Delivery Manager

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.

This Delivery Manager vacancy sits within Social Surveys Telephone and Ports Collection (SSTPC) division which encompasses the International Passenger Survey community, who are based at airports, seaports, and international train stations across the UK, and the Telephone Operations community, which is based within our HQ offices.

The division also incorporates the Survey Enquiry Line, who support field interviewers and the public who call in requesting assistance, and the Survey Validation team who undertake critical coding and editing work.

The Operational Delivery Profession Hub team, which provides profession-specific support and development across Social Surveys Directorate and the wider ONS, also sits within this division.

Social Surveys Directorate (SSD) is the largest Directorate in ONS, comprising 2000 colleagues, including the field communities, split across six divisions.

• Social Surveys Field Collection (SSFC)
• Social Surveys Telephone and Ports Collection (SSTPC)
• Social Surveys Research and Production (SSRP)
• Social Surveys Strategy, Research and Innovation (SSRI)
• Social Surveys Transformation (SST)
• Social Surveys Central Division (SSCD)

Job description

As a Delivery Manager you will be accountable for the delivery of products and services. Build and maintain motivated teams, making sure there is an iterative plan to work towards. Protect the team and make sure the team collaborates, communicates, and focuses on what is most important. Coach team members and others. Facilitate continuous improvement and apply the most appropriate agile and lean tools and techniques for their environment. Proactively manage dependencies, overcome obstacles, and get the best value against constraints. You may manage risks, budgets, and people. A delivery manager will build and maintain teams, ensuring they are motivated, collaborating and working well.

In this role you will:

• Identify obstacles and help the team to overcome them.
• Focus the team on what is most important to the delivery of products and services.
• Encourage and facilitate continuous improvement of the delivery team.
• Coach and mentor both team members and others to apply the most appropriate Agile and Lean tools and techniques.
• Work with stakeholders and end users to plan and configure systems, to develop solutions that will achieve needed objectives.
• Oversee the deployment of programs, systems, or services, coordinating all of the parties involved to ensure a smooth process with minimal disruption.

Responsibilities

• Demonstrate leadership skills, manage risk, and guide projects towards successful delivery.
• Proactively identify potential issues and take action to prevent them from hindering progress.
• Oversee the financial aspects of project delivery, ensuring efficient use of resources.
• Actively engage in project planning and estimation, preparing for potential challenges and changes.
• Experience in leading Delivery of software systems against business requirements, ideally when using telephony.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Commercial Management Working - Act as the point of contact for contracted suppliers. Understand appropriate internal contacts and processes within a government department. Understand how and when third parties should be brought into digital, data and technology project
• Communicating between the technical and non-technical Practitioner - Listen to and interpret the needs of technical and non-technical stakeholders and manage their expectations. Manage active and reactive communication. Support or host difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders.
• Life cycle management Working - Manage the delivery of products and services that add value through different phases of the life cycle, with some support. Identify if the product or service should move to the next phase and, if it should, how to do this ensure the product or service is developed in line with the appropriate service standards for a phase. Use new information to adapt approaches to life cycle management
• 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. Understand external suppliers’ delivery approaches and adapt to ensure interface to ONS delivery approach is smooth, challenging external supplier to align more closely where appropriate. Guide teams through the implementation of a new process
• Planning Practitioner - Understand the environment and is able to prioritise the most important or highest value tasks. Use data to inform planning. Manage complex internal and external dependencies. Provide delivery confidence. Remove blockers or impediments that affect the plan and is able to develop a plan for difficult situations. Ensure teams plan appropriately for their own capacity.

Behaviours

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

• Delivering at Pace
• Leadership
• Changing and Improving
• Working Together

Technical skills

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

• Communicating between the technical and non-technical

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, 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.

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

Please note we will reach out to you once the advert has closed to confirm eligibility for this role, this will be via an e-mail. Please check your junk e-mails for any correspondence.

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, skills, experience, CV, 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, it will state the maximum word count allowed, which should not be exceeded. Where it is a requirement to make a personal statement, 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.

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 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 Security Clearance checks from 18/02 - 25/02. We will be sending you an e-mail with a form to fill out. Please check your junk e-mails for any correspondence.
• Sift will be conducted from 26/02/2026
• Interviews will be conducted from 16/03/2026

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 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 : Government Digital and Data Recruitment
• Email : Government-Digital-and-Data-Recruitment@ons.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : Government-Digital-and-Data-Recruitment@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

2721 Advert 1B Permanent - ONS National Opens in new window (pdf, 83kB)