: about us

The scheme is aimed at high-calibre applicants and, for those who are successful, provides opportunities for rapid career progression to the top levels of GCHQ.

As a future manager, you'll be providing leadership, developing policies and managing resources.

It's a 3-5 year scheme, it's work-based, and involves placements across the core areas of the Department, giving you early and intensive exposure to the work that we do, allowing you to gather more experience and responsibility as you move through the scheme.

Formal training will be unique to you, but will be as broad ranging as our business. Informal training will take place at the workplace as you move through your assignments, which will give you progressively more management responsibility in different areas of the business. We expect a lot from you - and if you perform well the opportunities are there to progress quickly.

You will have the chance to work across a number of departments, facing genuine challenges which test your abilities to the full. Tasks like travelling to London to discuss relevant intelligence issues with representatives from other government departments or working with senior managers to plan future requirements for support to the intelligence process. You can also expect to gain early access to the heart of Government and its Intelligence machinery.

The work is very varied, and some other areas where you might get involved include: taking part in the weekly intelligence briefing for Director; producing papers on new intelligence sources; interviewing senior managers to elicit future IT support to the intelligence process; liaison visits to GCHQ stations to discuss working practices.

The nature of the work is intellectually challenging. It demands an enquiring mind, original thinking, sound judgement, as well as solid analytical skills, adaptability, determination and exceptional communication skills. Above all, we value people who can see the need for, and can produce, new approaches to old problems.

Top of page