Language Specialists
The Role
As an agency collecting intelligence in many different languages and dialects, we couldn't operate without our teams of talented linguists. Working primarily from London, they play a vital role in helping to keep the UK secure and prosperous.
If you have a passion for languages, you could develop a rewarding and fascinating career taking raw intelligence and making it accessible to people in the rest of the Service as translating both written and spoken material is a big part of the role.
Throughout your career, you'll have a chance to get involved in other activities, which might include interpreting, role-playing for training courses, carrying out foreign language website research and using your expertise to help other Government agencies. Some linguists with the appropriate skills might also assist with special operations overseas or training others in their specialist languages.
The Main Skills
You will need a very high level of skill in at least one of the languages we currently need and will be prepared to learn additional languages or dialects during your career. Whether you learnt this language at home as you were growing up, whilst living or working abroad or through academic study, you'll need to be motivated by the challenge of working with languages on a daily basis.
You will have an analytical and enquiring mind with a strong eye for detail. You are able to recognise the subtle nuances in your specialist languages rendering them into clear, well-drafted English. You will also be capable of identifying the key points of long pieces of material and producing a well-balanced summary.
We are currently looking for linguists with written and spoken fluency in Arabic, Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Korean, French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Russian. We will be recruiting for other languages at a later date so if your skills are in other languages please bookmark this site and keep checking it.
Where You Might Come From
Language specialists join us at different stages of their working life. Some apply shortly after graduating from university. Others are looking for a new career and are attracted to a role in which knowledge of a foreign language is a core skill. In each case your expertise in foreign languages, your experience of living, studying or working overseas in a different culture and your personal qualities are far more important than your particular background.
