Head of Sourcing

Job summary

The United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is a system leader for health security; taking action internationally to strengthen global health security, providing trusted advice to government and the public and reducing inequalities in the way different communities experience and are impacted by infectious disease, environmental hazards, and other threats to health.

UKHSA’s remit, as an agency with a global-to-local reach, is to protect the health of the nation from infectious diseases and other external threats to health. As the nation’s expert national health security agency UKHSA will:

• Prevent: anticipate threats to health and help build the nation’s readiness, defences and health security
• Detect: use cutting edge environmental and biological surveillance to proactively detect and monitor infectious diseases and threats to health
• Analyse: use world-class science and data analytics to assess and continually monitor threats to health, identifying how best to control and mitigate the risks
• Respond: take rapid, collaborative and effective actions nationally and locally to mitigate threats to health when they materialise
• Lead: lead strong and sustainable global, national, regional and local partnerships designed to save lives, protect the nation from public health threats and reduce inequalities

The Commercial, Vaccines and Countermeasures Delivery (CVCD) Directorate has responsibility for UKHSA’s procurement, commercial strategy and governance, business development collaborations, countermeasures against environmental threats and the supply and distribution of vaccines for national immunisation campaigns and for Covid.

We maintain a complex ecosystem of contracts and partnerships that enable the agency to respond to current and emerging health challenges. We manage business development partnerships that drive innovation and generate income to support core UKHSA capabilities. Our challenge is to develop innovative commercial arrangements that will shape and support the agency’s capabilities, preparations and response to health threats.

Job description

This role sits within the Commercial Sourcing and Delivery team, which is responsible for providing expert commercial and procurement support through the end-to-end commercial lifecycle for UKHSA Directorates, programmes, and projects. The team drive value for UKHSA through managing contract delivery and supplier relationships to ensure the delivery of goods and services to UKHSA customers, and enabling self-sufficiency through the effective management of the MarketPlace platform.

Sourcing works across the end-to-end commercial lifecycle at UKHSA to deliver strategic procurements and programmes. As owners of the Commercial Pipeline, they ensure current and future demand is balanced against our resource profile – as well as assure the quality of information and data that is submitted to the pipeline.

Sourcing, and this role, deliver value to UKHSA customers, Major Programmes and Business Partners through the ability to provide procurement subject matter expertise and crucial input into business cases and sourcing strategies. Their commercial delivery responsibility is supplemented through turning insight into action by rationalising and aggregating commercial spend across suppliers, identifying cost efficiency opportunities and the implementation of initiatives to achieve them.

The role will report into the Deputy Director Commercial Sourcing and Delivery and will join the team at a busy time as a new Sourcing and Delivery structure and ways of working are embedded. It will oversee a team that manages procurements in a multi category health environment including, Estates, Technology, Science and Professional Services.

We are looking for a strong procurement professional with extensive experience in leading a sourcing team within a busy and challenging environment. You will be an enthusiastic and collaborative leader, championing commercial best practice and ensuring the Sourcing team delivers an efficient, compliant, and high-quality commercial service to UKHSA. You will also bring excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, building effective relationships with key stakeholders to ensure commercial thinking is positively embedded across the organisation.

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

The successful candidate will be responsible for managing the Commercial Sourcing and Delivery team to drive and deliver against the following activities:

Leadership and Development:

