Head of Business Architecture

Join us to apply for the Head of Business Architecture role at Crown Commercial Service. Would you like to be part of an enterprise function that shapes the future of the Crown Commercial Service by harnessing innovation and providing strategic vision to transform the organisation and achieve our goals?

This critical role is a unique and exciting opportunity to establish and lead a new Business Architecture function to align business strategy and identify opportunities to drive operational excellence. This involves collaborating with leadership to understand vision, and cross-functional teams to model value streams, capabilities and processes that support our understanding of the current landscape and the definition of a target enterprise architecture.

Directorate Overview: The Digital & Data Services (DDS) directorate is at the heart of CCS's digital transformation journey, responsible for delivering modern, efficient, and user-centred digital services that support over £30bn of public sector procurement annually. We're building a world-class digital capability that will revolutionise how the public sector buys common goods and services.

Team Summary: You will be joining the Digital Strategy & Design team within CCS, part of the wider Digital and Data Services (DDS) Directorate which plays a critical role in understanding current states, designing the strategic future state of the organisation and driving its adoption.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and develop a high-performing service transition management team, building capability and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
• Set the strategic direction for service transition management across CCS, ensuring alignment with government digital service standards and ITIL 4 practices.
• Lead the successful transition of all digital services into DDS, ensuring minimal disruption and maximum value.
• Drive the development and maturation of service transition management processes.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with senior stakeholders across the organisation, acting as the escalation point for critical service issues.
• Champion user-centred design principles and ensure services deliver value to our stakeholders.
• Manage relationships with key suppliers and delivery partners, ensuring effective service integration.
• Drive the adoption of cloud-first approaches and modern service transition management practices.
• Lead the development and monitoring of service level agreements and performance metrics.
• Lead the strategic planning and execution of large-scale service transitions, focusing on XL and L complexity services.
• Develop and maintain the service transition framework, methodology, and governance structures.
• Drive the maturity of service management processes aligned with ITIL 4 practices.
• Lead the service discovery and assessment process, including T-shirt sizing evaluations.
• Oversee transition managers and coordinate with other workstreams and Domains.
• Ensure successful knowledge transfer and documentation.
• Manage transition risks and dependencies.

Person Specification:

Essential Criteria (to Be Assessed At Application Stage):

• Leadership: Proven ability to provide strategic direction and mentorship to a business architecture team within a complex organisation.
• Strategic Alignment: Proven capability to align Business Architecture to ensure effective delivery of transformation and technology initiatives align with strategy.
• Governance and Risk Management: Strong expertise in aligning with broader organisational governance.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Exceptional ability to foster meaningful connections with senior stakeholders, communicating complex architectural concepts in a clear and impactful manner.
• Innovation Insight: Proven aptitude for staying abreast of emerging practices and external influences, using this insight to inspire innovation and drive digital transformation.

Behaviours: We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process: Leadership, Communicating and Influencing, Seeing the Big Picture, Working Together, Changing and Improving.

Technical Skills: We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process: Business Architecture capabilities.

Alongside your salary of £70,389, Crown Commercial Service contributes £20,391 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

What we will offer you:

• Competitive salary.
• Generous pension scheme.
• A discretionary non-contractual performance related bonus.
• Working remotely in addition to working in advertised office location.
• Flexi time scheme (available for B1-B6).
• Minimum 25 days annual leave to a maximum service related 30 days excluding bank holidays.

At CCS, we actively support, promote and celebrate our differences for the benefit of our employees, suppliers and customers. CCS is proud to be an equal opportunities employer. CCS believes that diversity and inclusion is critical to our success and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people.

We want to make our recruitment process accessible to everyone, so if there is any way that we can support you, please contact recruitment@crowncommercial.gov.uk.

CCS is a flexible business with a smarter working model where our colleagues benefit from a mix of home and office working. Successful candidates are expected to work from one of the office locations listed. Our current office attendance approach requires a minimum of 26 days per quarter (approx 2 days per week, which may be subject to change) in CCS office locations or off site meetings with suppliers, customers, partners, networking / industry events. This is pro rata for those who work part time.

Our smarter working principles mean that our people have the advantage of both office and offsite based collaboration and learning, as well as working from home. This way of working allows us to honour our commitment to being a responsible business, offer flexibility and better work life balance as well as ensuring we deliver our business with confidence and in accordance with our CCS values.

Selection Process Details: This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours and Technical skills. Candidates who are successful at sift will be contacted as soon as possible following the closing date and advised of the interview process in more detail.

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check and meet the security requirements before they can be appointed.

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).

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.