Office for National Statistics
Lead Business Analyst
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Locations
The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield (Fareham),
This role is aligned to ONS hybrid working principles, which are based on attending the office with purpose. The post holder will be expected to contribute to the organisation’s overall 40% office attendance, in line with business and role requirements.
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.
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
This role sits within the Digital Strategy and Evaluation team in Digital Services. The team leads the development of digital strategy across the organisation and ensures that digital products and services deliver real value for users and the public.
Digital Services is an exciting place to work, supporting the delivery of modern digital products, services and platforms at a time when technology, data and AI are rapidly changing how organisations operate. This role sits at the heart of the Digital Services Strategy function, providing business analysis leadership to help shape strategic direction, identify opportunities for improvement and ensure that digital investment is aligned to organisational priorities. The postholder will work across teams to build evidence, understand user and business needs, and support informed decision-making that maximises the impact of ONS digital services
Operating at the centre of Digital Services, the team works across delivery, data and technology areas to align digital activity with organisational priorities and user needs. It brings together strategic planning and insight to support effective decision-making and continuous improvement.
As a Grade 7 Business Analyst, you will play a key role in shaping and delivering the organisation’s digital strategy. You will apply your business analysis expertise to support the development of strategic roadmaps and division-led strategies that align to the overarching digital vision. Working across complex services and stakeholders, you will help define clear outcomes, establish success measures, and track progress against strategic objectives. Through structured analysis and engagement, you will ensure that digital priorities are well-defined, evidence-based, and deliver tangible impact.
Job Description
This is a business analysis role with a strong strategic focus, working at the heart of Digital Services to help shape how we understand, prioritise and deliver change across the directorate. Rather than supporting a single delivery project, you will work across a broad and evolving portfolio of strategic activity, using business analysis skills to investigate complex problems, understand stakeholder needs, map current and future ways of working, and turn evidence into clear insight and recommendations.
You will play a key role in supporting the development of digital strategy, operating models, service improvements and future capability, helping senior leaders make informed decisions about where to focus effort and investment. The role will suit someone who can combine structured analysis with curiosity, strategic thinking and strong stakeholder engagement, and who is confident working in ambiguity to bring clarity, shape options and support meaningful organisational change.
Responsibilities:
- Review existing system capabilities, develop use cases and information models, and align business requirements to specific capabilities of system development.
- Define improvements to business processes, developing business cases to enable decisions to be made based on the benefits of the change.
- Facilitate, understand, and communicate the project scope and work to assure the overall goal is maintained in creation of the product backlog.
- Lead in defining solutions to real business problems through influence, facilitation and communication and ensuring the end-to-end process is considered.
- Shape and challenge business priorities and ways of working through collaboration with business and technology teams.
- Deliver at pace using the most appropriate delivery methodologies and adopting agile principles.
- Develop suitable analysis models using appropriate modelling techniques, considering traceability, adherence to business objectives and fitness for purpose.
- Work with business and solution architects to ensure that the wider architecture considered when undertaking analysis work.
- Assist decision makers in gathering information to make informed decisions.
- Promote a culture of assurance and security.
- Help to quality assure test solutions and products.
- Actively participate in the Business Analysis community and broader communities to refine and develop standards, working practices, sharing of knowledge, and understanding.
- Where appropriate and in line with divisional organisation practice, Line management of Business Analysts within the ONS community. In addition, SEO and Grade 7 roles will be required to provide coaching and mentoring to Junior Business Analysts.
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Person specification
Essential Criteria:
Business Analysis (Expert) - Set the direction for business analysis within a programme of work, enterprise or wider sector. Guide tactical decision making and influence the formulation of longer-term strategic plans in an evolving, complex and unpredictable environment. Give colleagues the means and authority to make decisions about their approach to business analysis activities. Ensure that the proposed solutions align with the organisational strategy and vision.
Consultancy (Working) - Provide advice, guidance and recommendations based on your specialist knowledge and experience. Propose methodologies to follow and approaches to implementation. Frame problems so they can easily be understood, and troubleshoot where required, to support the business in operating more effectively.
Stakeholder Relationship Management (Expert) - Direct the stakeholder relationship strategy for your teams. Ensure stakeholders objectives are set and support teams to meet them. Influence and negotiate with senior stakeholders to resolve issues and enable progress.
Business Process Improvement (Expert) - Lead the identification of large-scale opportunities to deliver business performance improvements. Set the direction for analysis, design and evaluation of business process improvements, including methods, tools and standards. Set the direction for design, execution and assessment of business process tests. Coach others in designing, testing, implementing and assessing business process improvements.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Making Effective Decisions
- Communicating and Influencing
- Changing and Improving
- Working Together
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
Business Analysis
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 (opens in a new window).
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.
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Whether you are hearing about us for the first time or already know a bit about our organisation, we hope that our careers site will give you a great insight into the benefits and facilities available to our colleagues, and our fantastic working culture.
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.
ONS are committed to flexible ways of working that support a healthy work-life balance. ONS has already considered how this job could be right sized for applicants working flexibly and we are happy to explore options with you about working part time, in a job share or flexibly, in line with our hybrid working policies.
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 (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.
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.
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
We will reach out to you to confirm eligibility once the advert closes.
Visa Sponsorship
ONS can offer visa sponsorship as part of this recruitment campaign. However, applicants must still hold valid right to work in the UK at the point employment commences.
To work at the ONS, candidates must meet both UK right to work and security clearance requirements (where applicable).
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.
For full guidance in relation to the use of AI through the recruitment process, please read A candidate’s guide to artificial intelligence (AI)
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