• Leading the team to develop and manage end to end commercial strategies, negotiating complex deals and managing suppliers and partners.
• Continuing to ensure and embed an inclusive and collaborative culture within the team.
• Identifying, appraising, and mitigating procurement and commercial risks, reducing the exposure of UKHSA, driving supply chain performance and investment, monitoring the financial health of suppliers and increasing operational resilience.
• Enabling good governance through ensuring that commitments are met with compliant, good quality and appropriate submissions to boards and ministers.
• Develop strong strategic relationships with a range of internal and external stakeholders to maximise opportunities to collaborate, achieve efficiencies, improve capability and promote the procurement profession.
• Oversee the allocation and triage process of work allocations. Receive, review, prioritise and allocate work to central sourcing and delivery teams.
• Oversight and management of pipeline data and information in liaison with Commercial PMO.
• Playing a leading role on the UKHSA Approval Board.
• Manage stakeholders and communicate with impact, using different communication styles depending upon the needs of the particular audience.
• Ensure effective relationship management with Commercial Business Partners, understanding and working with the team to align the agency priorities within the resource profile.
• Provide consistent and clear commercial advice, guidance and oversight to internal and external stakeholders and be a key point of contact for the department for sourcing.
• Ensure the Department is compliant with all relevant Government, EU and Departmental policies, regulations and legislation.
• Comply with Civil Service policies and procedures; this includes ensuring that responses to Freedom of Information Requests and Parliamentary Questions are handled robustly and accurately.
• Build and lead a high-performing, engaged team in a hybrid environment, fostering a commercially focused culture, empowering staff, and promoting continuous development through clear performance management, capability building, and active support for individual career aspirations.
• Develop strong relationships with key stakeholders to enhance commercial understanding across the organisation, working collaboratively to deliver the team’s vision, strengthen confidence, and drive improvement in sourcing capability and outcomes.
• Create an environment of trust, empowerment and accountability, understanding team strengths and skills gaps, encouraging innovation, and ensuring the team is supported to deliver high-quality commercial outcomes aligned with organisational priorities.
• Effectively support and upskill both commercial and non-commercial professionals. Develop and deliver training / workshop-based learning conducting targeted teach-ins. This should be done both proactively and on request.
• Lead or support the development, or create opportunities to improve, commercial leverage and drive best practice across all categories.

Sourcing:

• Responsible for establishing and maintaining a robust Sourcing structure that will result in best-in-class procurement processes based upon the candidate’s deep commercial expertise.
• Provide specialist commercial expertise to enable delivery of creative and innovative market leading commercial solutions.

• Support the development and delivery of the commercial strategy including planning, governance and performance management.
• Perform procurement reporting and analysis of management information to identify improvement opportunities.
• Ensure agreed cost savings, efficiencies and value add targets are delivered.
• Responsible for cascading guidance and direction on commercial principles and good practice and ensuring the correct application of commercial rules and principles apply.
• Ensure business continuity and that robust contingencies are in place for critical delivery.
• Lead and support the development of key documentation including business cases and tender documentation.
• Negotiate Commercial Agreements with third parties, coordinating interfaces and integrating across contracts and suppliers.
• Lead the development and creation of contracts.
• Lead transition management, exit strategy and contract renegotiations including driving value from the use of performance metrics and success criteria.

Process, Policy and Risk Management:

• Manage Commercial contribution to all Change Requests and Project Requests.
• Maintain comprehensive audit trails and justifications for price control.
• Be responsible for implementing and maintaining adherence to the department’s risk management framework.
• Engage with staff at all levels as appropriate to ensure that risk management remains visible, accessible, proportionate and relevant to all those involved in decision-making.
• Lead on continuous improvement activity, supporting the design and implementation of new policies and procedures in line with Commercial best practice.
• Embed the Cabinet Office spend controls across the commercial team ensuring alignment and compliance with Policy.

Technical skills

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

• Deliver high-quality results across complex projects by navigating unexplored issues with resilience. Manage difficult stakeholder messages and concurrent tasks with focus, ensuring deadlines are met without compromise.
• Evidence of building successful, effective working relationships with a diverse range of stakeholders with different, sometimes conflicting, priorities and knowledge.
• Proven leadership experience in large-scale complex organisations, developing commercial capability and upskilling diverse stakeholders. Develop capability by training and upskilling commercial and non-commercial staff.
• Extensive experience of delivery across the full commercial lifecycle including knowledge and understanding of commercial policies, their practical application, and the ability to implement the latest commercial methodologies.
• A sourcing expert with evidence of leading complex procurements in a fast-paced, changing environment. Knowledge of Cabinet Office spend controls, PCR and PA23, and the “5 Case” Business Case Process.

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 18 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 commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk 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-re…

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.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 : Ashlene Doherty
• 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, 70kB)448395 - Head of Sourcing - Candidate Pack Opens in new window (pdf, 452kB)