Senior Leader - National Delivery Assurance Service

Job summary

CFCD Delivery Hub, encompasses a range of roles that support all activities across a large directorate of over 10000 colleagues.

The Delivery Hub teams include - Communications and Complaints; Change and Continuous Improvement; Compliance, Briefings, Risk and Security (CBRS); Finance and Commercial; Universal Credit Service Innovation Leads.

These roles are crucial to operational delivery within the organisation and assure legality and compliance with Government standards and requirements. The 3 job roles are as follows:

Job description

Communications Senior Lead is a key role in this team dynamic and requires someone who can create clear, accessible messaging aligned with DWP and CFCD standards, supporting internal engagement and understanding of organisational priorities and objectives.

Key elements of this role are:

• Planning and delivery of Communications products and events, virtually and face to face
• Enabling support across DWP and CFCD as a supportive Business partner function
• Close collaboration with many diverse stakeholder groups advising on content, accessibility and consistency

Compliance, Briefing, Risk and Security (CBRS) Senior Lead assures the Directorate’s approach to compliance with Security, Data and Information requirements. Key elements of this role are:

• Leading CFCD collation of responses to Briefings for Freedom of Information requests and other departmental requests.
• Identifying and mitigating key CFCD risks
• Working with functional teams on accesses to small systems which are specific and key to how the organisation delivers
• Ensuring effective controls are in place to keep CFCD secure

Change and Continuous Improvement Senior Lead drives the delivery of change and continuous improvement initiatives across CFCD, closely collaborating with colleagues and partners in wider DWP Change and Transformation areas. Key elements of this role are:

• Lead and manage a team of project specialists, ensuring effective prioritisation and delivery of commissioned projects
• Oversee CFCD’s Change Gateway process, ensuring robust governance and impacting for changes
• Conduct impact assessments for change, ensure landing plans are sequenced and communicated effectively
• Drive continuous improvement of processes and procedures in all areas

The Delivery Hub work is fast paced and interesting and gives Job Holders an opportunity to lead, influence and participate in working collaboratively with a range of stakeholders across DWP. The ability to negotiate, engage, and influence at a senior level is essential.

SEO leadership roles in the Delivery Hub could perform within any of the G7 led teams detailed above. All roles require excellent stakeholder management and leadership capability delivering across wide stakeholder groups and supporting as business partner functions.

Negotiating and successful influencing skills are essential. These roles are visible, the work is varied, extremely interesting and no two days are the same, which all adds to the exciting and challenging work within the Delivery Hub.

The Delivery Hub is a National Team, travel for meetings is a key requirement across the UK, including overnight stays in UK locations.

Specific role tasks include:

• Strong leadership of a team, coaching and mentoring to develop skills

• Proactive collaboration with a diverse range of stakeholders, ensuring effective outcomes in a range of areas

• Ability to influence and negotiate tactfully, ensuring the right level of assurance and applying strict governance rules where applicable

• Lead progress monitoring, impacting and evaluation

• Maintain and continually evolve directorate products, plans and registers, linking to organisational objectives

Person specification

Successful applicants will be motivated self-starters and should demonstrate:

• Strong, inspiring leadership within a team, developing others to work autonomously by empowering and building skills
• Proven experience of communicating with clarity, conveying complex messages and information clearly and succinctly.
• Evidence of building trusted collaborative relationships in a fast-paced environment, with a wide range of stakeholders, creating and maintaining supportive networks to enable delivery of key objectives.
• Ability to influence and negotiate tactfully, ensuring the right level of assurance and applying strict governance rules where applicable.
• Proven ability to organise and prioritise a varied workload, working at pace, whilst maintaining a focus on continuous improvement, identifying new ways of working in response to feedback.

Desirable skills

• If based in Wales, the ability to speak Welsh is desirable.

Behaviours

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

• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Working Together
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,447, Department for Work and Pensions contributes £12,876 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

DWP have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:

• Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
• Generous annual leave – at least 23 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro–rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
• Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
• Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
• Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year’s continuous service.
• Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
• An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.

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, Strengths and Experience.

Stage 1 - Application Form

Please complete the first stage short application form, which includes your personal details, eligibility to apply and any reasonable adjustments required.

Stage 2 – Written Application and Sift

As part of the application process, you will be asked to complete a personal statement detailing the relevant skills and experience you can bring to the role. In no more than 1,000 words, please carefully consider the question below. You should address this when constructing your personal statement. You should also consider the person specification.

• Describe a time when you demonstrated strong leadership to guide your team through a period of competing priorities. Explain how you built effective relationships with a diverse range of stakeholders to deliver successful outcomes and detail the strategies you used to influence and negotiate across all levels. Detail your communication strategy and describe how you used governance to escalate risks to senior stakeholders. How did you support continuous improvement throughout the process?

