HM Revenue & Customs
Lead Operational Excellence Manager
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
Locations
Stratford Regional Centre - Westfield Avenue
Worthing - Teville Gate House
Manchester Regional Centre - Three New Bailey
Please note that due to workforce controls, Stratford is only available to existing HMRC staff in this location. HMRC staff based in Reading can also apply to move to Stratford in line with Migration path. HMRC staff based in 100PS can also apply to move to Stratford.
Job Summary
Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it’s really like to work at HMRC.
Visit our YouTube channel to watch the full series and come and discover your potential.
This is an exciting opportunity to join Tax Benefits and Enterprise Operations (TB&EOps), a vital part of HMRC responsible for delivering essential tax and benefits services. Our work supports individuals, families and businesses, helping to ensure customers receive the right support while maintaining confidence in the UK's tax and benefits systems.
As part of TB&EOps, you will contribute to the delivery of operational services that have a direct impact on customers and the wider economy. Working in a dynamic environment, you will help address complex challenges, improve performance and support HMRC's commitment to delivering trusted, efficient and customer-focused services.
You will work with a wide range of colleagues and stakeholders across HMRC and government, building strong relationships to achieve shared objectives. The role offers opportunities to support change, drive improvements and contribute to solutions that enhance service delivery and the customer experience.
We are looking for individuals who are motivated by public service and committed to delivering high-quality outcomes. You will lead our governance and compliance activities, providing oversight of governance frameworks, assurance, audit readiness, compliance obligations, risk management, portfolio assurance, and reporting.
In return, you'll join an inclusive and supportive organisation that values learning, development and continuous improvement. You'll have the opportunity to broaden your experience, develop new skills and build a rewarding career within one of the UK's largest government departments.
If you are looking for a role where you can make a meaningful contribution, embrace new challenges and help deliver services that matter to customers across the UK, we'd love to hear from you. Join Tax Benefits and Enterprise Operations and be part of a team delivering with purpose, professionalism and pride.
Job Description
The Tax, Benefits & Enterprise Operations (TB&EOps) Lead Operational Excellence Manager is accountable for establishing and embedding a culture of operational excellence across HMRC’s critical tax and enterprise platforms, including ETMP, Unity and EOPS services.
The role will lead the governance, assurance, service optimisation, resilience, continuous improvement and operational readiness agenda for some of HMRC’s most business-critical services. The postholder will ensure that operational practices are scalable, measurable, efficient and aligned to Platform as a Product principle whilst supporting major transformation programmes, including SAP S/4HANA migration, Sovereign Cloud adoption and wider digital modernisation.
The role acts as the senior authority for operational excellence, driving improvements across service management, supplier performance, operational controls, risk reduction, automation, resilience, cost efficiency and customer outcomes.
Person Specification
Operational Excellence Leadership
- Define and implement the TB&EOps Operational Excellence strategy.
- Establish consistent operational standards, KPIs and best practices across all TB&EOps capabilities.
- Create a culture of continuous improvement and data-driven decision-making.
- Develop operational maturity assessments and improvement roadmaps.
- Benchmark operational performance against industry and Government standards.
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Service Governance & Assurance
- Lead governance and assurance across platform deliveries and critical live services.
- Ensure compliance with operational, security, resilience and audit requirements.
- Provide independent challenge and assurance for major operational decisions.
- Oversee service reviews, operational health assessments and improvement plans.
- Drive audits across suppliers and delivery teams.
Continuous Improvement & Automation
- Identify and eliminate operational inefficiencies, recurring incidents and service bottlenecks.
- Lead continuous improvement initiatives using Lean, Six Sigma and Service Management practices.
- Promote automation, observability and self-healing capabilities.
- Drive reduction of operational toil and manual intervention.
- Establish measurable benefits realisation from improvement activities.
Reliability, Resilience & Service Stability
- Lead operational readiness and resilience reviews for critical services.
- Ensure robust disaster recovery, business continuity and service continuity arrangements.
- Oversee capacity, availability and performance management practices.
- Drive improvements in service reliability and platform resilience.
- Provide leadership during major incidents and operational crises.
Supplier & Partner Performance Management
- Lead operational performance governance with strategic suppliers.
- Establish and monitor operational SLAs, OLAs and contractual obligations.
- Ensure suppliers deliver continuous service improvements and value for money.
- Challenge supplier performance and drive corrective action where required.
- Support commercial and contract management activities.
Operational Transformation
- Ensure operational considerations are embedded throughout programme and project lifecycles.
- Lead service transition and operational acceptance activities.
- Support large-scale transformation initiatives, including SAP S/4HANA migration and platform modernisation.
- Ensure new services are supportable, secure, resilient and operationally ready.
Data, Reporting & Insights
- Establish operational dashboards and performance reporting.
- Drive the use of service data and analytics to inform decisions.
- Deliver executive-level reporting on operational performance, risks and improvement outcomes.
- Develop operational scorecards aligned to business and platform objectives.
Leadership & People Development
- Lead, coach and develop a multidisciplinary operational excellence team.
- Build capability across TB&EOps in service management, operational engineering and continuous improvement.
- Foster a culture of accountability, learning and innovation.
- Act as a role model for operational leadership across the organisation.
Key Accountabilities
The postholder will be accountable for:
- Operational performance across TB&EOps services.
- Continuous improvement portfolio and benefits delivery.
- Operational readiness of major platform changes.
- Service resilience and recoverability.
- Governance and assurance effectiveness.
- Supplier operational performance.
- Risk reduction and control effectiveness.
- Operational cost optimisation.
- Service management maturity improvements.
Essential Criteria
- Proven leadership in large-scale operational, governance, service management or live service environments.
- Experience managing mission-critical platforms within highly regulated environments.
- Strong background in IT Service Management (ITIL) and operational governance.
- Experience driving operational excellence, continuous improvement and automation initiatives.
- Experience managing suppliers and outsourced service providers.
- Demonstrable track record of improving service performance and operational outcomes.
- Experience leading through complex organisational or technology transformation.
- Strong stakeholder management skills with senior business and technology leaders.
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Desirable Criteria
- SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA or Enterprise Platform experience.
- Experience within Government or Critical National Infrastructure environments.
- Lean, Six Sigma or Operational Excellence certification.
- Platform Governance and modern operations practices.
- Experience implementing Platform as a Product operating models.
- Experience with cloud migration and transformation programmes.
Full time only
Due to operational needs, these posts are full-time; however, applicants who need to work a more flexible arrangement are welcome to apply. We can’t guarantee that we can meet all requests to work flexibly as any agreement will be subject to business ability to accommodate. Any request to work a more flexible arrangement should be made prior to your acceptance of the provisional offer.
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. Please be aware that you cannot change your location preference after submitting your application.
Salary
Alongside your salary of £71,725, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £20,778 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).
Benefits
- HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.
- We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.
- Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues’ Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
- Family friendly policies.
- Personal support.
- Coaching and development.
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
How To Apply
As part of the application process, you will be asked to provide the following:
- A name-blind CV including your job history and previous skills and experiences.
- A 750-word Personal Statement. Your Personal Statement should be used to describe how your skills and experience would be suitable for the advertised role, making reference to the essential criteria and person specification outlined in the advert.
Please complete a separate statement (Max 250 words) for the Desirable Criteria where applicable. This is not essential for the role but may be considered by the vacancy-holder where candidates have the same scores at interview.
Sift
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills