National Crime Agency (NCA)
Senior Commercial Manager
Get notified of more jobs like this · No spam, ever
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
Birmingham, Bristol, London, Normanton, Sunderland, Warrington
Job Summary
Please be aware that this recruitment campaign is being managed by our recruitment partners, Michael Page.
As part of the NCA’s Commercial Function, you will play a pivotal role in supporting the Agency’s mission to protect the public from serious and organised crime. Working at the centre of the organisation, you will partner with operational and corporate teams to provide high-quality commercial expertise across policy development, strategic planning, sourcing, and contract management.
These roles sit within the NCA’s multi-year commercial transformation programme, offering a rare opportunity to shape how the Agency procures critical goods and services that enable frontline operations. You will gain significant exposure to complex commercial activity, high-value portfolios, and senior stakeholders - experience that is difficult to match elsewhere in the Civil Service.
Please note that the role may involve occasional travel to other NCA sites and partner locations.
Job Description
As a Senior Commercial Manager, you will provide strategic commercial leadership across the full procurement and contract management lifecycle. You will shape and deliver robust commercial strategies, ensure compliance with government procurement regulations, and drive value for money through effective market engagement, sourcing, negotiation and supplier management.
You will lead complex, high-risk and high-value procurements, oversee critical commercial activity across your portfolio, and provide expert guidance to commercial colleagues. Working closely with senior stakeholders, you will influence commercial decisions, manage competing priorities, and ensure commercial outcomes support organisational objectives.
This role requires exceptional commercial judgement, strong leadership, and the ability to navigate ambiguity while maintaining a high-quality, compliant and strategically aligned commercial service.
Duties And Responsibilities
Strategic Commercial Leadership
- Lead the development and delivery of strategic commercial approaches across your portfolio, ensuring alignment with organisational priorities and government commercial policy.
- Provide authoritative commercial advice to senior stakeholders, influencing strategic decisions and shaping commercial direction at programme and organisational level.
- Identify opportunities to improve commercial outcomes, strengthen competition, and deliver sustainable value for money across high-value and high-risk procurements.
Procurement Delivery & Governance
- Oversee complex, high-risk and high-value procurements, ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory frameworks and delivering high-quality commercial documentation and recommendations.
- Lead key stages of the sourcing process, including market engagement, commercial modelling, negotiation strategies, and the development of robust governance cases.
- Ensure commercial activity is subject to appropriate assurance and is delivered to a consistently high standard across the team.
Contract & Supplier Management
- Provide senior-level oversight of major contracts, ensuring effective performance management, risk control, financial monitoring and delivery against agreed outcomes.
- Lead strategic supplier engagement, supporting the development of effective partnerships, resolving complex commercial issues, and identifying opportunities for optimisation and innovation.
- Ensure that contract management practices are compliant, proactive and consistently applied across the portfolio.
Stakeholder Management & Customer Engagement
- Build strong, trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, programme leads and delivery partners, ensuring commercial considerations inform strategic and operational decisions.
- Communicate complex commercial issues clearly, providing balanced, evidence-based advice to support informed decision-making.
- Manage competing priorities across multiple programmes, balancing commercial, financial, operational and legal considerations.
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.
Commercial Capability & Team Leadership
- Provide leadership, coaching and oversight to commercial colleagues, supporting capability development across the function.
- Champion best practice in procurement and contract management, actively driving improvements in processes, standards and commercial governance.
- Act as a role model for professional commercial behaviours, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration and high-quality service delivery.
Person Specification
The below expected skills and behaviours are aligned to the Government Commercial Function (GCF) People Standards for the Profession - People standards for the commercial profession - GOV.UK
Stakeholder Management
- Builds strong, credible relationships with senior stakeholders, communicating with clarity, confidence and impact.
- Clearly articulates commercial motivations, constraints and expected behaviours across stakeholder groups, suppliers and delivery partners.
- Engages the right stakeholders early in the process, maintaining constructive engagement and alignment throughout commercial activity.
- Explains complex commercial, technical or market issues to non-specialists in a clear and accessible way, ensuring understanding, buy-in and commitment to commercial plans.
