Head of Supplier Management Pillar in Edinburgh

Location: Belfast, UK; Birmingham, UK; Bristol; Leeds, UK; Portsmouth, UK; Telford; Worthing, UK; Cardiff, UK; Edinburgh, UK; Glasgow City, Glasgow, UK

Salary: 71,725 - 79,481 per year

Employment: Flexible

Category: Procurement

Posted: 2026-09-11

Valid to: 2026-10-08

Employer: HM Revenue and Customs

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Welcome - Thank you for your interest in joining HMRC’s Supplier Management Practice within CDIO. This role sits at the heart of how HMRC delivers major digital services at national scale. As a Grade 6, you will provide strategic leadership and accountability for supplier management across CDIO, ensuring suppliers deliver value, manage risk effectively and support HMRC priorities.

About HMRC & CDIO - HMRC is one of the largest and most complex digital organisations in Europe, operating a multi supplier ecosystem supporting platforms, products and services used by millions of citizens and businesses. CDIO is responsible for:

• Core and enabling digital platforms
• National scale digital services
• Secure integration with external partners
• Technology risk, assurance and operational resilience

Supplier Management is a critical enabling practice across all of these areas.

About the Supplier Management Practice

The Supplier Management Practice ensures:

• Suppliers and their performance are managed appropriately
• Sourcing strategy aligns to HMRC objectives
• Supplier relationships are robust, transparent and compliant
• Value, innovation and service continuity are realised
• Risk and dependency are understood and controlled

Person specification

The Grade 6 Role – What This Means in Practice

At Grade 6 you will:

• Support the strategic direction and maturity of supplier management across CDIO
• Drive Performance and seek operational value across all contracts
• Provide senior oversight of strategic and high risk suppliers
• Sponsor and assure supplier governance, escalation and reporting
• Shape policies, standards and capability development
• Represent CDIO Supplier Management at senior forums

You are not managing individual contracts day to day - you are ensuring you work as a system leader across HMRC.

1. Sourcing Strategy & Strategic Alignment across your pillar

• Work with the supplier management pre-award team and commercial aligned to the contracts you manage to define, maintain and evolve the CDIO sourcing strategy, aligned to:
• HMRC organisational strategy
• Commercial policy and public procurement principles
• Security, legal and financial controls
• Ensure sourcing decisions support strategic outcomes, not just contractual compliance
• Monitor the effectiveness of sourcing decisions, identifying:
• Strategic objectives impacted by supplier dependencies
• Gaps between sourcing strategy and delivery outcomes
• Drive continuous improvement of sourcing guidance based on performance, value, risk and market insight.

2. Supplier Relationship Management across your pillar

• Work with Commercial teams including the Strategic Supplier Management Team to differentiate how supplier relationships across the segmented suppliers are managed with both teams working collaboratively with the customer at the heart.
• Collaboration required with wider CDIO stakeholders, including Service/Product/Platform Owners, Commercial, Finance Business Partners and Business Units to clarify roles, responsibilities and ownership across your contracts.
• Ensure relationships are managed in line with HMRC internal controls and external regulatory obligations
• End to end supplier lifecycle and contract management
• Managing multi supplier ecosystems and strategic partners
• Performance, risk, dependency and value management.

3. End to End Supplier Lifecycle Management of your contracts across your pillar.

• Support and assure the supplier lifecycle of your own contracts including:
• Evaluation and selection
• Onboarding and mobilisation
• Performance and relationship management
• Renewal, transition and off boarding
• Ensure consistent use of:
• Contract frameworks and SOWs
• Performance and compliance criteria
• Risk and dependency management artefacts
• Ensure supplier information, decisions and performance are visible, auditable and managed centrally.

4. Performance, Risk & Value Management across your pillar

• Define and maintain supplier performance measurement frameworks, including KPIs, SLAs and outcome measures
• Ensure supplier reporting supports HMRC defined success measures, not supplier defined metrics
• Track and manage:
• Performance issues and service impacts
• Risks, dependencies and continuity concerns
• Financial value, benefits realisation and cost drivers
• Lead resolution of supplier issues and conflicts through structured governance and escalation routes via your operational performance board
• Measure, track, and report supplier performance, value realisation, risks, costs, and benefits
• Implement and maintain supplier performance metrics, SLAs, and reporting methodologies to drive accountability and improvement
• Address supplier issues, conflicts, and dependencies through effective governance and escalation mechanisms

5. Third‑Party Integration & Dependency Management across your pillar

• Ensure third‑party services are effectively integrated into HMRC digital products and services
• Work with the supplier management pre-award team to identify, analyse and manage critical supplier dependencies across CDIO value streams
• Work with the supplier management pre-award team to ensure alternative sourcing options are identified for strategic and high‑risk services
• Work with the supplier management pre-award team to embed dependency considerations into service design, delivery and operations, not treated as an afterthought

6. Governance, Reporting & Continuous Improvement across your pillar.

• Provide clear and timely supplier management reporting to CDIO governance forums (e.g. OPBs, Portfolio Boards)
• Support assurance, audit and compliance activity across supplier arrangements
• Champion lean, standardised and collaborative ways of working across supplier management
• Build a culture of continuous improvement, accountability and “one CDIO team” working.

Essential Criteria:

• Senior Supplier or commercial management in large, complex private, public sector or enterprise environments.
• Experience and Working knowledge of managing multiple suppliers and contracts driving value and performance outcomes effectively.
• Experience and Working knowledge of CI and innovation making improvements to drive better customer outcomes.
• Strong people leader who has experience in uplifting a team’s capability in a positive way to deliver outcomes.
• Ability to manage complex and demanding stakeholders in a collaborative way.
• Analytical and reporting skills, outcome focused and evidence led
• Commercial awareness and structured decision making

Desirable Criteria:

• Knowledge of ITIL 4 practices, value streams and service management principles but not essential and you will be provided with training.

Further Location Information

Please ensure that you only apply for a location that you are willing and able to work from, as we will only make one offer of employment. Any additional notes included in a ‘Further Location Preferences (optional)’ field within the application form, will not be considered.

Office closures

For more information on where you might be working, review this information on our locations.

Hybrid working at HMRC

HMRC is an office-based organisation, and colleagues are expected to spend 60% of their working time in the office. Our offices provide opportunity for interaction, collaboration which aids learning and development and a sense of community. Where the role allows it, and where the home environment is suitable, colleagues can work from home for up to 2 days a week, averaged over a calendar month (or a proportionate amount of time for colleagues who work less than full time).

Reasonable Adjustments

We want to make sure no one is put at a disadvantage during our recruitment process. To assist you with this, we will reduce or remove any barriers where possible and provide additional support where appropriate.

Eligibility

Please take extra care to tick the correct boxes in the eligibility sections of your application form. Mistakes sometimes happen but if you contact us later than two working days (Monday-Friday) before the vacancy closes, we may not be able to reopen your application for you.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a standard (or equivalent) criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants. We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles.

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities.