Specialist Pay Lead in Exeter

Pay and Reward policy underpins the employee lifecycle and employment contract, shaping the day‑to‑day experience of the people who work for us. As we take forward an ambitious programme to strengthen coherence and capability across water‑sector regulators, this is an exciting time to join Defra’s HR Centre of Expertise. We are a team of dedicated professionals supporting both Civil and Public Services across six organisations, c.25,000 employees and three pay bargaining units. Defra is currently leading a major reform to reset the water sector, including the creation of a new regulator. This is a flagship programme backed by significant investment and a mandate for bold change.

The People Workstream sits at the heart of this reform, ensuring the workforce, structures, and culture are ready to deliver, and this role is your opportunity to be part of shaping the foundations of a new regulatory landscape. In this role, you will lead the specialist advisory capability for the early stages, and dependent upon the outcome of these you will then lead on the pay workstream—bringing together pay and reward considerations across Natural England, the Environment Agency, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and Ofwat.

This programme will require detailed development of future pay structures, options for harmonisation, and frameworks that enable a coherent regulatory workforce model. It is likely to involve significant technical pay design, scenario modelling and alignment of existing terms and conditions across the four organisations.

You will be responsible for the research, development and end‑to‑end implementation of new policy approaches that enable greater alignment, portability and transferability across regulators. You will shape options on pay structures, progression, reward frameworks and regulatory workforce coherence, ensuring any proposals are grounded in strong evidence, operational insight and business need. You will also maintain an active programme of policy review and continuous improvement across your workplan.

Working closely with the Group Head of Reward, you will play a key role in ensuring our strategies align with government priorities, organisational capability requirements and leading practice. You will lead a range of team activity, ensuring the advice your team provides to colleagues across the Water Reform Programme is timely, accurate and well‑reasoned.

Dependent upon the outcome of the current programme work your role is likely to include:

• Leading the design and development of future pay structures for any new water regulator, including job families, progression frameworks, reward architecture and options appraisal across Natural England, the Environment Agency, DWI and Ofwat.
• Managing technical pay policy work, including Pay Flex cases, Equal Pay considerations, modelling affordability lines, pay scenario testing, and supporting ministerial/Cabinet Office approval pathways.
• Overseeing the harmonisation of terms and conditions across the four organisations as appropriate to the new Target Operating Model (TOM), including identifying alignment risks, mapping differences, and developing recommendations that support a coherent regulatory workforce model.
• Leading the HR and pay elements of any potential TUPE/Cabinet Office Statement of Practice (COSOP) transfer, ensuring policy, legal, and operational readiness; developing clear advice; and coordinating with legal, unions and departmental sponsors.
• Directing a small team of reward specialists, ensuring clear work planning, quality assurance, capability development and strong alignment to the wider Reward strategy.
• Providing expert technical advice to HR colleagues, wider Water Programme colleagues including casework teams, workforce planning leads, business partners and organisational change programmes, ensuring advice is timely, accurate and consistent.
• Working collaboratively with customers and stakeholders, building strong internal and external partnerships to influence policy choices, shape regulatory alignment models, and secure collective buy‑in to the final proposals.
• Leading the production of evidence-based policy materials, including business cases, pay modelling outputs, consultation documents, and Trade Union engagement materials, ensuring accuracy, clarity and a consistent narrative.
• Ensuring legislative compliance, including alignment with pay remit guidance, TUPE/COSOP duties, employment law, and legal horizon scanning to shape policy development and mitigate risk.
• Coordinating HR dependencies across the programme, ensuring business partners, resourcing, employee relations and change teams are fully briefed and equipped to deliver downstream impacts.

You will have/be:

• Used to leading a team of specialists
• Previous experience in Pay and Reward policy design and development
• Experience of complex working environments (ideally in a multi-org group context but not essential), building effective and productive relationships and influencing multiple senior stakeholders
• Proven experience in pay structure design, job evaluation, reward architecture or similar analytical reward disciplines
• Experience of supporting TUPE/COSOP transfers, organisational design or integration programmes involving multiple legacy organisations
• Excellent attention to detail and the ability to convey complex information clearly both orally and in writing
• Excellent skills in writing, data interpretation and analytical skills
• Evidence of working collaboratively across a range of teams and stakeholders including Trades Unions
• Excellent knowledge of employee relations and employment legislation

Alongside your salary of £56,375, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs contributes £16,331 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. This role can be located in Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter, Leeds, London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Reading, Warrington or York.