Assistant Director (Crime)

You will be a visible and influential leader, responsible for setting direction, building capability, and ensuring high-quality, effective delivery across a complex and evolving portfolio of criminal cases. The role combines strategic leadership, operational oversight, and professional authority within the Government Legal Profession.

As Assistant Director (Crime), you will be a key member of the Legal Services senior leadership team, accountable for leading the Agency’s criminal prosecution function.

You will define and deliver a clear strategy for criminal enforcement, aligned to the Investigation and Enforcement Strategy, ensuring resources are prioritised to areas of greatest risk and harm. You will oversee a portfolio of complex and high-profile prosecutions, ensuring legal quality, consistency, and value for money.

Working closely with senior leaders across Enforcement Group and the wider Agency, you will integrate criminal enforcement into a broader, outcomes-focused approach to tackling economic misconduct. You will also play a leading role across government, contributing to cross-Whitehall initiatives and strengthening partnerships to improve the collective response to economic crime.

You will lead and develop a high-performing team of senior lawyers, building capability, fostering innovation, and embedding a culture of continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

You will be an intellectually capable, highly motivated lawyer, with at least 10 years post qualification experience in the field of criminal prosecutions, with powerful leadership and communication skills. You will lead, inspire and motivate teams, welcoming feedback and championing continuous improvement both in operational delivery and personal professional development.

You will play an active role as part of the Legal Services senior team in delivering against our investigation and enforcement strategic aims, advocate innovation and use of technology to drive performance, provide inspiring, proactive, and positive leadership to a team of criminal prosecuting lawyers, working collaboratively across the agency to help deliver agency wide strategic objectives, promoting a culture of high performance, efficiency, and continuous improvement.

The ideal candidate will have:

very strong legal technical knowledge and experience of criminal prosecution work
strong leadership skills with ability to both see the strategic picture and focus on effective and efficient operational delivery
the ability to provide well-articulated and evidenced advice and recommendations on complex technical matters
the ability to influence others and communicate clearly both orally and in writing, to a wide range of stakeholders including presenting papers to Directors and other members of the Agency Executive team
the vision to create joined-up strategies and influence the direction and culture of Legal Services and the wider Enforcement Group to increase effectiveness and engagement
Responsibilities may also include:

undertaking the role of value stream lead for any one of the Enforcement Group's value streams, coordinating efforts across the various capabilities within the Enforcement Group to deliver enforcement outcomes against prioritised threat areas, accounting to the Group's Directors and the Executive Committee Delivery Group
attending regular senior level meetings at Legal Services, Enforcement Group, and wider Agency level, and providing oversight and assurance of the delivery of our criminal prosecution work, the team's training and development, and its spend against allocated budget
This is a senior leadership role with responsibility for other Grade 6 lawyers and wider teams. The role requires regular engagement at senior levels across the Agency and with external partners.

Experience in insolvency is not essential; however, an interest in economic crime and public service impact is critical.

Insolvency Service policy is that a minimum 60% of your working time should be spent at your principal workplace. Requirements to attend other locations for official business will also count towards this level of attendance.