Lead Delivery Manager in London

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government. Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government by:

• joining up public sector services
• harnessing the power of AI for the public good
• strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
• elevating leadership and investing in talent
• funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
• committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and are at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government. We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.

The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale. Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You will solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.

The GOV.UK One Login programme is full of talented and passionate people who are consistently delivering high quality products for services and individuals. The right person will join a well motivated and dynamic multi-disciplined delivery organisation working to deliver on our commitments and roadmap.

If you’ve got a background in technology delivery and are used to working in a scaled agile environment then this could be the place for you! Sometimes described as the most strategic programme in government, GOV.UK One Login represents a once in a career opportunity to work on a software product that will be used by the majority of the people living in the UK. It’s a fast paced, dynamic and challenging environment that is sure to offer you career satisfaction as well as a chance to develop and enhance your skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead and motivate multiple multi-disciplinary teams, helping them organise and plan their work, ensuring they deliver products and services that meet users’ needs and key timeframes.
• Shape the programme of work by establishing how the team will work as a team of teams, encompassing internal staff and third party managed services.
• Identify the people, skills and resources that teams need to deliver to the agreed goals.
• Ensure teams understand their mission, vision and goals, and that these align across the organisation.
• Use your delivery expertise to actively manage risks, issues and internal & external dependencies across multiple delivery teams. You will act as an escalation point for risks raised by your delivery teams, supporting or intervening as necessary to enable prompt and effective management.
• Have accountability for your teams’ delivery plans, and for your area’s overall delivery plan; ensuring they have robust processes in place for refining and estimating work and that there is collective confidence in their ability to achieve their commitments.
• Ensure teams clearly communicate their plans and progress through them using recognised agile practices.
• Provide clear, timely and accurate reporting to the Head of Delivery and other key stakeholders to support a comprehensive view of the overall programme status.
• Form a strong partnership with your Lead Product Manager and Lead Developer counterparts to provide leadership & direction to your team and to effectively engage with and influence relevant senior stakeholders.
• Ensure the programme strikes the right balance of leveraging Managed Services to augment work, while ensuring long term knowledge retention.
• Assess effectiveness across multiple delivery teams, engaging with and motivating teams in different ways depending on their needs. Facilitate collaboration across delivery teams as required to ensure objectives are met.
• Actively participate in the Delivery Manager community, line managing, coaching, mentoring, learning, sharing and applying skills and knowledge to improve delivery capability.

Person specification

Our delivery professionals work on a range of products and services within the GDS One Login programme, and work with a range of other stakeholders inside and outside the programme. You’ll have strong interpersonal skills and enjoy working in a demanding, high profile environment. You’ll be used to accountability, working proactively to make delivery happen, and to working with a degree of uncertainty. You’ll be passionate about agile working, care about technology and know how to make projects succeed.

We’re interested in people who have:

• A significant track record of successfully delivering difficult and/or complex digital programmes of work, leading, coordinating and motivating multi-site / multi-disciplinary teams through all stages of the delivery lifecycle.
• A deep understanding of agile and lean methodologies and experience in applying these practices at scale across an organisation.
• Led and directed stakeholder engagement and expectation management, moderating difficult discussions about high risk and complex topics, even within constrained timescales.
• Demonstrated expertise in optimising the delivery flow of teams; actively addressing the most complicated risks, issues and dependencies, driving them to resolution.
• Led continual planning processes in highly complex digital environments, balancing multiple priorities, dependencies and teams working across complex products whilst delivering value.
• Experience of identifying and challenging processes that are unnecessarily complicated, adding value by coaching the organisation to inspect & adapt processes and guiding teams through the implementation of new processes.
• Experience of recruiting, coaching and line management of delivery managers, identifying learning and development opportunities for individuals and team.

Please note: This role requires SC clearance, which would normally need 5 years’ UK residency in the past 5 years. This is not an absolute requirement, but supplementary checks may be needed where individuals have not lived in the UK for that period. This may mean your security clearance (and therefore your appointment) will take longer or, in some cases, not be possible. DSIT cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. DSIT holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not qualify.