Strategy Manager

Job summary

Are you ready to be part of something that shapes the future of our nation? Do you thrive on variety, enjoy working with teams, and want to make a difference? If so, this could be the opportunity you've been looking for.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UKs largest producer of official statistics covering economic, social and demographic topics. Our statistics directly influence how services are planned and communities are supported across the country.

Be at the heart of one of the UK's most significant data transformation programmes.

Census 2031 represents our most ambitious data collection programme yet: a once-in a-decade opportunity to capture a complete picture of everyone living in England and Wales. Building on the digital success of Census 2021, we're pioneering new ways to reach every household and community, ensuring no one is left uncounted. The insights generated will inform policy decisions, guide funding, and support the planning of services and communities across the country for years to come.

Your work will support delivery of this transformational project that will shape how we understand and support our nation's future. You’ll be part of a team that ensures everyone is counted, and every voice is heard. We're building a culture that values collaboration, fresh thinking, and respect for diverse expertise. Whether you're a seasoned professional or bringing new perspectives, you'll be part of a team that welcomes bold ideas, works transparently, and thrives on solving complex challenges together.

This role sits within the Census Service Delivery & Operations division, which delivers inclusive and high-quality Census data collection across digital, remote and paper channels. As part of this division, you’ll work at the heart of our Communal Establishment (CE) Collection team.

CEs are complex for data collection because they differ fundamentally from private households in structure, population characteristics, and operational accessibility. These establishments, such as care homes, prisons, student halls, and hostels, often house vulnerable or transient populations that are hard to reach and underrepresented in administrative data. Enumeration is complicated by varied definitions of “usual resident,” inconsistent address data, and gaps in administrative coverage for certain CE types. Operational challenges include restricted access in secure environments, reliance on proxy responses, and the need for tailored strategies across diverse CE types.

Job description

As the Strategy Manager for CE Collection for the census programme, you will play a key role in shaping and delivering the end-to-end CE census collection journey, helping to ensure the Census can successfully collect high-quality data from some of the most complex operational environments in England and Wales.
As the subject matter expert for CE collection, you’ll help deliver approaches that meet the unique needs of communal establishments, ensuring solutions are user centered, operationally effective, inclusive and accessible. Working closely with service design, operational, digital and delivery teams you will help develop requirements, support testing activity, and assure the readiness of people, processes and technology for CE operations.

If you thrive in a collaborative environment, enjoy solving complex challenges, and want to make a meaningful contribution to communities across England and Wales, we’d love to hear from you.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build strong, effective relationships and collaborating with partners across ONS, to understand synergies, implement opportunities to strengthen links and improve outcomes.
• Engage with a wide variety of internal stakeholders to generate coherence across plans and outputs and capitalise on best practice shared across business areas.
• Work across the team to deliver new or improved initiatives for the directorate and the wider ONS to ensure we are maximising the impact, reach and engagement of our analysis.
• Represent work at cross office meetings and ensure intel is shared effectively, this will include providing provide written and verbal updates and briefings to colleagues across the directorate and wider, as well as supporting the team to draft key papers and documents.
• Play a key role in developing and implementing coherent stakeholder engagement. This may include supporting the delivery of forums or other stakeholder engagement initiatives.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Demonstrated ability to lead and motivate inclusive teams, providing clear direction, managing workloads effectively, and delivering high-quality outcomes in challenging operational environments.
• Strong communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to build productive networks, foster collaborative relationships, and communicate complex information in a clear, accessible, and inclusive manner.
• Experience of using data and insight to inform decision-making, including analysing trends, interpreting complex data sets, developing meaningful management information, and driving continuous improvement through evidence-based recommendations.
• Ability to drive innovation and adapt to change, promoting a culture of continuous improvement, embracing new technologies, and supporting teams to adopt new ways of working and deliver services more effectively.
• Proven ability to make timely and effective decisions under pressure, balancing risks, providing clear rationale for decisions, and delivering outcomes at pace while maintaining operational standards and performance targets.

Behaviours

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

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving
• Working Together
• Communicating and Influencing

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £41,985, Office for National Statistics contributes £12,163 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

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.

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.

Visa Sponsorship

ONS are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants are expected to hold a valid right to work in the UK when employment commences. If you are applying on a time-limited visa, this will need to be valid for at least 18 months.

Right to Work and Nationality Requirements

To work at ONS, applicants must meet the Civil Service nationality requirements, satisfy UK right to work requirements and, where applicable, meet the relevant security clearance requirements.

If you are unsure whether you meet the appropriate right to work or security clearance eligibility criteria, please refer to the guidance on Gov.uk or contact the recruitment email provided in the advert before applying. Failure to meet these requirements will result in your application being rejected and employment offers being withdrawn.

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, CV, skills, experience, 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.

Interviews will take place in person at our Titchfield (Fareham) Office. Please note that travel expenses will not be reimbursed. You will also be required to bring valid photo identification to your interview.

Office for National Statistics

Segensworth Road

Titchfield

Fareham

PO15 5RR

Our main locations are Newport (South Wales), Darlington and Titchfield.

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

Important Dates:

The Sift will be conducted from Wednesday 30th September

Interviews will be conducted from Wednesday 14th October

Dates are subject to change.

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

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

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a basic (or equivalent) 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 : Recruitment Operations
• Email : recruitmentoperations@ons.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : About.you@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

ONS_Vacancy_Terms(Permanent) Opens in new window (pdf, 83kB)Role4_Census2_Requirements Opens in new window (pdf, 70kB)