Data and Insights Lead

Salary: London: £60,670 - £67,500 / National: £57,670 - £64,500. If the successful candidate is a current Civil Servant joining on level transfer, HM Treasury will honour their current substantive salary if higher.

Contract Type: Permanent

Working Pattern: This post is available on a full time, part time or job share basis, and flexible working hours can be accommodated.

Location: London (1 Horse Guards Road) or Darlington (Feethams House)

Can you demonstrate excellence in quantitative analysis, data management, data visualisation and evaluation? If yes, then within this role you will be able to run projects to a high standard and deliver high-quality outputs, while influencing interested parties.

About the Team: The centre for the Government Debt Management Function (GDMF) is a small team of 14, providing expertise and strategic leadership to align debt management practices across government and improve how government resolves overdue debt. Ensuring that people or businesses are paying or repaying what is due to government is essential to protecting public finances and supporting confidence in our systems. When debt arises, we seek to deal with it efficiently, effectively and fairly. Collecting money owed to government, or recovered by government on behalf of others, ensures more funding available for public services, reduces pressure to increase borrowing or taxes, and makes sure that no one is better off by failing to pay what they should. We work closely with the private sector and debt advice sector to ensure that those who cannot pay through financial, mental or physical vulnerability, are identified and able to access the relevant advice and support. This means debt recovery and enforcement activity can focus on those who are deliberately trying to avoid repaying their debts. Through our 2026-30 Government Debt Strategy, Functional Standard and Public Sector Toolkits we set expectations for the management of overdue debt across the function and articulate the strategic aims that will enable us to work towards this. Through our Debt Capability work we ensure we have a professional, and innovative workforce, equipped with the skills and knowledge to manage and resolve debt on behalf of the government.

The key responsibilities of the post-holder will be:

• As Debt Data and Insights Lead, you will own the GDMF’s programme of data analysis, insight and sharing of good practice. This is a key element of the new 2026-30 Government Debt Management Strategy.
• Your work will ensure we have robust data management processes in place and produce the high-quality reports and visualisations that support decision‑making by senior leaders.
• In this role, you will have the opportunity to take an innovative and creative approach to data analysis, harnessing new methods, tools, and data sources to unlock deeper insights.
• We will rely on you to generate actionable intelligence that strengthens decision‑making across the debt portfolio.
• You will work across boundaries—engaging operational departments, analysts, policy teams, finance colleagues, and functional leaders—to turn data into clear findings, practical recommendations, and measurable improvements.
• Being responsible for debt data collection from departments, covering performance, efficiency and fairness metrics, ensuring data quality processes are maintained.
• Carrying out exciting quantitative analysis to understand trends in government debt portfolios, including volumes, values, flows, segmentation, and performance over time.
• Translating analysis into actionable insight for a range of audiences (operational teams, policy colleagues, senior leaders).
• Developing and maintaining a clear narrative on “what the data is telling us”, including key risks, opportunities, and emerging issues.
• Developing high-quality dashboards, visualisations and briefing products to communicate performance and insight clearly and accurately, bringing data together from different sources.
• Leading evaluation activity to assess functional interventions (toolkits, standards, training, assurance activity, departmental improvement plans) and to ensure we build evaluation into our work from the beginning.
• Building strong working relationships with debt leads analysts, digital/data teams, operational delivery leaders, and functional colleagues across government, including taking the lead in running the cross-government data board.
• Contributing to cross-government forums and working groups, representing our evidence and insight perspective.
• The contributions you make will be crucial in improving consistency of data definitions and reporting, recognising differences in systems and operational contexts.
• Supporting departments across government in embracing current good practice and innovation in use of data for debt management purposes, drawing from the private sector and from across government.

About You: We want you to demonstrate your experience in leading the development and application of data analysis approaches, with a proven ability to translate complex data sets, analytical frameworks, and strategic objectives into clear, actionable insights that drive effective operational decision‑making. We would like you to have the ability to build relationships across departments and with delivery partners to align approaches and implement projects consistently as well as being able to seek out opportunities to create effective change and suggest innovative ideas for improvements in the management of debt owed to government.

Some of the Benefits our people love!

• 25 days annual leave (rising to 30 after 5 years), plus 8 public holidays and the King’s birthday (unless you have a legacy arrangement as an existing Civil Servant).
• Additionally, we operate flexitime systems, allowing employees to take up to an additional 2 days off each month.
• Flexible working patterns (part-time, job-share, condensed hours).
• Generous parental and adoption leave packages.