Census Service Operations Manager

Job summary

Are you ready to be part of something that shapes the future of our nation? Do you thrive on variety, enjoy working with lots of teams, and want to make a real difference? If so, this could be the opportunity you've been looking for.

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.

Census 2031 represents our most ambitious data collection project yet – a once-in-a-decade opportunity to capture a complete picture of everyone living in England and Wales. Building on the digital success of 2021, we're pioneering new ways to reach every household and community, ensuring no one is left uncounted. This vital work will provide the foundation for policy decisions, resource allocation, and community planning for the next decade.

Your work will support delivery of this transformational project that will shape how we understand and support our nation's future. You’ll be part of a team that ensures everyone is counted—and every voice is heard. We're building a culture that values collaboration, fresh thinking, and respect for diverse expertise. Whether you're a seasoned professional or bringing new perspectives, you'll be part of a team that welcomes bold ideas, works transparently, and thrives on solving complex challenges together.

Job description

This role sits within Census Service Delivery & Operations division and plays a key part in shaping the delivery and performance of Census services.

Each role will be part of one of the following services:

Field Ops - Household (HH) - The Households service manages field operations to support census completion for all residential households. It allocates and oversees field visits, provides guidance to respondents, performs address and frame checks, and ensures data is collected safely and accurately to maximise response rates across England and Wales.

Field Ops - Special Population Groups (SPGs) - The SPGs service delivers tailored enumeration for groups that fall outside traditional households, such as rough sleepers, travelling communities, houseboats and other hard‑to‑reach populations. It ensures appropriate engagement, adapted collection methods and inclusive operational approaches so every community is counted accurately.

Field Operations - Communal Establishments (CEs) - The CE service delivers tailored enumeration for groups that fall outside traditional households, such as universities, care homes and other hard to reach populations. It ensures appropriate engagement, adapted collection methods and inclusive operational approaches so every community is counted accurately.

Field Support - The Support service provides remote help and issue resolution for field staff, handling queries across technology, HR, pay, health and safety, guidance and equipment. It ensures staff receive timely assistance, escalates issues when needed, and maintains the resources field workers rely on to operate successfully.

Field Logistics - The logistics service manages all materials required by field staff. It oversees stock, quality checks, picking, packing, delivery, returns and recycling, ensuring every field worker receives the right equipment at the right time to support smooth census operations.

Field Technology - The Technology Service manages all devices, software and data used by field staff, ensuring equipment is built, configured, supported and kept secure throughout the census. It maintains field work management tools, oversees data exchange with other services, and provides reliable technology that underpins smooth operational delivery.

Paper Capture - The Paper Capture Service is responsible for managing the receiving and receipting of all returned paper questionnaires. It also ensures that the completed questionnaires are scanned to produce images and to capture all response data, as well as managing the secure transfer of the images and data for processing. It also covers postal services to collect and return the completed questionnaires for data capture.

Print Services - This Print Service is responsible for managing the printing and timely despatch of the census materials including initial contact products, paper questionnaires, and other non-questionnaire materials, such as envelopes and Field Ops supplementary materials, including on-request fulfilments.

Public Support - Public Support – The Public Support service provides support to respondents by offering clear guidance and accessible contact centre assistance. The service provides national-scale channels for remote agents to support and guide respondents via telephone, email, chat, SMS and social media. This also includes providing telephone-agent assisted capture of questionnaire responses

Responsibilities:

Design and Build Phase

• Lead and contribute to the detailed design, integration and documentation of one or more Census services, ensuring alignment with Census strategy, architecture and cross service dependencies.
• Gather, refine and document operational, functional and nonfunctional requirements, engaging with delivery partners, technical teams and subject matter experts.
• Support the development of service models, process maps, user journeys and workflows that underpin the delivery of your service area.
• Review proposed solutions, designs and supplier products, ensuring they meet agreed acceptance criteria, operational standards and user needs.
• Identify design risks, constraints and interdependencies early, escalating appropriately and contributing to mitigations and decision making.
• Participate in test planning and assurance activities, including scenario testing, UAT, failover checks, and operational readiness exercises.