Your personal statement needs to set out evidence of how your experience meets the requirements set out above. Your layout is entirely your preference; you may choose narrative, bullets, etc. One narrative example may cover the requirements needed. You don’t have to explain the whole process, just what you have done and the skills and experience you have used. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

You will also be asked to complete a CV with details of your job history, full qualification details, previous skills and experience. Your CV will not be formally assessed so please put the main evidence of your skills into your personal statement. Your CV will be used to add context to your personal statement.

Candidates who pass the initial sift may be progressed to a full sift or progressed straight to an interview.

In the event of a low number of applications, candidates may be progressed to interview without their written application being sifted.

**Please note the closing date for your full application is 23:55 on 27/01/2026**

The sift is scheduled to be held from 28/01/2026 to 13/02/2026. These dates may be subject to change.

Stage 3 - Interview

If you pass the written application sift with the required score you will be invited to a blended interview and will receive an electronic notification to your Civil Service Jobs account.

The interviews will be conducted face to face. Where possible the interviews will take place at some of the locations listed in the Candidate Pack (slide 2), however candidates may be expected to travel to an alternative location as required.

If you require any reasonable adjustments to attend a face-to-face interview, please ensure you state those on your application form when asked to do so.

Interviews are scheduled to take place from 02/03/2026, please note that these dates are only indicative at this stage and could be subject to change. Interviews will be scheduled Monday to Friday, between 09:00 to 17:00.

Communications will be electronic and/or by SMS/telephone therefore it is important that you check your Civil Service Jobs account regularly, as well as your spam/junk email folder. Telephone calls may show as a withheld number, it is important that you answer so that your interview can be confirmed. If you wish to opt out of SMS messages, please email this address, including the vacancy reference and your candidate ID CFCD.RECRUITMENTINBOX@DWP.GOV.UK. As part of our commitment to improving the candidate experience, you may be contacted during the recruitment process to provide feedback.

Preparing for the Interview

The interview will take approximately 45 minutes and will consist of behaviour and strength-based questions.

A blended interview aims to be more of a conversation offering a more inclusive approach. The behaviour and strength-based questioning explores what you, the candidate, can and have done, but also your potential.

Behaviours

You will be assessed against the Civil Service Behaviours listed at level 3.

An example of a behavioural question would be “Tell me about a time when you have had to deal with a difficult customer.” / “How did you lead by example to inspire and motivate your teams?”.

It may help to use one or more examples of a piece of work you have completed or a situation you have been in and use the WHO or STAR model to explain:

• WHO - What it was? How you approached the work/situation? What the Outcomes were, what did you achieve? or

• STAR - What was the ituation? What were the Tasks? What Action did you take? What were the Results of your actions?

Strengths

It is difficult to prepare for strength type questions. However, you can think through your answers, focus on your achievements and aspects you enjoy and decide how these can be applied in the organisation and role. While strengths questions are shorter and we do not expect a full STAR response, the panel is interested in your first reaction to the question and information or reasoning to support this.

If you do not have work-based examples then please give examples from school/college, clubs, volunteering or other activities you have been involved in.

If you withdraw your application at any stage, it will not be progressed any further.

Stage 4– Offer

Once all interviews have been completed, you will be notified of the outcome by email. Offers will be made in strict merit order to the highest scoring candidate first.

The successful candidates will be notified of a start date following successful pre-employment checks, which is likely to be during April 2026.

Important information

Candidate pack

It is important that you take time to read the candidate pack which can be found at the bottom of this job advert. This provides further information about the role and working in DWP.

Location

Please see slide 2 in the candidate pack for list of possible locations.

You should only apply for suitable posts where you can travel to and from your home office location daily within a reasonable time. Please be aware that this role can only be worked in the UK and not overseas. Relocation costs will not be reimbursed.

Hybrid working​

This role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work. If a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for the role and for you, you will normally be required to spend a minimum of 60% of your contracted working hours from your DWP office. If you have a disability, caring responsibilities, or other circumstances that may affect your ability to meet the minimum office attendance requirement, please discuss this with us using the contact details in this advert.

Hybrid working will not commence until any training and consolidation period has been successfully completed.

Working pattern​

Part-time, part-year, term-time compressed hours and job-sharing working patterns within working hours will be considered but must meet business needs. We will do our best to let people with existing part time contracts retain their contracted hours provided they are in line with current business needs. Please note that successful candidates with agreed alternative working patterns may be required to work full time for specific periods to complete all training and consolidation.

