Major Decarbonisation Projects Group – CCUS Delivery Director

Job summary

This is a pivotal role within the Major Decarbonisation Group providing strategic leadership and delivery accountability for projects within the UK’s Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) programme. The role requires decisive leadership and demands experience in major project delivery and commercial negotiation.

The role exists to lead major projects through lifecycle, beginning with feasibility and extending through to appraisal, delivery and operation. In practice, this means ensuring that each project has a clear scope, a robust business case, the right commercial and technical arrangements in place, and the governance and controls required to reach Final Investment Decision and their Commercial Operation Date.

The SRO provides the central leadership presence across the CCUS programme to ensure decisive progress at all stages. The postholder will have responsibility for the following clusters: East Coast Cluster (Teesside and Humber), Acorn and Viking. This is a delivery role, and the postholder must demonstrate experience in major project delivery and commercial negotiation.

The post-holder’s responsibilities are broad and critical: they set the strategic direction and expectations for the teams and ensure strong delivery capability. During periods of intense negotiation and delivery, the SRO will guide their team through challenges and maintain momentum. A central part of this role is dedicated to building skills, enhancing capability, and fostering resilience within the teams, as well as motivating and supporting staff who are often working in high-pressure delivery environments.

Job description

Key Responsibilities

• Programme Leadership & Delivery: Lead the delivery of CCUS projects to Commercial Operation Date (COD), ensuring alignment with portfolio priorities and strategic direction.
• Cluster Management: Direct the delivery and negotiation of CCUS projects managing sequencing, readiness, infrastructure dependencies and commercial model development.
• Business Case Assurance: Secure Final Investment Decision (FID) through robust business cases (SOBC, OBC, FBC), ensuring compliance with governance expectations and value for money assessments. Provide assurance for Portfolio Board, InvestCo, and Cabinet Office approvals.
• Risk & Controls Management: Oversee programme risks, controls, assurance, and delivery confidence across CCUS clusters, ensuring time, cost, and quality parameters are met. Escalate key decisions and risks to senior governance bodies.
• Resource & CapabilityDeployment: Direct multidisciplinary teams comprising commercial specialists, engineers, delivery professionals, and policy colleagues, deployed from hubs and functions. Align capability with delivery stage and foster resilience and skills development.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Engage with cluster developers, industry partners, and cross-Whitehall colleagues. Represent MDPG at senior forums, influence major private sector partners and government departments, and secure agreement on delivery and commercial approaches.
• Reporting & Recommendations: Report to the DG, Portfolio Board, and Ministers, providing recommendations and escalating risks. Exercise delegated programme authority, including approval or rejection of project progress at key control points.

Person specification

The successful candidate will demonstrate:

Essential

• Proven experience leading large, multidisciplinary teams, building an inclusive, high-performing culture, and supporting capability development across delivery hubs.
• Deep knowledge of major project delivery, ideally in infrastructure, energy, or regulated markets. Skilled in programme controls, assurance, and risk management, with familiarity with business case processes in large multi-stakeholder organisations.
• Strong competence in commercial negotiation and managing complex commercial structures. Ability to balance cost, investor confidence, value for money, and deliverability.
• Excellent judgement in assessing commercial viability, sequencing clusters, and managing risks in uncertain environments. Experience advising senior stakeholders such as ministers or board members and navigating novel scenarios where policy, market conditions, and technical solutions are evolving.
• Authority and credibility to influence major private sector developers, investors, government departments, and industry partners. Collaborative approach to securing alignment of objectives and driving forward wider government goals.
• Must have or be willing to work towards achieving an MPLA.

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 £100,000, Department for Energy Security & Net Zero contributes £28,970 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero offers a competitive mix of benefits including:

• A culture of flexible working, such as job sharing, homeworking and compressed hours.
• Automatic enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme, with an employer contribution of 28.97%.
• A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by 1 day per year up to a maximum of 30.
• An extensive range of learning & professional development opportunities, which all staff are actively encouraged to pursue.
• Access to a range of retail, travel and lifestyle employee discounts.

Office attendance

The Department operates a discretionary hybrid working policy, which provides for a combination of working hours from your place of work and from your home in the UK. The current expectation for staff is to attend the office or non-home based location for 40-60% of the time over the accounting period. Senior Civil Servant (SCS) staff are expected to aim for closer to 60% of the time at an office or non-home based location over the accounting period.

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.

How to apply

To apply for this post please follow the instructions on the CS Jobs website by no later than 18th May 2026 23:55, . As part of the application process you are asked to complete the following:

1.A CV no longer than 2 sides of A4, setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role, relevant achievements in recent posts, together with reasons for any gaps within the last two years.

2.A Statement of Suitability (no more than 1000 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.

3.Shortlisted candidates will be invited to undertake an assessment as part of this recruitment prior to a final interview panel:

• A staff engagement exercise: a structured exercise which involves shortlisted candidates facilitating a discussion with a selection of staff from the Department on a given topic.

These assessments will not result in a “pass” or “fail” decision. Rather, they are designed to support the panel’s decision making and highlight areas for the panel to explore further at interview.

1. 4. Final Interview

For further information on the application process and an overview on what toexpect, please visit the Civil Service Careers website.

Further Information

Reasonable Adjustment

We are proud to be a disability confident leader and we welcome applications from disabled candidates and candidates with long-term conditions.

Information about the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and some examples of adjustments that we offer to disabled candidates and candidates with long-term health conditions during our recruitment process can be found in our DESNZ Candidate Guidance. A DESNZ Plain Text Version of the guidance is also available.

We encourage candidates to discuss their adjustment needs by emailing the job contact which can be found under the contact point for applicants section.

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.

Overview of the Process

Government Recruitment Service will acknowledge your application and advise you of the outcome of the sift meeting. Depending on the number of applications received there may be a second stage sift.

Applications will be sifted to select those demonstrating the best fit with the post against the criteria set out in the person specification. Please ensure you keep this in mind when writing your CV and supporting statement.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview.

Arrangements for interview

Final Interviews to be held in person at:

3-8 Whitehall Place

London

SW1A 2AW

Candidates are required to prepare a presentation for their interview, they will be given at least one week’s notice of the subject

Expenses incurred by candidates during the recruitment process will not be reimbursed by the Department except in exceptional circumstances and only when agreed in advance.

Shortlisted candidates may be invited to an informal chat with Paro Konar, Director General, Major Decarbonisation Projects. This will be an informal chat and will not be assessed as part of the recruitment process.

Indictive Timeline

Please note that these dates are only indicative at this stage and could be subject to change. If you are unable to meet these timeframes, please let us know by contacting scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. Please ensure you quote the job title and reference number in your email.

Interviews will be held in Person. Candidates are asked to note the timetable, exercising flexibility through the recruitment and selection process. The anticipated timetable is as follows:

Advert Closing Date – 18th May 2026 23:55

Shortlist Announcement – W/C25THMay

Assessments – W/C1stJune

Interviews – W/C 8th June

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

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 : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
• Email : scscandidate.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : scsrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel that your application has not been treated in accordance with the recruitment principles, and wish to make a complaint, then you should contact in the first instance desnzresourcing.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, then you can contact the Civil Service Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission please visit their web pages at: https://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/contact-us/

Attachments

458713- Major Decarbonisation Projects Group CCUS Delivery Director (1).pptx Opens in new window (pdf, 854kB)458713 - Major Decarbonisation Projects Group – CCUS Delivery Director - Accessibility Pack.docx Opens in new window (pdf, 277kB)