Head of Proactive Protection

HM REVENUE & CUSTOMS; Telford; On-site; GBP 125,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A government regulatory agency in England is seeking a proactive leader to guide their Fraud Prevention Centre. The ideal candidate will develop and implement strategies for fraud protection, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives. They will lead a diverse team and foster collaboration across different departments and external partners. A strong background in fraud prevention, cybersecurity, and change leadership is essential. This position offers a competitive salary and an extensive benefits package, including generous leave and a robust pension scheme.

Benefits

Pension scheme with contributions of at least 28.97% of salary

Family friendly policies

Personal support

Coaching and development

Generous leave allowance starting at 25 days

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience in leading strategic online fraud prevention.
• Deep understanding of risks to financial organisations and threat intelligence.
• Current knowledge of threats to internet services including authentication.

Responsibilities

• Set the vision and direction for Proactive Protection function.
• Lead and manage the operation of technical security controls.
• Drive innovation in fraud prevention techniques.

Skills

Leadership in Fraud Prevention

Identity-based Fraud Management

Stakeholder Engagement

Governance Knowledge

Analytical Skills

Education

Relevant academic qualifications

Industry certifications

Job description

Role Overview

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it's really like to work at HMRC. The Fraud Prevention Centre (FPC) in HMRC Security is a growing area, focusing on countering fraud across HMRC services and providing secure Identity and Access Management services for customers.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership: Set the vision and direction for the Proactive Protection function, ensuring alignment with HMRC's purpose, organisational objectives and security strategy, protecting services critical to the UK and millions of global user accounts.
• Threat Intelligence integration: Develop relationships across HMRC and externally for the collection, analysis, and application of threat intelligence to dynamically adapt proactive fraud prevention measures, technical controls, and ensure senior risk owners are informed.
• Preventive Control Operation: Lead and manage the operation of technical security controls and detection capabilities, leveraging intelligence to prevent identity-related fraud before it occurs across all customer communications channels.
• Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement: Build strong partnerships across FPC and HMRC (including our Customer Compliance teams, tax and customs service leads) and with external bodies to ensure a coordinated approach to fraud prevention and victim support.
• Innovation and Continuous Improvement: Drive innovation in fraud prevention techniques, leveraging automation, anomaly detection, and advanced analytics to stay ahead of evolving threats, and ensure a prompt and effective response.
• Team Development and Capability Building: Recruit, lead, and develop a multidisciplinary team of analysts, investigators, and technical specialists to operate proactive protection services in close collaboration with the FPC Engineering lead.
• Governance and Assurance: Establish robust governance frameworks, ensuring compliance with legal, regulatory, and organisational standards for fraud prevention.
• Performance Monitoring: Define and track key performance indicators for proactive protection activities, reporting progress to senior leadership and adapting strategies as needed.
• Customer-Centric Approach: Ensure that fraud prevention measures protect customers effectively while maintaining trust and minimising friction in HMRC services.

Qualifications

• Proven Leadership in Fraud Prevention or Cybersecurity: Demonstrated experience in leading strategic online fraud prevention and/or security functions within a large, complex organisation, able to take a hands-on approach to develop and grow a rapidly growing capability.
• Expertise in Identity-based Fraud and Threat Management: Deep understanding of risks to financial organisations, threat intelligence, and proactive protection techniques, including anomaly detection and adaptive controls. Knowledge of cyber security fields and methodologies, including MITRE ATT&CK, threat modelling.
• Strategic Planning and Delivery: Ability to define and execute a vision for proactive fraud prevention, aligning with organisational objectives, international standards and good practice, and regulatory requirements.
• Technical Acumen: Current knowledge of threats to internet services including authentication and identity proofing, cybercrime tools, techniques and procedures, familiarity with fraud prevention technologies such as dynamic risk scoring, behavioural analytics, zero-trust security models and relevant industry and government standards. Technical skills should be evidenced by relevant academic qualifications, industry certifications and professional membership.
• Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration: Strong track record of building partnerships across internal teams in a large organisation and external bodies, including internationally, to deliver integrated fraud prevention solutions.
• Governance, Legislative and Compliance Knowledge: Understanding of governance frameworks, assurance processes, and legislative requirements relevant to intelligence collection, fraud prevention and data protection to ensure activity is lawful and outputs are actionable by law enforcement teams.
• Change and Transformation Leadership: Experience in driving organisational change, embedding new capabilities, and managing cultural shifts towards proactive fraud prevention.
• Analytical and Decision-Making Skills: Ability to interpret complex data, assess risk, and make informed decisions under pressure.
• Desirable Criteria: Experience of law enforcement and intelligence, Familiarity with HMRC services, Criminal methods and investigative techniques.
• Candidate should hold DV clearance, or be willing and able to achieve that level of clearance. This is considered a 'Reserved Post' under the Civil Service Nationality Rules and is open to UK nationals only.

Benefits

• Pension scheme with contributions equivalent to at least 28.97% of salary.
• Family friendly policies.
• Personal support.
• Coaching and development.
• Generous leave allowance starting at 25 days, increasing by a day for each year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.