Location
The locations for this role are Newport, Titchfield (Fareham), London, Edinburgh, Darlington and Manchester.
Due to workforce controls you can only select Manchester, London, Darlington or Edinburgh if you are an existing ONS employee contracted to that location. If you are not contracted at one of these sites, these options are not available to you.
Applicants who select a location they are not eligible for will be removed from the recruitment process and will not be considered for alternative locations.
This role is aligned to ONS hybrid working principles, which are based on attending the office with purpose. The postholder will be expected to contribute to the organisation’s overall 40% office attendance, in line with business and role requirements.
The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.
Please refer to attachments for further terms and flexibilities.
About the job
Job summary
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social, and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.
The Automation function within ONS Digital Services is responsible for helping the organisation work more efficiently through the use of automation, low-code and AI technologies. We partner with teams across ONS to simplify processes, reduce manual effort and improve services, enabling colleagues to focus on delivering value for citizens and stakeholders.
Our multidisciplinary teams deliver and support a wide range of digital solutions, including workflow automation, applications, data insights and AI-enabled services. We provide technical leadership, governance and support to ensure these technologies are adopted safely, securely and effectively.
Supporting thousands of users across the organisation, the function plays a key role in driving innovation, increasing productivity and building digital capability, helping ONS modernise services and deliver better outcomes through technology.
Job description
As senior delivery manager, you will be accountable for the effective delivery of complex, high risk products and services. You'll have experience across a range of products and services throughout the entire product life cycle and act as the main point of escalation.
You'll have strong communication skills and engage senior stakeholders, while coaching and mentoring junior staff.
Responsibilities include:
- Lead the delivery of the Centre of Enablement and Citizen Developer Governance roadmap, ensuring successful delivery of products, services and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Work with the Service Owner and Service Manager to translate strategic priorities into clear delivery plans, milestones and measurable outcomes.
- Manage complex risks, issues, dependencies and competing priorities across multiple teams and stakeholders, ensuring delivery momentum is maintained.
- Coordinate the development and implementation of governance processes, standards, assurance activities and service improvements that enable safe and effective use of low-code technologies.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with senior leaders, technical specialists, platform teams and business stakeholders, facilitating collaboration and informed decision-making.
- Provide delivery reporting, performance insights and recommendations to support governance boards, service reviews and strategic planning activities.
- Promote Agile and Lean delivery practices, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, innovation and evidence-based decision making.
- Support and develop communities of practice, encouraging knowledge sharing, capability development, mentoring and collaboration across the organisation.
- Act as an escalation point for delivery challenges, resolving complex issues and driving solutions that balance governance, user needs and organisational priorities.
Person specification
Essential Criteria:
Agile and Lean Practices (Expert)
You can:
- coach and lead teams in Agile and Lean good practices
- create and tailor the right approach for a team, challenging, evaluating and iterating the approach through the life cycle
- experiment with new and innovative ways of working to improve delivery across the organisation
- act as a recognised expert and advocate for Agile and Lean approaches
Life Cycle Management (Practitioner)
You can:
- work and consult with the right people at the right time to move through the life cycle and deliver value
- use evidence to decide when a team should continue, change direction or stop
- identify tools and techniques required at different phases of the life cycle
- guide colleagues and stakeholders through different phases of the life cycle
Maintaining Delivery Momentum (Expert)
You can:
- Optimise the delivery flow of teams.
- Actively address the most complicated risks, issues and dependencies including where ownership exists outside the team or no clear ownership exists.
- Identify innovative ways to unblock issues.
Planning (Expert)
You can:
- Lead a continual planning process in a very complex environment.
- Plan beyond product delivery.
- Identify dependencies in plans across services and coordinate delivery.
- Coach other teams as the central point of expertise.
Team Dynamics and Resolution (Practitioner)
You can:
- Identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them.
- Identify issues through Agile health-checks with the team and provoke the right responses.
- Engage in varying types of feedback choosing the right type at the appropriate time and ensuring the discussion and decision sticks.
- Accelerate the team development cycle.
