The Cabinet Office is seeking a new civil servant to oversee human resources policy for ministerial special advisers.

A job advert placed on the government’s website calls for an “HR policy lead” who will play a “key role in establishing the cross-government special adviser HR function”.

The successful candidate for the “high-profile and stretching role” – with a salary of up to £60,635 – would be asked to “revise and embed a full suite of HR policies, processes and principles ensuring they are fit for purpose”.

It follows a series of concerns about the treatment of special advisers – known as “spads” – after an adviser to the former chancellor Sajid Javid, Sonia Khan, was escorted out of Downing Street by police officers after being sacked by Dominic Cummings.

Boris Johnson’s chief adviser was challenged at an internal meeting of aides at 10 Downing Street earlier this month, with one spad saying it was “unkind” of him to say half of them would be fired.

Buzzfeed News, citing a senior Whitehall official, said the new role had been created in response to concerns within the civil service about the treatment of spads by No 10.