Commercial Lead x2

Job summary

The Home Office works to keep citizens safe and the country secure. We reduce crime, enforce the law, protect borders, and safeguard the most vulnerable, while shaping public policy at the highest level. Our commercial teams have played a critical role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthening border and societal protections.

Each year, the Home Office spends around £3bn with third-party suppliers, managed by our Commercial Directorate—a team of approximately 300 procurement and contract management professionals. We source a wide range of goods and services, including complex programmes unique in Europe, supported by multi-million-pound contracts.

Joining us means making a tangible impact on the UK’s future. You will work across diverse missions, from Borders and Migration to Public Safety, Homeland Security, the Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme, and Digital, Data & Technology.

We are midway through a transformation programme and are recruiting across all grades. We now seek enthusiastic individuals to help deliver our objectives; you are our leaders and managers who will strengthen our reputation as a strategic partner, improve business outcomes, and deliver value for money through the contracts we source.

Whatever your background—public or private—if you are passionate about delivering first-class outcomes, we invite you to join our journey.

Job description

The Home Office has one of the most challenging and critical jobs in Whitehall: to keep Britain safe and secure. We operate at the heart of the Government's agenda, leading on immigration and passports, drugs policy, crime policy, counter-extremism and counterterrorism and work to ensure visible, responsive, and accountable policing in the UK. The challenges the Department faces are significant and can change rapidly in the global environment in which we operate, making this one of the most exciting and stimulating Government Departments in which to work.

The Commercial Directorate manages the conduit between the Home Office and those supplier markets that help us provide key services to the public. It provides strategic commercial services such as market intelligence, procurement and contract management activities and its principal aims are to deliver efficiency savings, support the strategic agendas of our client groups by procuring the right products and services in a timely manner and dynamically managing contracts and suppliers, whilst delivering activities in a transparent and compliant manner.

This is an exciting opportunity to join Home Office Commercial Directorate with roles within Missions: across Homeland Security Group and Public Safety Group.

Role Summary:

In these roles, you will be a true leader, driving development, innovation and creating a cohesive, positive mind-set to deliver great commercial outcomes with real accountability and collaboration with business and project teams. Your key focus will be planning and executing the Category Strategies for goods and services compliant with regulations and governance in support of business strategies.

The successful candidates can expect themselves to be working across a varied portfolio leading procurement and strategy development and be involved working as part of a wider commercial team leading procurement activity to deliver the business objectives.

All roles will involve the opportunity to lead individuals or a small team of other commercial professionals. You will develop and maintain positive relationships with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders and encourage collaborative relationships as appropriate. Your professional expertise and judgement will be relied upon and valued by senior colleagues.

Locations

The successful candidate(s) will be able to agree a contractual workplace from those locations listed in this advert. When selecting your location listed in this job advert please be aware that this will be your contractual base location with a requirement to spend a minimum of 60% of your working time in this organisational workplace.

Your time spent on official duties at workplace locations other than your contractual office such as supplier, customer or partner locations required to perform your role is included in the 60% attendance.

This requirement will however take into consideration any reasonable adjustments agreed upon appointment for people with a disability, flexibilities agreed for those with specific caring responsibilities, or other similar temporary flexibilities.

Person specification

Procurement:

• Work with business stakeholders and engage the market to refine requirements and procure critical goods and services which support Home Office priorities, playing a fundamental role in the security and economic prosperity of the UK.
• Create, maintain, and deliver Category Strategies and Procurement Strategies working collaboratively with Commercial teams and stakeholders developing a deep understanding of all supply markets, category, and business context.
• Lead and support your team, function, and customers to implement the commercial change program, paying attention to the evolving future pipeline, ensuring it is regularly refreshed and agreed with business teams.

Contract Management:

• Work with the business to manage Contracts and Supplier Relationships.
• Create, maintain, and deliver Contract Management Plans working collaboratively with Commercial teams and stakeholders.
• Lead or support teams in the implementation and embedding of robust Contract Management, aligned to the Government Commercial Organisation (GCO) “Contract Management Guide,” with initial focus on those designated critical contracts.
• Deliver Home Office Contract Management processes, procedures, and training, in line with the GCO Standards.
• Act as an assessor of business-critical contracts to ensure compliance, mitigate risk, and maximize value.
• Analysis and resolution of contractual issues, negotiation, and exercising judgement to make effective decisions.