​​Hours of work ​

The full-time working week in DWP is 37 hours. You may be required to work at any time between the hours of: ​

• 7:45am and 8:00pm on any day between Monday to Friday, and​

• 8:45am to 5:00pm on Saturday.​

Managers will agree working patterns with successful applicants within these business hours and review these as appropriate. You will be given advance notice of your personal schedule.

Further Information

Diversity and Inclusion

At the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce.

Find out more about working for DWP on the DWP Careers Hub.

Reserve List

A reserve list may be held for a period of 3 months from which further appointments can be made.

If you are placed on a reserve list but we cannot immediately offer you a post, please note:

Please note:

• If you are later offered the role you applied for, in a location you have expressed a preference for, and you decline the offer or are unable to take up post within a reasonable timeframe you will be withdrawn from the campaign and removed from the reserve list, other than in exceptional circumstances (e.g. a contractual part time working pattern cannot be accommodated in the initial role offered or in the case of serious ill health).

• If we make an offer of an alternative role or location to that which you originally applied for, and you decline that offer, you will be able to remain on the reserve list.

Disability Confident Scheme

If high application volumes are received, the benchmark for candidates to proceed to the next stage may be raised. In line with our commitment to the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS), we aim to advance all candidates applying under the DCS who meet the minimum standard. However, we may only progress those candidates who best meet the required standards.

Reasonable Adjustments

We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions, or mental ill health. Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, or schizophrenia.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should contact the Government Recruitment Service via DWPRecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.

Complete the “Reasonable Adjustments” section in the “Additional requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.

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

Integrity, plagiarism and Civil Service Principles

The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expects all candidates to abide by these principles.

Please ensure that all examples provided in your application are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words.

Examples of plagiarism can include:

• Presenting the work, ideas and experience of others as your own
• Copying content or answers from an online or published source that is not your own

Disclosure and Barring Service and Internal Fraud Database Checks

To process applications without delay, we will be sending a Criminal Record Check to Disclosure and Barring Service or Disclosure Scotland on your behalf.

However, we recognise in exceptional circumstances some candidates will want to send their completed forms direct. If you will be doing this, please advise Government Recruitment Service of your intention by emailing Pre-EmploymentChecks.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk stating the job reference number in the subject heading.

For further information on the Disclosure Scotland confidential checking service telephone: the Disclosure Scotland Helpline on 0870 609 6006 and ask to speak to the operations manager in confidence, or email Info@disclosurescotland.co.uk

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment. A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5-year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.

If successful and transferring from another Government Department a criminal record check will be carried out.

Important

Salary

New entrants are expected to join on the minimum of the pay band.

Before applying for this vacancy, current employees of DWP should check whether a successful application would result in changes to their terms & conditions of employment, e.g. mobility, pay, allowances. If you are a current employee and are successful you must be able to be released from your current post within four weeks.

Those on protected TUPE/ COSoP terms and conditions applying on promotion or voluntary permanent level move will adopt DWP’s Terms and Conditions and this may have a different impact on pay and allowances. Please review this prior to acceptance of a role.

Civil Servants that would transfer into DWP from other government organisations, following successful application, will assume DWP's terms & conditions of employment current on the day they are posted, unless DWP has stated otherwise in writing. Accepting a post will be taken to mean acceptance of revised terms & conditions.

Civil Servants applying on promotion will usually be appointed to the salary minimum or within 10% of existing salary.

Any move to DWP from another employer will mean you can no longer access childcare vouchers. This includes moves between government departments. You may, however, be eligible for other government schemes, including Tax Free Childcare. Determine your eligibility at the Childcare Choices Website.

Visa Sponsorship

For these vacancies, we strongly recommend that applicants consult with an immigration specialist or qualified advisor to assess their eligibility for Visa Sponsorship before deciding to apply. Please note that while we consider sponsorship requests in accordance with current DWP guidance and Home Office policy, sponsorship cannot be guaranteed.

Feedback

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 : CFCD Recruitment Team
• Email : CFCD.RECRUITMENTINBOX@DWP.GOV.UK

Recruitment team

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

Further information

Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. If you feel your application has not been treated in accordance with these principles and you wish to make a complaint, you should in the first instance contact DWP by email: HR.BUSINESSASSURANCE@DWP.GOV.UK.
If you are not satisfied with the response you receive from the Department, you can contact the Civil Service Commission. Click here to visit the Civil Service Commission.

Attachments

DWP Terms and Conditions January 2024 Opens in new window (docx, 17kB)Success-Profiles-Candidate-Overview Opens in new window (pdf, 635kB)443009 - SEO Candidate Pack Opens in new window (pdf, 517kB)443009 - Candidate Pack W Opens in new window (pdf, 550kB)