Analyst - Government Cyber Unit

This is an opportunity to join the Government Cyber Unit (GCU), where we are working to create the conditions that will strengthen cyber security and digital resilience across public services.

The GCU was created as part of the Government Cyber Action Plan (GCAP) which was launched in January 2026, setting out the government's response to critically high cyber and digital resilience risks faced by government as a result of an escalating threat environment and low levels of resilience across departments and the wider public sector.

The role will be a unique opportunity to shape and embed an in-house approach to benefit realisation. Benefit realisation is the process of translating what is known about the value and impacts of a programme into timely, practical insight on delivery performance, enabling informed decisions to optimise outcomes while programmes are live, and ahead of formal evaluation evidence.

The successful candidate will work closely with the GCU Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) team who will manage the programme M&E, as well as the GCU Data and Insights function. There is also an evolving evidence base which is currently underdeveloped and needs to be built up.

The analytical role will oversee development and delivery of the appraisal of multiple business cases over this Spending Review period. The immediate priority is developing the Business Cases for the cyber uplift service and the response function, which represent the central investment for delivery of the £260m GCAP.

These will enable DSIT to hold government to account for managing cyber and digital resilience risks, set much stronger central direction on minimum standards and priorities for the transformation and investments in scalable digital services and operational capability to better enable risk mitigation.

Delivering these capabilities once and well will provide levers to address severe and complex risks, improve responsiveness to fast-moving events, and rapidly increase government-wide resilience through high-quality central services and support.

Key Responsibilities

• Work closely with the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) team to assist with analytical delivery of the Government Cyber Action Plan benefits management, including refining benefit definitions, updating benefit metrics, and ensuring alignment with indicators and milestones.
• Support the preparation of benefits-related inputs for dashboards, business cases, strategic reviews and evaluation deep dives.
• Aid the development of the full suite of business cases from the £260m Government Cyber Unit Programme Business case, including the cyber uplift service and response function, providing analysis across the Five Case Model.
• Provide analytical quality assurance across MEL products that include economic related content.
• Help to shape the evidence base for government wide cyber resilience, updating modelling of the benefits of risk reduction and avoided harms, as well as creating a framework for departments to assess the costs to them of cyber incidents.

Essential Criteria

• Strong analytical experience, demonstrated through applied work using quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods to address complex policy or delivery questions.
• Experience working with imperfect, evolving or incomplete data and evidence.
• Ability to synthesise evidence from multiple sources (programme data, modelling outputs, research, external statistics) into clear, decision focussed insight.
• Experience communicating analysis to a range of audiences, in written and verbal formats.
• Ability to analyse and handle qualitative and quantitative data for the purposes of producing evidence to advise decision makers and influence policy choices.

Desirable Criteria

• Proficient in coding languages such as R, SQL or Python (training can be provided).
• Experience related to benefits management, value for money, appraisal or evaluation in government or large programmes.
• Experience working collaboratively with policy, delivery, commercial or strategy colleagues in a complex organisational environment.
• Familiarity with Green Book and Magenta Book.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £45,740, Department for Science, Innovation & Technology contributes £13,250 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

• A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
• Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
• An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
• Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.