Chief Customer Officer, UK Hydrographic Office

Job summary

The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) is a world-leading centre for hydrography, delivering trusted data and expertise to support safe, secure and thriving oceans. Supporting safe navigation is at the heart of what we do. Through our Admiralty portfolio, we provide a leading range of navigational products and services which are trusted by over 90% of large ships trading internationally today.

We collaborate with a wide range of partners and peers across the globe to collect, process and publish hydrographic and marine geospatial data from seabed to surface. In addition, we represent the UK government internationally as an authority on hydrography and seabed mapping.

As an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence, our expertise also supports vital defence operations, maritime security and marine development in the UK and worldwide.

The primary purpose of the Chief Customer Officer role is to deliver and sustain strong commercial performance, meeting revenue targets across the existing customer base, while identifying and developing new business and revenue growth opportunities that build on our core Admiralty navigation business.

Along with the role holder’s ELT peer group, the CCO role will lead the building and embedding customer-centricity across UKHO as a means to this commercial end, shaping how the UKHO operates and delivers through a deep, data-led understanding of our customer’s needs.

The role holder will drive the use of customer insight and strengthened customer relationships to inform strategy, product development and support high-quality commercial decision-making.

Job description

The role spans seven areas of accountability, across the Executive Leadership Team, the Customer Division and the wider organisation:

• Executive Leadership Team - Provide strategic commercial and customer leadership as a member of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT), ensuring that revenue sustainability and growth, customer-centricity, customer data and insight and market understanding are key to decision-making and overall organisational strategy.
• Revenue sustainability & growth - Accountability for delivering sustainable revenue performance, including revenue growth, customer retention and value growth including, but not limited to, across the UKHO’s Admiralty digital products and services, through identifying new product innovation, entering adjacent or new markets and enhancing customer experience.
• Leadership - Providing empowering and inspiring leadership across the Customer Division (circa 100 colleagues) with direct line management responsibility for a small team of Senior Leadership Team (SLT) members, indirect line management for the rest of the division and fostering collaboration across a wider network through dotted line reporting relationships.
• Strategy - Leading the development and delivery of the Customer Division and overall customer strategy, aligned to the UKHO’s Corporate and Business Plans and the Vision for 2034. This includes ensuring that our brand remains competitive and a brand of choice within a changing operating environment.
• Culture - Provides empowering and inspiring leadership within the Customer Division and across the organisation, by acting as a role model for ‘The UKHO way’. The role holder will create a supportive environment of trust and accountability, where people are inspired, confident and empowered to achieve every day.
• Customer experience advocate - Provides direction and clarity of focus by setting and embedding a customer strategy across all functions and touchpoints and will design and continuously improve end-to-end customer journeys based on insight and feedback. Will drive consistent, high-quality experiences across all aspects of the customer journey and will champion customer advocacy at executive level and across the organisation.
• Product management - Ensures that strategy aligns with customer-centricity through understanding customer insights and integrating these into product design and continuous improvement. Will oversee product roadmap prioritisation and will ensure collaboration with multi-disciplinary teams across the organisation to develop products and services.

Person specification

• Experience of senior customer leadership at Director level (or equivalent), delivering customer outcomes by bringing together multidisciplinary teams across sales, marketing, commercial, digital and product functions.
• Demonstrable experience of developing and delivering customer-centric commercial strategies that have directly driven revenue growth, business development, market expansion, and increased market share. Evidence of identifying and converting new business opportunities, building sustainable income streams, and delivering measurable commercial growth whilst enhancing customer experience, engagement, and long-term organisational sustainability.
• Experience of operating in digital and data driven organisations, using customer insights to inform product, service or ‘go-to-market’ decisions.
• Experience of building and sustaining customer-centric cultures, working effectively across teams to promote an entrepreneurial and commercial mindset.
• Experience of championing diversity and inclusion and creating inclusive environments that enable high performance and innovation.

Leadership Behaviours

• A collaborative strategic leader, able to work across organisational boundaries to set direction and policy.
• Can deliver and drive customer-centric and digital transformation, preparing the organisation to deliver against evolving and changing market and user needs.
• Shapes outcomes through clear, inclusive communication, clarity of focus and effective influencing and negotiation, building trust and credibility with a diverse group of stakeholders.
• Can develop high performing multi-disciplinary teams that use customer insights, data, technology, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking to create capability to focus on delivery and outcomes for the UKHO’s customers.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £115,000, Ministry of Defence contributes £33,315 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

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

Hays Executive is managing this competition on behalf of the UKHO and the MOD. To apply for this post, please submit the following on the below link no later than 23:59 Monday 19th October 2026.

• A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years and include contact details for two referees.
• A supporting statement of suitability (maximum 1000 words) that outlines your interest in this organisation and role. The statement should demonstrate how your experience meets the essential experience criteria set out in the person specification as well as the post holder responsibilities set out in the role summary.
• Please complete the diversity monitoring questionnaire included in the application portal, found on the application portal when you press the “Apply now” link. All information gathered is anonymous and is not used as a part of your application.
• If you would like to apply under the Disability Confident Scheme, the Veteran’s Scheme, or the Redeployment Interview Scheme, please complete the “Guaranteed interview declaration form”, found on the application portal when you press the “Apply now” link.

External candidates who join the MOD and are new to the Civil Service will be subject to a six-month probation period.

For further information about this role, please visit UK Hydrographic Office , Role Summary , Hays UK

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Security

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 : Andrew Timlin
• Email : Andrew.timlin@hays.com

Recruitment team

• Email : Andrew.timlin@hays.com

Further information

We aim to process all applications as quickly as possible and to treat all applicants with courtesy. If you feel that you have a complaint about the way in which your application has been handled, please contact in the first instance MOD SCS Recruitment Team on People-CivHR-SCSCandidateSupport@mod.gov.uk. If you are not completely satisfied with the response, please contact the Civil Service Commission on info@csc.gov.uk.

We will acknowledge your complaint upon receipt and aim to provide a response within five working days.

https://webmicrosites.hays.co.uk/web/ukho/