Head of Advanced Connectivity Technologies and Systems (ACTS)

Job summary

Job Purpose:

This is a pivotal leadership role at the heart of a strategy to grow the UK as prosperous, safe and vibrant place to live and work. The primary purpose of this role is to provide leadership for your team, work in collaboration with other Heads of roles, and support the Director for Secure and Resilient Growth. The role will actively contribute to the directorate vision to deliver secure and resilient growth for the UK, focusing on the advanced connectivity technologies and systems. You will be responsible for the strategic plan, financial planning, and delivery of interventions required to build capability in foundational technologies that underpin our critical technology supply chains. You will also be responsible to identify, create the business case for, and deliver interventions that connect these capabilities to grow the UK business landscape able to deliver solutions into UK Government's Priority Growth Sectors.

We particularly welcome female applicants as women are under-represented within Innovate UK in this type of role.

Job description

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

Leadership team. This includes:

Leadership:

• Lead on the benefits realisation for the Directorate objectives to ensure the agreed outputs and outcomes are delivered as defined in agreed business cases in terms of SMART objectives.
• Communicating the vision such that a UK coalition of industrial and political leaders are advocating for, enabling and delivering action.
• Building momentum for and delivering strategic outcomes across the UK from the Directorate interventions. Play a strong role in the Director team by building a strong and influential coalition of partners from industry, academia, and government to deliver transformational change and growth for the UK.
• Communicating wins and approach in line with the Directorate vision and to support the overall business case developments.

Strategic Delivery:

• Providing clear thought leadership for you and your objectives to enable better delivery for the transformational changes required across businesses and industries to achieve growth.
• Accountable for delivering the intervention strategies for funding research and innovation for approval through Directorate, Innovate UK, DSIT governance structures, including which areas to fund and how best to deliver.
• Developing business cases for future, broader activities aligned with the programme strategy.

Programme Governance:

• Advise and deliver robust, transparent and open programmes that meet audit, public and government scrutiny.
• Manage the day-to-day financial forecasting for the Foundational Technologies programme.

High-performing team:

• Working with the senior leadership team and Director to manage and develop a high-performing, highly skilled programme team that can influence exceptional collaborative outcomes.
• Assist with the recruitment and development of the team

Specific Responsibilities include:

• Maintaining financial forecasts and updates for the various programme activities.
• Managing multiple managed programme interventions.
• Responsibility for the strategic plan and interventions required to identify and build necessary capability within a advanced communication technology and solutions’ sectors and markets.
• Identify, create the business case for, and deliver interventions from connecting capabilities to create a business landscape able to deliver solutions into UK Government's Priority Growth Sectors.
• Ensure any Programme Board and Advisory Group are well informed and enabled to take action through the design of agendas, Terms of Reference and papers and discussion topics at meetings. Ensure that there would be ongoing scrutiny of the Advisory Group, particularly in relation to membership and conflicts of interest.
• Contribute appropriately to the running and future development of the programme including contributing to the development of future activities, developing and enabling delivery of the evaluation, chairing team meetings, participating in the programme catch-ups, and sharing information across the programme.
• Leading on future potential proposals to develop the communication technologies and solutions programmes and interventions.

Person specification

Person Specification:

Experience & Qualifications:

Essential –

• Educated to degree-level in a relevant discipline or equivalent experience (S)
• A deep understanding of multiple technologies and solutions as found in advanced connectivity and systems such as O-RAN. (S&I)
• Knowledge across technology and solutions in connectivity and semiconductors, as well as a strategic view of how these and related technologies interrelate within the supply chains for UK Government's Priority Growth Sectors. (S&I)
• Demonstrable achievement of results through influencing skills rather than direct control.
• Successful management of multiple senior and executive stakeholders with conflicting demands and priorities. (S&I)
• Effective management of significant budgets, implementing cost-control and forecasting in a tightly controlled environment. (S&I)
• Experience of innovation or research, business competitiveness and technology policy or delivery. (S&I)
• Experience of influencing high-performance teams across multiple locations to deliver exceptional results. (S&I)

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £70,752, Innovate UK contributes £20,496 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

• 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

1st interview incl presentation.

Interviews will either take place remotely via Teams or in person face to face.

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

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.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.

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

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Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Recruitment@ukri.org
• Email : Recruitment@ukri.org

Recruitment team

• Email : Recruitment@ukri.org