• Free entry to a wide range of museums and exhibitions.
• Participation in private and public Museum activities, including talks by leading curators from around the world and behind-the-scenes opportunities to learn how museums care for and manage their extraordinary collections.
• Interest-free travel, bicycle, and rental deposit loans.
• Professional and personal development opportunities.
• Employee Assistance Programme.
• Discounts on food and gift shop purchases.

Additional details

For more information about this role, please see the job description.

If you have any additional needs that we should be aware of in order to support you with your application, please provide details.

We offer a flexible way of working that allows our employees to work remotely in a way that suits them and the organisation.

The Museum adheres to the HMG Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) for pre-employment screening of Civil Servants.