Deputy Director, Test Learn and Grow, Strategy and Enablement (Secondment Only)

We recognise that candidates come from diverse employment backgrounds and are offering two distinct application routes for this role. Campaign 441402 is for those seeking a fixed-term contract or a temporary loan arrangement to become or remain a Civil Servant. This pathway is ideal for existing Civil Servants, individuals without an employer, or anyone looking for a temporary post as a Civil Servant. Alternatively, Campaign 441398 is available on secondment for candidates who wish to maintain their current employment with their existing organisation while working with the Civil Service on a temporary basis. For more information on secondments, please refer to the "Further information about Secondments" document attached to the bottom of this advert. Both recruitment processes are the same, but as secondees do not become employed as Civil Servants there is a different eligibility criteria. Please apply for one campaign, duplicate applications may be removed.

This is a critical role for delivering the Government’s public service reform agenda, leading on strategy and enablement of the Test, Learn & Grow Programme. Located within the Cabinet Office, the Public Service Reform team plays a role in coordinating cross-government efforts around reform, anchored in a series of ‘big bets’ around prevention, place-based delivery, technology and data, and iterative and adaptive approaches to improving services and outcomes. Test, Learn and Grow is our flagship programme driving forward these efforts - the programme is designed to accelerate the Government’s mission ethos in partnership with local places, driving a focus on prevention and relational public services.

Test, Learn and Grow (TLG) is a Programme with two core components that work together to drive Public Service Reform. One part focuses on working alongside place-based services, providing teams in local government with multi‑disciplinary support, enabling colleagues to embed test & learn approaches to tackle some of the biggest public service challenges. The other works to identify, prioritise and shift the blockers within central government that prevent progress locally and centrally.

As Deputy Director of TLG Strategy & Enablement you will focus on this latter strand of work within the Programme, working very closely with the Deputy Director of TLG Delivery. You will work closely across the wider Director General Group, supporting and championing the work of sister teams focused on civil service strategy, impact economy, evaluation and planning.

The Deputy Director, Test Learn and Grow, Strategy and Enablement is a senior role, responsible for:

• Growing and scaling a large, complex delivery focused programme and ensuring the structures, roles and support are in place to enable teams to be successful.
• Building, owning and driving the story of the test, learn and grow programme, ensuring the work is recognised across central and local government.
• Ensuring teams can challenge and shift cross-government blockers that prevent teams from being able to take a test and learn approach.
• Co‑leading a team of circa 50 people (with the potential to grow) with the Deputy Director TLG (delivery), forming an exceptionally high‑performing team that both delivers outcomes and inspires through our approach.

This is a key leadership role; as Deputy Director, you will be a visible senior leader across the Senior Civil Service (SCS), advising the Director of PSR and Director General (PSR and Efficiency) and overseeing a large flagship programme. As a leader you will have the ability to build strong relationships and engagement across central government, enabling the successful delivery of the programme’s outcomes. You will embrace challenges that arise to drive change, creating a community that can work together towards shared outcomes. You will endeavour to create the conditions that lead to place‑based, citizen focused and joined up delivery for the public by valuing and championing collaboration, creativity and boldness.

Your aim is to enable your teams to identify, diagnose, and rapidly resolve institutional barriers - translating insights and learning from teams working in places, delivering across the UK, into permanent, central government‑wide improvements. You will sustain an iterative, innovative, collaborative and delivery‑focused culture, with your teams taking a test and learn approach. You will share this widely creating opportunities for collaboration with colleagues across local and central government.

You will shape and curate the story of Test, Learn and Grow, working across departments and organisations to bring people on the journey of the programme and beyond. You will work alongside others who are leading the way, and support those who are endeavouring to put the approaches of test and learn into practice. You will clear the way for delivery and enable the programme to meet outcomes by building strong relationships with partners across Cabinet Office and HMT, ensuring the programme’s strategic intent is well understood.

This is a crucial transition period for the TLG programme as we expand our leadership team to support the ramping up of delivery across place. In this role, you will:

• Overcome barriers & accelerate impact: Proactively surface systemic problems from TLG Accelerators and translate these into actionable insights. Find them, prioritise, and demonstrate high‑impact solutions to sustain reform.
• Influence: Build trusted allies by demonstrating effective new ways of working that departments want to repeat. Work with them to change ways of working rather than imposing. Act as a cohort with an empowered group of fellow DDs within the PSRE Group with a remit to drive cross‑government change.
• Prioritise: Enable your teams to have focus and direction, making tough decisions that create space for delivery. Ensure teams have the skills, capacity and support needed to be able to make progress.
• Enable TLG as an exemplar: Make TLG itself a model of modern practice. Work hard to sustain test and learn approaches throughout the programme, learning what gets in the way as a source of insight for your work.
• Strategic leadership & enablement: Provide courageous, clear leadership. Create psychological safety and enable teams to act in conditions of uncertainty that are inherent in innovation. You will create a ‘high support, high challenge’ culture which is outcomes‑focused and puts citizens at the heart of everything we do. You will make it easier for everyone to deliver.
• Collaborate: Work with your peers, teams and individuals across government and beyond to create trust, shared understanding and impactful delivery. Embrace collaboration at all stages of work and support your teams to do this well.

Person Specification: It is important that, through your CV and supporting statement, that you provide evidence of the following Essential Criteria:

• Collaborative and action focused: capable of building trust across organisational boundaries, creating a sense of excitement and common purpose about delivering together.
• Strategic delivery: passionate about getting things done and solving problems in the way of teams. Demonstrable success leading complex, multi‑faceted programmes. Rapidly identifying problems, mobilising resources, delivering tangible impact at pace.
• Experience and deep understanding of test and learn: commitment and passion about modern methods whilst capable of bringing others along whose expertise and experience differs from your own. An understanding, and experience of, truly iterative approaches delivered through multi‑disciplinary teams.
• Inspiring and inclusive leadership: a leader first and foremost, passionate about the wellbeing of teams and what you can do in service of them. Lead and motivate high‑performing teams. Model exemplary behaviours. Foster an inclusive, high‑pace culture of continuous improvement and psychological safety. You will care passionately about inclusion and place this at the centre of the team’s work.
• Navigating existing structures: A proven track record of meaningful delivery against outcomes in large complex organisations, including outside your direct area of control. You will be able to demonstrate delivery that doesn’t come at the expense of individuals' development and well being.
• Political acuity: Street smart but able to keep your eyes on the north star of our work and the outcomes we are there to drive. Exceptional ability to operate at senior levels. Challenge with influence. Build trusted alliances to drive contested reforms.
• Bridging policy & delivery: Successfully integrate strategic policy with operational reality. Drive departmental engagement. Foster joint ownership for outcomes.
• Communication & storytelling: an instinctive storyteller, who can persuade a Secretary of State as easily as a social work team leader. You will be a confident communicator, able to persuade in private but also in public, modelling ‘working in the open’ and encouraging the team to do so whilst observing the civil service code. You will find stories that support the ambitions of the programme and work hard to share these widely.
• Experience of and passion for place-based delivery: you will understand the centrality of place to public service reform, with the ability to build trusted, action-focused relationships with local and regional government, the voluntary sector, and a range of other public services that touch on the lives of citizens.