Operational Delivery and Service Management

• Act as the first point of escalation for service specific operational issues, using judgement to resolve issues promptly or escalate to the Business Service Owner where required.
• Monitor day to day service delivery, identifying performance concerns, operational risks, blockers or failure points and ensuring timely resolution.
• Maintain effective relationships with suppliers and internal delivery partners, ensuring they meet SLAs, contractual obligations and performance expectations.
• Prepare, validate and submit accurate data and documentation required for supplier invoicing and payments.
• Ensure operational controls, policies, compliance requirements and quality standards are embedded and consistently followed.
• Maintain a clear understanding of interdependencies with other Census services, ensuring seamless end-to-end delivery.
• Implementing and managing compliance of Census H&S management arrangements for those you manage directly and through your management team. Being directly responsible for ensuring all H&S requirements are in place and managed.
• Operational management of H&S issues as they arise during field operations, responding to and making decisions; making informed contributions and being able to cascade clear instructions to your team.

Performance, MI and Assurance

• Monitor service performance using data, dashboards, trends and operational insights to support evidence-based decision making.
• Produce high quality MI and reporting for senior leaders, programme governance forums and cross service working groups.
• Assure the integrity, accuracy and completeness of operational data and support continuous improvement of MI processes.
• Track SLAs, KPIs and operational indicators, identifying root cause issues and feeding recommendations into service or system improvements.
• Contribute to internal and external audits, compliance reviews and assurance activities, ensuring your service meets legislative, security and operational standards.

Governance, Risk and Continuous Improvement

• Maintain and support service governance routines including action logs, risk registers, decision logs and change control processes.
• Identify improvement opportunities across processes, tools, training materials and service delivery, leading or contributing to continuous improvement initiatives.
• Champion learning from previous Census cycles and embed lessons learned into design, delivery and training documentation.
• Contribute to horizon scanning and forward planning, highlighting impacts of policy shifts, operational intelligence or programme changes.

Stakeholder and Partner Engagement

• Build and maintain strong collaborative relationships with key stakeholders including design teams, technical services, logistics, customer support, training providers and field operations.
• Represent your service area at internal and cross programme meetings, presenting updates, risks, dependencies and insight.
• Work with suppliers, partners and internal teams to resolve complex issues, negotiate priorities and ensure a joined up approach to service delivery.
• Support the cascade of information and guidance to operational teams, ensuring messages are consistent, accurate and timely.

Decommissioning and Evaluation

• Support structured decommissioning activity for your service area, ensuring data retention, knowledge capture and supplier offboarding are completed correctly.
• Contribute to post operational reviews, evaluations and lessons learned exercises, producing recommendations for Census 2031 and future programmes.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Strong operational management experience in complex or high‑volume service environments, with the ability to maintain consistent delivery under pressure.
• Ability to interpret and use data, MI and insight to inform decisions, monitor performance, and identify risks or improvement opportunities.
• Experience working with suppliers or delivery partners, ensuring service standards, SLAs and operational expectations are met.
• Excellent organisational and planning skills, with the ability to manage competing priorities, deadlines and resource needs.
• Strong communication and stakeholder engagement skills, able to build relationships, influence outcomes and work collaboratively across teams.
• Proven problem‑solving and decision‑making skills, with the ability to act in ambiguous situations and escalate appropriately.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing
• Managing a Quality Service

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £41,985, Office for National Statistics contributes £12,163 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.

Things you need to know

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 and Experience.

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.

If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link, or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.

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

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 wordcount 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.

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.

Interviews will take place in person at our Titchfield Office.

Our main locations are Newport (South Wales), Titchfield and Darlington.

A reserve list may be held for a period up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.

Important Dates:

The Sift will be conducted from Friday 10th April 2026

Interviews will be conducted from Wednesday 22nd April 2026

Dates are subject to change.

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 theCivil 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 :

• Name : Recruitment Operations
• Email : Recruitmentoperations@ons.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : Recruitmentoperations@ons.gov.uk

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 recruitment.complaints@ons.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission

Attachments

ONS_Vacancy_Terms(Permanent) Opens in new window (pdf, 83kB)