Continuous Improvement Lead in Exeter

Your new company is a well-established public sector organisation serving a diverse and growing community across a large geographical region in the South West. With a strong focus on operational excellence, public safety and community engagement, the organisation is undergoing a period of continued digital and organisational development. Technology plays a critical role in enabling frontline services and improving efficiency across the organisation with ongoing investment in systems, infrastructure, and data-driven capabilities. The environment is complex and fast-paced, requiring individuals who can balance day-to-day operational demands with longer-term improvement and innovation.

This is an opportunity to join an organisation that is committed to continuous improvement, collaboration and delivering high-quality services, where technology is increasingly central to its future direction and success.

Your new role is a leadership opportunity for an experienced Continuous Improvement professional to shape how change is delivered across a complex and evolving environment. The role sits at the heart of the organisation's transformation agenda, responsible for driving end-to-end improvement initiatives using Lean DMAIC methodologies. You will lead a structured approach to identifying, prioritising and delivering improvements that generate measurable outcomes aligned to strategic objectives and external inspection requirements. A key focus will be on embedding a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring that change is not only delivered but sustained and continuously built upon.

Working across both technical and non-technical areas, you will play a critical role in identifying opportunities to introduce automation, streamline processes and remove inefficiencies. This includes driving the use of technologies such as RPA and M365 tooling to enhance service delivery, optimise workflows and reduce manual effort across the organisation.

You will lead and develop a multidisciplinary team, bringing together specialists across automation and digital tooling, while working closely with functions such as HR, Finance, IT, Learning & Development, and Change. The role requires a strong ability to understand organisational and people impacts, ensuring improvements are effectively embedded and aligned with business needs. In addition, you will take ownership of a portfolio of improvement initiatives, developing robust business cases, overseeing delivery from design through to implementation, and ensuring clear governance and reporting is in place. You will engage with senior stakeholders, providing visibility on progress, outcomes, and benefits realisation, while influencing the wider organisation to adopt continuous improvement as a core way of working.

The position also carries responsibility for engaging and managing external partners, including commissioning specialist support where required, and overseeing supplier performance and contractual delivery. This requires strong commercial awareness, alongside experience in vendor and contract management. This is a rare opportunity to step into a role where you can genuinely shape and influence how a large organisation delivers change, driving tangible improvements that have a long-term impact on both operational performance and service delivery.

To be successful in this role, you will bring proven experience leading Continuous Improvement functions within complex, multi-stakeholder environments. You will have a strong track record of managing multidisciplinary teams, setting clear priorities and delivering against a structured pipeline of initiatives. This will include experience of building and overseeing portfolios, establishing governance frameworks and ensuring effective performance management. Exposure to driving change across areas such as HR, Finance, IT and operational teams is essential, alongside the ability to influence senior stakeholders and balance competing demands around cost, risk and service delivery.

You will demonstrate a well-developed professional toolkit in Continuous Improvement methodologies, including Lean and structured problem-solving techniques with the ability to translate insight into measurable outcomes. Experience developing robust business cases, tracking benefits realisation and presenting clear, data-led recommendations at senior level is important. You will also be comfortable building capability within teams, embedding new ways of working and ensuring improvements are sustainable over time.

From a technical perspective, you will have a practical understanding of process optimisation and automation with experience overseeing solutions such as RPA and digital workflow tools. You will be comfortable working closely with technical teams, understanding system integrations, data flows and operational constraints, while ensuring solutions are robust, secure and scalable. Experience working with legacy systems and third-party vendors, alongside an ability to oversee testing, deployment and ongoing optimisation, will be key to success in this role.

Previous experience within the public sector or similarly regulated environments would be advantageous.