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.
We are looking for a highly motivated and dynamic Programme Delivery Manager to take on a Head of Function (HoF) role, leading and energising the IT Service Manager, IT Infrastructure Engineer, and DevSecOps communities across the Digital Services Directorate.
Working in close partnership with other Heads of Function within Digital Services (DS),you will be responsible for building a vibrant, collaborative and high-performing community, driving alignment with organisational strategy and enabling pace, momentum and delivery of key organisational objectives.
You will have an energy and enthusiasm to lead the Community and will bring passion and a proactive mindset to leading the community, championing knowledge sharing, consistent ways of working, and continuous learning and development. Through your enthusiasm and drive, you will foster a strong sense of community, empowering colleagues to collaborate, innovate and grow.
Our team culture is based around agile working and keeping our users-both internally and externally- at the centre of our thinking. You will lead from the front in embedding agile principles, maintaining pace and momentum, and evolving the IT Service Manager, IT Infrastructure Engineer, and DevSecOps communities to be responsive, forward-looking, and resilient.
Job overview
A Programme Delivery Manager is accountable for the delivery of complex products and services that are being delivered by multiple teams or have high technical or political risk.
- Manage dependencies of varying complexity, potentially planning, and feeding into larger programmes and portfolios.
- Remove blockers and manage risks, commercials, budgets, and people.
- Balance objectives and can redeploy people and resources as priorities change.
- Have an in-depth knowledge of agile and other methodologies.
- Are responsible for understanding, managing, and communicating between complex stakeholder groups, balancing priorities.
- Are the initial escalation point for the programme and must have an awareness of the bigger picture.
- Support the programme director by overseeing the delivery of their vision for the programme.
- Support and coach delivery managers.
Responsibilities
- Lead delivery where multiple product or service teams need to collaborate to deliver and ensures interdependencies and cross-cutting team issues are dealt with.
- Ensure that agile principles and practices are deeply embedded and that all teams have the right skills and access to development that they need to do their roles.
- Encourage a culture of innovation focused on adding value.
- Effectively manage team dynamics when working across departmental and other boundaries
- Actively develop agile capability of teams, learning, sharing, and re-applying skills and knowledge and bringing in good practice
- Communicate service performance against key indicators to internal and external stakeholders.
This campaign is for external candidates who wish to be based at either our Newport or Titchfield site. Therefore this campaign has been linked with the internal advert 462789. If you are an internal candidate to ONS please apply via the other campaign. The selection and interview process will be combined, so you do not need to apply for both campaigns.
Person specification
Essential Criteria
- Agile and Lean practices (Expert) - 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.
- Community Collaboration (Expert) - Act as a champion for community-led initiatives, supporting their delivery and encouraging broader engagement. Foster engagement and encourage active participation in the community, role modelling collaborative behaviours. Advocate and role model knowledge sharing (for example, mentoring community leads). Work with the Head of Function/Head of Practice/Community Lead to develop the maturity of the community and professional growth of its members, providing leadership, feedback and insight.
- Maintaining delivery momentum (Expert) - 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.
- Making the process work (Expert) - Identify and challenge organisational processes of increasing complexity and those processes that are unnecessarily complicated. Add value and can coach the organisation to inspect and adapt processes. Guide teams through the implementation of a new process.
- Planning (Expert) - Lead a continual planning process in a very complex environment. Plan beyond product delivery. Identify dependencies in plans across services and co-ordinate delivery. Coach other teams as the central point of expertise.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Communicating and Influencing
- Leadership
- Delivering at Pace
- Working Together
- Seeing the Big Picture
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Agile tools and techniques and the ability to apply the appropriate methodology to support effective delivery.
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £68,199, Office for National Statistics contributes £19,757 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.
Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.
Inclusion & Accessibility
At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.
As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.
If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.
ONS are committed to flexible ways of working that support a healthy work-life balance. ONS has already considered how this job could be right sized for applicants working flexibly and we are happy to explore options with you about working part time, in a job share or flexibly, in line with our hybrid working policies.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience.
Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action.
Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
Security Clearance
For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis.
You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.
At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:
- Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records).
- UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records.
- Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency.
- Security Services records.
Visa Sponsorship
ONS can offer visa sponsorship as part of this recruitment campaign. However, applicants must still hold valid right to work in the UK at the point employment commences.
To work at the ONS, candidates must meet both UK right to work and security clearance requirements (where applicable).
If you are unsure whether you meet the appropriate right to work or security clearance eligibility criteria, please refer to the guidance on Gov.uk or contact the recruitment email provided in the advert before applying.
Failure to meet these requirements will result in your application being rejected and employment offers being withdrawn.
Application Process
Number of Stages: 2 stage process
- Stage 1: Application
- Stage 2: Interview
Stage 1 – Application
The assessment process at the application stage will be based on your work history, CV, skills, experience, and personal statement. It is important that your application is tailored to highlight the skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the role.
A personal statement is required at application stage, the maximum word count allowed is 1250 words, which should not be exceeded. You should provide evidence for each essential skill criterion listed in the person specification. As these criteria are scored, it is advisable to give clear examples for each one, including the impact of your actions, ideally utilising the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result).
Please note that Success Profiles Behaviour examples are not required at this stage of the application process.
In instances where a high number of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted, and candidates will be invited to interview based on merit order, i.e., those with the highest scores.
When a high volume of applications are received, the sift pass mark may be adjusted. Candidates will be invited to interview based on their merit order, with those achieving the highest scores being prioritised. Applicants who score below the adjusted pass mark but still pass will be placed on hold and may be invited to interview at a later date.
We often have similar roles available at different grades. If a candidate is suitable for a similar role or a lower grade than they have applied for, we may offer the candidate that role without the need to go through a further selection process providing the role has the same behaviours, and essential skills.
Stage 2 – Interview
If invited to interview, you will be assessed using techniques aligned with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework, covering all behaviours listed in the job advert and any required technical skills.
You will be required to provide a 10 minute presentation at interview. The presentation topic will be emailed to candidates who have passed the initial online application stage, 1 week prior to interview. This presentation will assess candidates against the Success Profiles Behaviour Working together.
Interviews will be via Microsoft Teams.
A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.
Important Dates
- Eligibility checks from 17/06 - 24/06. Please be aware we will be sending you an e-mail.
- Sift will be conducted from 25/06/2026
- Interviews will be conducted from 13/07/2026
For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment.
Please note that all campaigns may be subject to withdrawal at any stage if the internal resource position changes.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window). See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Nationality requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window).
Working for the Civil Service
The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.
Diversity and Inclusion
The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).
Apply and further information
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.
Contact point for applicants
Job contact
Recruitment team
Further information
If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with the Recruitment Principles and you wish to make a complaint, in the first instance, you should contact [email protected].
If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission.
Attachments
2721 Advert 1B Permanent - ONS National - Opens in new window (pdf, 83kB)
