Information Digital Service

"Information Digital Service" is a job-advert label rather than a tightly defined profession - it usually sits within an organisation's information, library, records or digital services team, often in the NHS, a university, a local authority, a government department or a professional body. The work generally involves running and improving the digital tools and content people use to find, store and share information: intranets and websites, document and records management systems, online library and database subscriptions, search tools and knowledge bases. You spend your time making information findable, accurate and accessible for colleagues or members of the public, and helping them use the systems properly.

Starting salary: £23k–£30k
Live graduate jobs: Search all jobs
Main way in: Direct entry into an assistant or officer-level post advertised…
They usually ask for: A degree in any subject is usually enough for entry-level posts

Approximate graduate salary

Entry-level roles typically start at roughly £23,000–£30,000, with graduate schemes and London-based or specialist posts reaching higher. This is an approximation only and varies considerably by sector, employer size and region - public sector posts follow fixed pay bands, while private sector and consultancy roles are more variable.

What you'd actually do

Answering enquiries from staff or the public about where to find something - a policy document, a journal article, a dataset, a form - and either finding it, or fixing the reason it was hard to find
Updating and tidying content on an intranet or website: rewriting pages in plain English, checking links work, retiring out-of-date material, applying consistent page titles and tags
Adding metadata (descriptive labels such as subject, author, date, department) to documents and records so that search works properly and things can be retrieved later
Running searches in subscription databases or internal systems for colleagues who need evidence, legislation, standards or background research, and summarising what you find

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Doing routine admin on digital systems - setting up user accounts and permissions, checking a records retention schedule (rules on how long documents must be kept before deletion), logging and chasing issues with suppliers or the IT team
Running short training sessions or writing how-to guides so colleagues can use the search tools, document system or online resources themselves
Pulling together usage statistics and simple reports on what people are accessing, and feeding that into decisions about renewing subscriptions or redesigning a section of the intranet

How graduates get in

Direct entry into an assistant or officer-level post advertised as information assistant, digital content officer, library and information assistant or knowledge services assistant - this is the most common route and these posts are often open to any degree subject
NHS, Civil Service and local government graduate or apprenticeship schemes that include rotations through information, knowledge or digital services; the Civil Service has digital and data routes, and NHS trusts recruit into knowledge and library services
A postgraduate qualification in librarianship, information management or information science accredited by CILIP (the professional body for library and information professionals) - common if you want to move into senior information or knowledge roles, and sometimes funded part-time by an employer once you are in post
Moving across from a related support role - web content editing, administration, customer services, records or archives work - which is very common because much of the skill set is transferable

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Student jobs or placements in a university library, archive or student-facing digital services team, which carry real weight for these roles
A digital or records apprenticeship, or an entry-level role taken straight from A-levels with progression afterwards - a degree is not always required, so graduates are sometimes competing with experienced non-graduates

What employers ask for

A degree in any subject is usually enough for entry-level posts; humanities, social sciences, information science, computing and business backgrounds are all common and no one subject dominates
Specific grade requirements are unusual outside structured graduate schemes - most employers in this space screen on the application form and evidence of relevant experience rather than a 2:1 cut-off
Demonstrable comfort with digital systems: content management systems (software for editing website or intranet pages), SharePoint or similar document libraries, spreadsheets, and search tools. Employers often test this rather than take it on trust
Some customer-facing or administrative experience, because much of the job is handling enquiries and explaining systems to people who find them confusing

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For public sector posts, you will usually face a competency or behaviour-based application and interview, and a basic DBS check in some settings
A CILIP-accredited master's is genuinely required for some professional librarian and knowledge-manager titles, but not for most assistant or officer-level digital service posts - check the advert, as practice varies a lot

Skills that matter

Search and information retrieval

Constructing a good search - knowing how to combine terms, filter and narrow results across different databases - is the difference between finding the answer in ten minutes and not finding it at all.

Metadata and classification thinking

Deciding how documents should be labelled and organised determines whether anyone can find them in two years' time, and this is the bit that is genuinely hard to do well.

Plain-English writing and editing

Most of the content you touch was written by a specialist for themselves, and your job is to turn it into something a non-expert can scan and act on.

Digital accessibility awareness

Public sector websites and intranets must meet accessibility standards, so knowing about heading structure, alt text and readable link text is a practical daily requirement, not an extra.

Patience with non-technical users

A large part of the role is helping a clinician, caseworker or academic who is frustrated with a system and has five minutes, and getting them to a result without jargon.

Attention to detail under routine

Much of the value comes from consistency - the same tag applied the same way across thousands of records - and sloppiness quietly degrades the whole service.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Assistant or officer level: handling enquiries, updating content and maintaining systems under supervision. Pay and grade here are modest and the work is hands-on.
Senior officer or specialist: owning a particular service - the intranet, the records management system, the subscription portfolio, or evidence searching for a specific directorate - and making decisions about how it runs.
Manager of a small team or service lead: budget responsibility, supplier and licence negotiation, and working with IT and communications on bigger system changes. Many people take a CILIP-accredited qualification or seek chartership around this stage.
From there the paths diverge: some move into knowledge management, digital content strategy, information governance and data protection (often with additional qualifications in data protection law), records and archives, or into wider digital delivery roles such as business analysis, service design or product ownership.
Timelines vary widely. In a structured public sector graduate scheme you may move up in a couple of years; in a small team with little turnover, progression can mean moving employer rather than being promoted.

What people get wrong

“It is an IT job, so you need to be able to code.”

Coding is rarely required. The technical side is mostly configuring and using systems someone else built; the harder skills are organising information well and writing clearly. Where development is needed, it usually sits with a separate IT or digital delivery team.

“It is a quiet back-office job with little contact with people.”

A lot of the week is enquiries, training sessions, nudging colleagues to file things properly and negotiating with stakeholders who all want their content on the intranet homepage. People skills matter more than the title suggests.

“The title is vague, so the job must be junior and generic.”

Titles in this area are genuinely inconsistent between employers - the same work is advertised as information assistant, digital services officer, knowledge officer or content officer. You have to read the duties, because two adverts with identical titles can be very different jobs at very different grades.

“Search engines and AI tools have made this work obsolete.”

Better search tools have shifted the work rather than removed it. Someone still has to decide what gets published, how it is labelled, how long it is kept and whether it is accurate - and poor underlying information makes any search or AI tool worse, not better.

Where this varies

This role looks quite different depending on where it sits. In the NHS it often means knowledge and library services - evidence searching for clinicians, managing access to journals and databases, and supporting staff with current awareness. In universities it leans towards digital library systems, repositories of research outputs and supporting students. In central or local government it leans towards records management, information governance, freedom of information and intranet or website content, with strong rules about retention and accessibility. In the private sector, similar work may be badged as knowledge management (common in law firms and consultancies) or digital content operations. The balance between research, content editing, systems administration and records compliance shifts a lot between these settings, so read the duties in any advert closely rather than assuming the title tells you what the day looks like.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.