Digital Senior Delivery Manager - EXT

Job summary

Do you thrive on working with people, improving how teams work, and helping deliver outcomes that genuinely make a difference? We are looking for Digital Senior Delivery Managers!

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 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 463150 Digital Senior Delivery Manager. 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 to both campaigns.

Job description

As a Digital Senior Delivery Manager, you will be accountable for the effective delivery of complex, high risk products and services. You will have strong communication skills and engage senior stakeholders. You will also coach and mentor other Digital Delivery Managers. You will be accountable for ensuring delivery achieves agreed outcomes, provides value for users, and aligns with wider organisational priorities and strategic goals.

These roles will contribute to delivery across strategic platforms and key organisational objectives, supporting critical services and transformation initiatives.

You will work with multidisciplinary teams and senior stakeholders to plan and deliver effectively in fast-paced, often ambiguous environments.

There are four roles available, each leading delivery within a distinct area. These include work across strategic platforms and delivery aligned to key organisational objectives.

The roles will support:

• Survey Data Collection
• Statistical Business Register
• Digital Delivery Framework

While each role will have ownership of a specific product or service, which may evolve over time, you will work collaboratively across teams, platforms and programmes to manage dependencies and ensure the successful delivery of shared outcomes

Key responsibilities

You will:

• Manage the delivery of high-risk products and services, ensuring successful outcomes.
• Share expertise with other team members, nurturing their growth and development.
• Maintain open lines of communication with high-level interested parties, effectively advocating for their team.
• Contribute to strategic decision-making, steering the direction of products and service delivery.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Communicating between the technical and non-technical (Expert) - Mediate between people and strengthen relationships, adopting the appropriate communication method with stakeholders at all levels, manage stakeholder expectations and moderate difficult discussions about high risk and complex topics, even within constrained timescales, speak on behalf of, and represent the community to, large audiences inside and outside the organisation.
  
• 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.
  
• Planning (Expert) - Lead a continual planning process in a very complex environment. Plan beyond product delivery. Identify dependencies in plans across services and coordinate delivery. Coach other teams as the central point of expertise.
  
• Team dynamics and resolution (Practitioner) - Identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them. Identify issues through Agile health-checks with the team and provoke the right responses. Engage in varying types of feedback choosing the right type at the appropriate time and ensuring the discussion and decision sticks. Accelerate the team development cycle.
  
• 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.

Behaviours

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

• Leadership
• Delivering at Pace
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £56,861, Office for National Statistics contributes £16,472 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.

This role is part of the cross-government Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) profession framework. As a role within Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) at the ONS, we also offer benefits such as:

• Protected Learning Time to spend on your personal development and side-projects.

• A supportive and active Community of Practice which you will be expected to contribute to, helping ensure you and your colleagues get the training, development and opportunities you need to progress your careers.

We are committed to supporting our people’s wellbeing by offering flexible ways of working that support a healthy work life balance. We are happy to explore opportunities with you about working flexibly in line with our hybrid working policies.

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

For full guidance in relation to the use of AI through the recruitment process, please read A candidate’s guide to artificial intelligence (AI) in recruitment

Please note that all campaigns may be subject to withdrawal at any stage if the internal resource position changes.

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, the maximum wordcount allowed is 1250, 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.

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.

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.

A presentation will be required at interview. This will be against the "Leadership" behaviour.

Interviews may be in person or via Microsoft Teams.

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

The Sift will be conducted from 15/06/2026

Interviews will be conducted from 23/06/2026

For the full terms and conditions of the post, please see attachment.

Curious about Government Digital and Data? Dive into the Candidate Pack to learn more

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@ons.gov.uk
• 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 v1-00 Opens in new window (pdf, 83kB)