Office for National Statistics
Digital Senior Delivery Manager
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Locations for this role are Newport, Titchfield (Fareham), and Belfast.
This role aligns with ONS hybrid working principles, which require attending the office with purpose. The postholder will be expected to contribute to the organization’s overall 40% office attendance, in line with business and role requirements.
The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.
Due to workforce controls, you can only select Manchester / London / Darlington / Edinburgh if you are an existing ONS employee contracted to that location. If you are not contracted at one of these sites, these options are not available to you.
Only existing ONS contractual homeworkers can select Homeworking.
Applicants who select a location they are not eligible for will be removed from the recruitment process and will not be considered for alternative locations.
Please refer to attachments for further terms and flexibilities.
Job Summary
Do you thrive on working with people, improving how teams work, and helping deliver outcomes that genuinely make a difference? We are looking for a Digital Senior Delivery Manager to support the upcoming Census!
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social, and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.
Census 2031 represents our most ambitious data collection project yet – a once-in-a-decade opportunity to capture a complete picture of everyone living in England and Wales. Building on the digital success of 2021, we're pioneering new ways to reach every household and community, ensuring no one is left uncounted. This vital work will provide the foundation for policy decisions, resource allocation, and community planning for the next decade.
Your work will support delivery of this transformational project that will shape how we understand and support our nation's future. You’ll be part of a team that ensures everyone is counted—and every voice is heard. We're building a culture that values collaboration, fresh thinking, and respect for diverse expertise. Whether you're a seasoned professional or bringing new perspectives, you'll be part of a team that welcomes bold ideas, works transparently, and thrives on solving complex challenges together.
Interview for this role will be in person from either Newport or Titchfield.
Job Description
This is a fantastic opportunity to play a pivotal role in shaping the design of Census 2031. As a Delivery Manager, you will lead multidisciplinary teams of researchers, designers, statisticians, operational experts, and delivery professionals to run discovery activities that explore complex challenges and identify innovative solutions for the future census. You will be responsible for planning and leading a programme of innovation events, ensuring insights and evidence are effectively captured, synthesised, and translated into actionable design outcomes.
Working collaboratively across professional disciplines, you will enable further research, design, and experimentation, helping to build a robust evidence base that informs key decisions and drives the development of services, processes, and operating models for Census 2031. A key aspect of the role will be working closely with colleagues in the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), as well as National Records of Scotland (NRS), to support a coordinated UK-wide approach to census design. This will include planning and facilitating joint innovation events, workshops and discovery activities, building strong working relationships across organisations, and ensuring insights from across the UK are considered as part of the development of Census 2031. Regular engagement with NISRA colleagues, including opportunities to work alongside teams on-site in Belfast, will support effective collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and expertise.
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As a Digital Senior Delivery Manager, you will be accountable for the effective delivery of complex, high-risk products and services. You will have strong communication skills and engage senior stakeholders. You will also coach and mentor other Digital Delivery Managers. You will be accountable for ensuring delivery achieves agreed outcomes, provides value for users, and aligns with wider organisational priorities and strategic goals.
These roles will contribute to delivery across strategic platforms and key organisational objectives, supporting critical services and transformation initiatives.
You will work with multidisciplinary teams and senior stakeholders to plan and deliver effectively in fast-paced, often ambiguous environments.
Key Responsibilities
You will:
- Manage the delivery of high-risk products and services, ensuring successful outcomes.
- Share expertise with other team members, nurturing their growth and development.
- Maintain open lines of communication with high-level interested parties, effectively advocating for their team.
- Contribute to strategic decision-making, steering the direction of products and service delivery.
Person specification
Essential Criteria
Planning (Expert) - Lead a continual planning process in a very complex environment. Plan beyond product delivery. Identify dependencies in plans across services and coordinate delivery. Coach other teams as the central point of expertise.
Maintaining Delivery Momentum (Expert) - Optimise the delivery flow of teams. Actively address the most complicated risks, issues and dependencies including where ownership exists outside the team or no clear ownership exists. Identify innovative ways to unblock issues.
Life Cycle Management (Practitioner) - Work and consult with the right people at the right time to move through the life cycle and deliver value. Use evidence to decide when a team should continue, change direction or stop. Identify tools and techniques required at different phases of the life cycle. Guide colleagues and stakeholders through different phases of the life cycle.
Communicating between the technical and non-technical (Expert) - Mediate between people and strengthen relationships, adopting the appropriate communication method with stakeholders at all levels, manage stakeholder expectations and moderate difficult discussions about high risk and complex topics, even within constrained timescales, speak on behalf of, and represent the community to, large audiences inside and outside the organisation.
Agile and Lean practices (Expert) - Coach and lead teams in Agile and Lean good practices. Create and tailor the right approach for a team, challenging, evaluating and iterating the approach through the life cycle, experiment with new and innovative ways of working to improve delivery across the organisation, act as a recognised expert and advocate for Agile and Lean approaches.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Leadership
- Delivering at Pace
- Seeing the Big Picture
- Changing and Improving
Salary
Alongside your salary of £56,861, Office for National Statistics contributes £16,472 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
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Benefits
This role is part of the cross-government Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) profession framework. As a role within Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) at the ONS, we also offer benefits such as:
- Protected Learning Time to spend on your personal development and side-projects.
- A supportive and active Community of Practice which you will be expected to contribute to, helping ensure you and your colleagues get the training, development and opportunities you need to progress your careers.
We are committed to supporting our people’s wellbeing by offering flexible ways of working that support a healthy work life balance. We are happy to explore opportunities with you about working flexibly in line with our hybrid working policies.
Inclusion & Accessibility
At ONS we are always looking to attract the very best people from the widest possible talent pool, and we are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer. As a Disability Confident Leader we’re committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.
As part of our application process, you will be prompted to provide details of any reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process that you need. If you would like to discuss any reasonable adjustments before applying, please contact the recruitment team in the first instance.
If you would like an accessible version of any of the attachments or recruitment documents below or linked to in this advert, please contact the recruitment team who will be happy to assist.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Security Clearance
For ONS the requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for 3 consecutive years immediately prior to applying and the department will consider eligibility by exception on a case-by-case basis. You will be asked to provide information regarding your UK residency during your application, and failure to provide this will result in your application being rejected.
If you are unsure that you meet the eligibility above, please read the information available on Gov.uk on this link, or contact the recruitment email on the advert before applying to discuss, as failure to meet the residency requirements will result in your security clearance application being rejected and any offer of employment being withdrawn.
At the point of SC application, you will need to provide or give access to the following evidence:
- Departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
- UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
- Your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
- Security Services records
Visa Sponsorship
ONS may be able to provide visa sponsorship where the role meets ONS sponsorship criteria and all relevant Home Office requirements. Applicants must hold, or be eligible to obtain,
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