Wanted: IT manager for UK government agency – £60k
- Reference: 1748853092
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/02/wanted_it_manager_for_uk/
- Source link:
The [1]Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) is an Executive Agency of Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), tasked with protecting public health and ensuring high standards of animal welfare.
That's a pretty serious responsibility, and like all modern government departments, it needs IT infrastructure to make sure its dedicated staff can carry out their duties effectively.
[2]
The VMD is now advertising a vacancy for an IT Service and Operations Manager, someone to oversee all that infrastructure and lead the team in charge of maintaining it. The salary on offer for such a responsible role? £59,900, which doesn't sound like much to us, when the average wage for workers in the UK is said to be £37,430 (about $50k) for full-time employees. In fact it is £7k less than a [3]senior manager at a UK McDonalds, according to Indeed.co.uk listings.
[4]
[5]
According to IT Jobs Watch, £60k represents the median IT Manager salary in the UK, gauged by vacancies posted during the previous six months. Recruitment agency Morgan McKinley puts the average remuneration for IT Managers working in London at £70k to £80k ($94k to $108k).
Admittedly, as a government employee, you will also benefit from a Civil Service Pension, with an employer contribution of 28.97 percent – not to be sniffed at.
[6]
The position is based at the VMD site in Addlestone, Surrey, to the southwest of London, and the successful applicant will be expected to spend at least 60 percent of their time in the workplace, with the option to work the remaining time flexibly from home.
The role calls for a "highly motivated and organized individual" with "significant IT Service provision experience." It will involve leading the team responsible for provisioning and maintaining services across the agency's IT estate, including legacy systems, networks, software, Microsoft 365, the IT Service Desk and more.
[7]AI skills shortage more than doubles for UK tech leaders
[8]How sticky notes saved 'the single biggest digital program in the world'
[9]C-suite at Alphabet make B-A-N-K from 2024 equity awards
[10]Nvidia boss gets 45% pay bump, but is the billionaire happy?
The chosen candidate will also take on the service management relationship between VMD and a managed service provider for the agency's public facing digital services.
According to the vacancy notice, the VMD has kicked off a program to replace legacy systems and migrate workloads to the cloud, with the delivery pipeline for this project extending over the next 2 to 3 years.
That sounds like quite a lot of responsibility to us, however, if it appeals, interested parties can apply [11]here on the Civil Service Jobs website, by June 24. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/veterinary-medicines-directorate
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aD12M22UAlq_Kawbj3S9jQAAAYs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://uk.indeed.com/cmp/McDonald's/salaries?location=GB%2FENG
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aD12M22UAlq_Kawbj3S9jQAAAYs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aD12M22UAlq_Kawbj3S9jQAAAYs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aD12M22UAlq_Kawbj3S9jQAAAYs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/19/ai_skills_shortage_more_than/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/16/universal_credit_commons_committee/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/14/alphabet_exec_pay_2024/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/08/big_bucks_huang_gets_fiscal_payday/
[11] https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cgi?SID=cGFnZWNsYXNzPUpvYnMmdXNlcnNlYXJjaGNvbnRleHQ9MTM0ODE2NzgyJm93bmVydHlwZT1mYWlyJnBhZ2VhY3Rpb249dmlld3ZhY2J5am9ibGlzdCZzZWFyY2hwYWdlPTEmc2VhcmNoc29ydD1zY29yZSZqb2JsaXN0X3ZpZXdfdmFjPTE5NTM5Njkmb3duZXI9NTA3MDAwMCZyZXFzaWc9MTc0ODYwOTU2NS0wN2FiYmRkYjFlOTVmMTc2YTVhODQ4ZWY1YjVhYmI3YmViZjJjM2Zi
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I work in a different discipline, and I'm a civil servant. I'd earn about 50% more and additionally have performance related pay around 15-20% of salary in the private sector. It's common in most public sector roles.
The "fault" here is that people in the UK want public services like Denmark with taxes like Chad, and the political classes play to that gallery. Decades of government spending beyond its means has resulted in a vast pile of debt that consumes over £1 in 12 of public spending so that (as Ms Reeves is finding out) there's zero headroom to make any changes.
But what we get are taxes like Denmark and services like Chad. That's why people get pissed off whatever the causes of it.
A few years ago I saw a job posting by the Met Police, asking for a senior developer with a wide range of experience and skills. The pay? £38k. Similar jobs in the private sector were at least double that.
I had another look 6 months later...still there. They just don't get it.
They might well get it - just not have the budget for any more.
Public sector usually has job skill scoring which determines the salary banding. And often without management responsibility the scores are kept low. It's one of the main reasons professional/expert jobs are so poorly paid as although they may be desirable skills in the job market the restrictive scoring system marks them down if you aren't running a department as well.
Most public sector bodies are finding way around this with various additional top ups (might be a band 3 at £38k but with a £10k top up for skill shortage thing) but they don't always choose to add them or are allow to add them.
Ideal VET candidate
Should have a wet nose and a bark worse than their bite
Even then, I would expect them to cock a leg at £60k
Re: Ideal VET candidate
You're barking!
Monkeys and Peanuts
If the compensation for the chief monkey is GBP60k and being the civil service all the under monkeys must be earning less than that, and most considerably less I imagine. Well, Hamlet is never going to be written at that rate.
But seriously attracting the young into STEM when those salaries are the carrot I dread to think of the stick.
Self employed trades appear to pull in more than GBP70k pa and as a skilled migrant to AU can do a great deal better (with nicer weather and properly cold beer.)
Re: Monkeys and Peanuts
"being the civil service all the under monkeys must be earning less than that".
Not true. There might be a line management hierarchy of tasking and performance management, but not of pay. When I was a civil service line manager, I was managing several people at higher pay and seniority than me, some of them were at grades far higher then I am likely to ever reach. And it's still the same there, for technical projects too. A project lead can quite easily be a lower grade than people working under them. It's all about the skills for the task.
They never get it on the competitive rates - it's not like it's a decent pension anymore to compensate you heading into a local/regional/country level authority back stabbing, non-accountable civil servant/manager snake pit (I speak from experience).
I've been out 8 years now. Pay went up 20% instantly.
Been out 4yr myself, I went up 75% to move to the private sector and less stress.
"you will also benefit from a Civil Service Pension, with an employer contribution of 28.97 percent"
this though. 60 x 1.2897 = £77382. And how many PTO days a year? Probably a lot more than statutory!
Civil Service Pension, with an employer contribution of 28.97 percent ... why is this still allowed, should be a capped amount controlled and if the unions and their sheep don't like it, find the door and exit the job !
In the civil service, that pension is often described as justification for the lower starting salary. That security of the pension might be very attractive if you are considering a lifetime job there, but of next to no interest of you are only planning a five year stint.
And on the mention of "life", the current civil service pension age is 68 years, it'll probably change up again in a few years.
Doesn't seem odd or even that bad tbh
Depends on the job. "IT manager" in the public sector is often a fairly junior role. Would not be shocked to see the public sector advertise "IT manager" at £27-35k tbh.
This isn't in the same league as the "Head of infosec" that was advertised the other year for £55k. TBH £60 doesn't sound all that bad at all relatively speaking.
Reading the little bit of description you've got there, when I was in public sector we'd have called that an "IT Team leader" but then the organisation I worked for coveted the "manager" word. "Team leader" would get about £45k now I guess.
No one in a minor public sector organisation gets big bucks other than the heads of service and the exec teams. Professional roles are generally very poorly rewarded. If you're in the public sector you really want to be at the bottom as they generally pay well for unskilled/entry level jobs, (living wage + decent pension), or at the top (face in paper, take the money and retire) but not in the middle whioch is poorly paid and very stressful.
Hidden benefits
Bunging lucrative contracts to your mates or your own companies
Yeah... sounds about right. The pay is not competitive at all. But whose fault is that?