Head of Service Delivery in Swindon

Location: While UKRI supports hybrid working, the postholder will be required to attend one in‑office team day per week at Polaris House in Swindon, Wiltshire.

About the role

We are looking for a Head of Service Delivery to join the UKRI Infrastructure Team and play a pivotal role in delivering the Next National Supercomputing Service (NNSS): the £750m project to ensure the UK scientific community retains access to the most advanced modelling and simulation capabilities through provision of state‑of‑the‑art compute hardware at the University of Edinburgh and service provision and software services to support users. The NNSS is the cornerstone investment at the heart of the DSIT‑UKRI compute roadmap, and a high‑priority strategic investment for the UK government. The Digital Research Infrastructure, Infrastructure Fund and Portfolio pillars form the cross‑cutting UKRI Infrastructure Team that coordinates and manages UKRI’s Infrastructure portfolio.

You will collaborate across the organisation and externally, engaging with relevant stakeholders in Government Departments, Public Sector Research Establishments (PSREs), academia and industry to gather insight and ensure that UKRI’s plans for Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) enable our varied communities to use the most powerful digital tools and techniques. This role will be critical to successful delivery of the new service. You will work closely with the service providers, leading on successful implementation and management of the hardware and service provision contracts. You will lead on monitoring and evaluation to ensure the service fully delivers its intended benefits, as well as proactively looking for opportunities for continuous improvement, drawing on best practices from across the sector and major project management.

Your responsibilities:

• Ensuring that the NNSS service providers fulfil their agreed service requirements and managing any changes, including grant funding and/or contractual issues.
• Ensuring successful implementation of agreed governance, advisory and management structures, including coordination of the service providers.
• Ensuring that the NNSS service is effectively integrated within UKRI and DSIT’s broader support for the compute ecosystem, including coordination with related initiatives such as National Compute Resources (NCRs) and EuroHPC and proactively seeking opportunities for improvement.
• Supporting the Head of Policy & Engagement in implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the NNSS service model to ensure successful delivery, including liaison with the host site, technology provider and other stakeholders involved in delivering the service.
• Driving working level relationships with infrastructure leads in government, the service providers and other key stakeholders.
• Developing an understanding of, and communicating, how our work aligns with and supports key national policies.
• Supporting the delivery of time‑bound strategic projects within the UKRI Infrastructure team.

Person Specification

The following criteria will be assessed at either Shortlisting (S), Interview (I), or both (S&I):

• Awareness and understanding of large‑scale compute services, including key technical concepts, their operation, and how they interact within the broader digital research infrastructure ecosystem, sufficient to guide policy, governance, and access‑related decisions. (S&I)
• Extensive experience of leading successful complex, high‑profile and fast moving infrastructural and/or technical projects ensuring delivery to agreed specifications, cost, time and quality standards. (S&I)
• Demonstrable ability to develop and integrate services, projects or programmes within wider strategic or policy landscapes, ideally within a national research or digital infrastructure context. (S&I)
• Experience developing and coordinating research or innovation communities, consortia, or multi‑institution partnerships. You must have the ability to build and sustain productive relationships internally and externally and represent UKRI, at all levels of seniority and across government, academic, policy and wider sectors. (S&I)
• Excellent oral and written communications skills. You must be comfortable in speaking publicly to audiences of varying sizes; be able to write clear, concise and effective technical reports; and be able to absorb and convey detailed information to/from technical and non‑technical audiences. (S&I)
• Able to prioritise and manage multiple commitments across a complex portfolio, applying creative and adaptive thinking to navigate ambiguity, resolve interdependent challenges, and make effective decisions. (S&I)
• Demonstrable ability to deal with critical and high‑profile issues, often working with external organisations, and handle risks independently, calling out to senior managers when required. Show high levels of personal drive, determination and resilience. (I)

We recognise and value our employees as individuals and aim to provide a favourable pay and rewards package. We are committed to supporting employees' development and promote a culture of continuous learning!

A list of benefits below:

• 30 days' annual leave in addition to 10.5 public and privilege days (full time equivalent).
• Employee discounts and offers on retail and leisure activities.
• Employee assistance programme, providing confidential help and advice.
• Flexible working options.
• Plus many more benefits and wellbeing initiatives that enable our employees to have a great work life balance!

For further information on our benefits please see: UKRI is an Equal Opportunity & Disability Confident Employer. Please apply online, if you experience any issue applying, please contact Recruitment@ukri.org. We encourage candidates to apply as soon as possible, as we reserve the right to close this vacancy early.

How to apply

Online applications only preferred for this role. Please submit a CV and covering letter which clearly outlines how you fulfil the criteria specified along with your motivation for UKRI and the role. Ensure that the job reference number is included in the filename description of each document uploaded. Note that failure to address the above criteria or submit an application without a covering letter may result in the application not being considered. Assessment will only be based upon the content of your submitted covering letter and CV and not the ‘experience’ section of the application.

UKRI seeks to ensure it creates and maintains a system of openness, fairness and inclusion – a collaborative, trusted environment, which is attractive to and accessible to everyone who is interested in developing their career with us.

The role holder will be required to have the appropriate level of security screening/vetting required for the role. UKRI reserves the right to run or re‑run security clearance as required during the course of employment.

About the Team

The Science and Technology Facilities Council is a world‑leading multi‑disciplinary science organisation where curiosity‑driven, blue‑skies thinking meets practical, application‑led science and engineering. Our goal is to deliver economic, societal, scientific and international benefits to the UK and its people – and more broadly to the world. One of Europe’s largest research organisations, we’re trusted to support, enable and undertake cutting‑edge projects in an amazing diversity of fields.