Leadership:

• Develop strong strategic relationships with a range of internal and external stakeholders to maximize opportunities to collaborate, achieve efficiencies, improve capability, and promote the procurement profession.
• Lead or support the development or create opportunities to improve commercial leverage and drive best practice across all areas of Home Office.
• Provide consistent and clear commercial advice and guidance to internal and external stakeholders and be a key point of contact with the department.
• Ensure the Department is compliant with all relevant Government, EU and Departmental policies, regulations, and legislation.
• Develop a commercially focused culture within the team and work to develop relationships with key stakeholders to improve commercial understanding across the business.
• Proactively support the professional development of all team members, taking responsibility for the ongoing performance and development of self and staff, plus the team's performance.
• Provide leadership direction, standards, and advice to the wider Commercial department, contributing to the culture of meeting the highest commercial standards and continuous learning and improvement

Technical skills

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

• Be able to demonstrate/evidence balancing the conflicting demands across multiple projects and tasks, including how to prioritise and ensure each task is treated appropriately
• Evidence of working on complex commercial projects involving novel and non-standard commercial & contractual mechanisms, with the ability to identify improvements that deliver greater commercial outcomes.
• Experience building and influencing strong, productive relationships at all levels and with a variety of stakeholders with different backgrounds, perspectives and drivers, in a highly complex, fast-moving, commercially focused environment.
• Demonstrate effective communication both orally and in writing and evidence of being a caring and empathetic manager. Evidence of leading by example, listening to others and confidence at delegating to their team.
• Evidence of leading on contracts of high value/complexity/reputational risk, ensuring security of supply throughout & demonstrating a focus in managing costs and driving the best value out of contracts

Benefits

As a valued employee of the Government Commercial Organisation (GCO), you will have access to all the benefits the centre has to offer; including flexible working, generous benefits, Career Coaches, Mentors, L&D, a Commercial College, active talent management and, most importantly, access to commercial projects that will far exceed the scale and complexity on offer elsewhere in the UK.

For existing Civil Servants: For full details of the impact on any move across the civil service on your existing terms and conditions, please read the candidate pack. Please note that any move across the Civil Service may have implications on your ability to continue to claim childcare vouchers.

Kindly refer to the following link for the GCF Rewards and benefits page.

https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/gcf-benefits/

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 Experience and Technical skills.Your application will be reviewed by a panel and should you be successful at sift we will invite you to attend a Virtual commercial Assessment and Development Centre (VADC). The panel will review results of the VADC and determine which candidates will go through to a subsequent final panel interview. Please note: Only candidates that achieve an A grade at ADC will be invited to interview for this role.

Please be advised that the Virtual ADC is taking place on Monday 23rd March 2026 and will require a full day's attendance.

If you are invited to attend a virtual ADC, but for any reason are unable to meet the date outlined then please get in touch with the team on as soon as possible. The ADC is booked and paid for in advance by departments, therefore it is only in certain circumstances we are able to accommodate alternative dates.

For full details of our process, and a likely timeline, please read the attached candidate pack.

Throughout our selection process, we will make decisions about your capability to do the job, based on evidence you provide against the Technical Skills (essential criteria) and your Job History (CV) that you will be asked to provide during the application process. Further help and advice on our application and selection process can be found at this web address https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/gcf-how-to-apply/
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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/artificial-intelligence-and-recruitment/
IMPORTANT: If you do not receive an acknowledgement of your application within 2 working days please contact: commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
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.The Civil Service welcomes applications from people who have recently left prison or have an unspent conviction. Read more about prison leaver recruitment (opens in new window).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 : Patricia Krauss
• Email : commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.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, you should direct this to the Head of Commercial Resourcing Hub at the following email commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk quoting the vacancy reference number (if applicable) and the details of your complaint. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you can contact the Civil Service Commission via the following web page: http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/civil-service-recruitm…

Attachments

Guaranteed Interview Schemes (GIS) Opens in new window (pdf, 64kB)447444 - Candidate Pack - Home Office - Commercial Lead x2.docx Opens in new window (pdf, 480kB)