- Promotes and enforces high ethical standards across supply chains, actively addressing risks of fraud, corruption or unethical behaviour and taking appropriate action where concerns arise.
- Is a trusted source of commercial advice, able to influence senior decision-makers using evidence-based reasoning.
Commercial Experience
- Proven experience leading complex and high-value procurements, applying strong commercial judgement and delivering high-quality outcomes.
- Demonstrable experience of category management, including developing category strategies, analysing markets and identifying opportunities for improved value and performance.
- Strong track record of managing teams or leading others in delivering commercial activity, providing oversight, direction and expert challenge.
- Identifies and resolves commercial issues even when data is incomplete or ambiguous, using professional judgement and structured analysis.
- Understands and balances key trade-offs across cost, risk, performance, delivery confidence and operational need.
- Leads commercial activity that secures demonstrable value for money through effective competition, negotiation, contract management and supplier collaboration.
Business Acumen
- Applies commercial principles confidently within public procurement and contract law, understanding the legal context for decisions and actions.
- Identifies legal or compliance implications in commercial activity and works effectively with legal and policy experts to address complex issues.
- Understands commercial drivers, category-specific markets and broader organisational priorities, ensuring commercial strategies are well-aligned.
- Brings a flexible mindset and skillset, able to work effectively across any Commercial team at this grade, adapting quickly to new subject matter and priorities.
Risk Management
- Analyses commercial and contract risks comprehensively, understanding assumptions, margins of error and potential impacts on delivery, value and compliance.
- Uses evidence, market insight and structured analysis to inform recommendations, clearly articulating key risks, mitigations and alternative options.
- Embeds proactive risk management across procurement and contract management activity, ensuring controls are appropriate, proportionate and routinely applied.
Decision Making
- Evaluates evidence objectively, weighing the strengths and limitations of different options to reach well-reasoned, defensible conclusions.
- Influences internal decisions through clear, evidence-based commercial analysis and persuasive recommendations.
- Leads constructive supplier discussions on technical matters, commercial terms and contractual issues, using judgement to secure positive, compliant and value-focused outcomes.
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Leadership
- Demonstrates resilience and composure when resolving issues, supporting the team through challenges and maintaining progress on complex commercial activity.
- Provides leadership and direction to commercial teams, building confidence and capability through coaching, feedback and knowledge sharing.
- Implements and embeds change at team or portfolio level, working collaboratively with affected parties to identify and overcome challenges.
- Adapts communication style and leadership approach to suit different audiences, contexts and environments.
- Understands team strengths, skill gaps and career aspirations, actively supporting professional development and succession planning.
- Promotes a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement and resource sharing within the commercial function.
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £70,179, National Crime Agency contributes £20,330 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).
All NCA employees are members of the UK Civil Service and eligible for the Civil Service pension scheme, alongside your salary the NCA contributes £19586. Further information on the benefits of the scheme is available on the Civil Service Pension Website.
New entrants to the NCA receive 26 days annual leave, rising to 31 on completion of 5 years continuous service, plus 8 bank holidays.
If qualifying criteria is met new joiners from UK Police Forces or the UK Intelligence Community (UKIC) will have service with those employers taken into account for continuous service purposes for annual leave entitlement only, this will be up to a maximum of 31 days leave (including 1 privilege day).
Other Benefits Include:
- Flexible working, including flexi-time, compressed hours and job sharing (in line with business requirements).
- Family friendly policies, notably above the statutory minimum.
- Learning and Development opportunities.
- Interest free loans and advances, including season tickets, childcare and rental deposits.
- Housing schemes - Key Worker status.
- Discounts and Savings with a wide variety of services including Cycle to Work, Smart Tech schemes, dental insurance, gym discounts and savings on everyday spending, available through the Reward Gateway, Edenred and Blue Light Card schemes.
- Staff support groups/networks.
- Sports and social activities, including membership to the Civil Service Sports Council (CSSC).
Further information is available on the NCA Website.
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
Please speak to a member of the team at Michael Page who will discuss the process with you.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window). See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Medical
Successful candidates will be expected to have a medical.
Nationality Requirements
This Job Is Broadly Open To The Following Groups:
- UK nationals
“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
Location