Office for National Statistics
Head of Operational Management
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The locations for this role are Titchfield (Fareham).
This role requires regular attendance at an ONS office, with a minimum of 2-3 days per week worked on site. The postholder will be expected to work in the office on a regular basis to undertake in-person activities. This level of attendance will apply for most of the programme, although requirements may vary at different stages, with periods of increased or reduced on-site working in response to census priorities, delivery phases and business need.
The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.
Please refer to attachments for further terms and flexibilities.
Job Summary
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.
Be at the heart of one of the UK's most significant data transformation programmes.
Census 2031 represents our most ambitious data collection programme 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 Census 2021, we're pioneering new ways to reach every household and community, ensuring no one is left uncounted. The insights generated will inform policy decisions, guide funding, and support the planning of services and communities across the country for years to come.
Working at the heartbeat of Census 2031, you'll be right in the middle of the action, acting as a central point within the programme and helping to connect people, services, and delivery partners. You'll work closely with senior leaders and colleagues across operational delivery, digital, data, policy, communications, and programme management, providing leadership that ensures activities are aligned, risks are understood, and delivery remains on track. This is a unique opportunity to gain exposure to a high-profile national programme while helping shape a project of national importance.
As a visible senior leader, you will be expected to build strong relationships across teams and stakeholders, leading collaboration and driving delivery in a complex environment. The role requires regular office attendance, participation in meetings, workshops, and key programme events, and being present where important decisions are made. Your leadership, judgement, and influence will be critical in bringing teams together and maintaining momentum across multiple workstreams.
Job Description
As Head of Operational Management, you will provide strategic leadership across complex operational services, ensuring delivery teams, suppliers, and stakeholders work together effectively to deliver high-quality outcomes. You will be responsible for shaping and planning operational services, establishing governance, performance, and assurance frameworks, and ensuring risks, resources, budgets, and operational priorities are managed effectively.
Working across multidisciplinary and matrix-managed teams, you will drive operational performance, readiness, and continuous improvement while providing insight and assurance to senior leaders. You will identify emerging risks and opportunities, ensure decisions are informed by evidence and data, and help shape the strategic direction of the Directorate to support wider organisational objectives.
As a senior leader, you will set the vision and direction for teams, champion inclusive leadership, and build capability to deliver both current priorities and future ambitions. For Grade 6 roles, there is an additional focus on leading long-term operational improvement, strengthening leadership capability, and implementing new operating models and organisational change, while maintaining the delivery of critical operational services and strategic objectives.
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As a visible senior leader at the heart of the programme, this role is based in Titchfield. Regular office attendance is required to provide leadership and support to teams, lead workshops and engagement activities, strengthen collaboration across workstreams, and ensure the successful delivery of this high-profile programme.
Responsibilities
- Set the strategic direction for operational delivery, ensuring services are designed, integrated and delivered effectively to achieve organisational objectives.
- Establish and oversee operational performance management frameworks, ensuring management information, insight and analysis are used to drive operational performance, inform strategic decisions and support delivery outcomes.
- Provide leadership and assurance across operational governance, controls and decision-making arrangements, ensuring effective oversight and accountability across services and suppliers.
- Lead the management of significant operational risks, issues and dependencies, ensuring appropriate mitigations, escalation and senior decision-making.
- Establish and maintain operational readiness, resilience and business continuity frameworks, ensuring services are prepared to respond effectively to changing demands and disruptive events.
- Provide strategic leadership during major operational incidents and service disruptions, ensuring effective coordination, recovery and organisational learning.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with senior stakeholders, devolved governments, delivery partners and suppliers to enable integrated, effective and efficient service delivery.
- Lead the development and implementation of operational communication strategies, ensuring stakeholders and senior leaders receive timely, accurate and actionable information.
- Drive a culture of continuous improvement, innovation and learning, using operational insight, assurance activities and lessons learned to improve organisational performance and service outcomes.
- Lead, inspire and develop high-performing, inclusive teams, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, wellbeing and continuous professional development.
- Provide strategic leadership across complex operational services, ensuring alignment between organisational priorities, operational delivery, commercial arrangements and supplier performance.
Person Specification
Essential Skills Criteria:
- Proven experience leading complex operational services, programmes, or functions within a large-scale delivery environment, with the ability to navigate change, manage competing priorities, and deliver outcomes in a fast-paced and complex environment. (Lead)
- Strong experience of operational governance, assurance, risk management and performance management, driving delivery through effective oversight and control.
- Ability to use management information, data and insight to inform decision-making, improve performance and support the delivery of organisational objectives.
- Experience working across organisational boundaries, building effective relationships with senior stakeholders, suppliers, delivery partners and devolved administrations.
- Strong leadership skills with a track record of building, developing and inspiring inclusive, high-performing teams.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Delivering at Pace
- Making Effective Decisions
- Managing a Quality Service
- Leadership
- Seeing the Big Picture
Salary
Alongside your salary of £68,199, Office for National Statistics contributes £19,757 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
Get help with your application
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The Office for National Statistics is part of the Civil Service, and as such we share a number of key benefits with other departments, whilst also having our own unique offerings to support our valued colleagues across the organisation.
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.
Selection Process Details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.
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, the right to work in the UK before employment commences.
Right To Work And Nationality Requirements
To work at ONS, applicants must meet the Civil Service nationality requirements, satisfy UK right to work requirements and, where applicable, meet the relevant security clearance requirements.
If you are unsure whether you meet the appropriate right to work or security clearance eligibility criteria, please refer to the guidance on Gov.uk or contact the recruitment email provided in the advert before applying. Failure to meet these requirements will result in your application being rejected and employment offers being withdrawn.
Application Process
Number of Stages: 2 stage process
Stage 1: Application
Stage 2: Interview
Stage 1 – Application
The assessment process at the application stage will be based on your work history, CV, skills, experience, and personal statement. It is important that your application is tailored to highlight the skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to the role.
A personal statement is required at application stage, the maximum wordcount allowed is 1250, which should not be exceeded. You
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