Office for National Statistics
Service Owner Head of Data Design and Build
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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 postholder will be expected to contribute to the organisation’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 / Belfast 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
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.
Data Products, Services and Governance (DPSG), which sits centrally within ONS, provides a cross-ONS capability for data, including data access and preparation, and the provision of data and linked data products. DPSG develops and manages the systems and processes that underpin the distribution of data across ONS and beyond. DPSG provides data to ONS, academia, wider government, and other external users in a safe and controlled way, supporting and encouraging users to maximise data utility, enabling innovation and statistical and research use.
The Data Architecture, Location and Integration Division within DPSG is responsible for the production of core linked and geospatial data products for use across ONS, the core data architecture standards and practices the organisation adheres to, and the design and build of new data infrastructures to deliver them.
This role, as Head of the Data Design and Build team, is a critical one within the division, leading the provision of a well-architected infrastructure to support our delivery of data and data products to ONS and external customers.
Job Description
This role is being advertised under the Service Owner role profile under the Government Digital and Data Profession. The successful candidate will lead the Data Design and Build team (DDB), a multidisciplinary group of architects, data engineers, user researchers, business analysts and software developers, which is responsible for building the next generation of data services on the ONS Google Cloud Platform (GCP) environment. Currently the team is primarily focused on building a metadata infrastructure which will enable us to manage data across the ONS estate, supporting our data governance programme as well as providing a data discoverability layer, and the ability to use metadata more effectively for both quality improvements and automated data pipelines.
You will be accountable for the delivery of evolving functionality for the service based on user feedback and the requirements of the Data Governance Office, Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) team, Digital Publishing team and other core business stakeholders. For this reason, stakeholder management and the ability to critically evaluate requirements and suggest solutions is particularly key.
The successful candidate will need to be an experienced agile practitioner who can help the team prioritise, set targets and deliver, while providing the support, decision making and removal of blockers that will enable that delivery.
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Responsibilities
- Lead on delivery, recognising and collaborating where multiple products or service teams need to deliver and ensuring interdependencies and cross-cutting team issues are dealt with.
- Own the service, taking responsibility for business-as-usual development, problem resolution, and continuous improvement; seeking to find the best balance of resource allocation against competing priorities.
- Support development teams by setting priorities and ensuring the product vision is clearly articulated thereby helping to define the roadmap for the products and service and translate that into an achievable backlog.
- Support the programme, delivery teams, and wider multi-disciplined teams by communicating what is achievable in each timeframe.
- Build relationships with product managers, sponsors, and other stakeholders so that they remain on-board throughout, and ensure others are not allowed to divert resources or influence priorities.
- Encourage a culture of innovation focused on adding value.
- Effectively manage team dynamics when working across departmental and other boundaries
- Actively develop agile capability of teams, learning, sharing, and re-applying skills and knowledge and bringing in good practice
- Effectively engage with, set direction for, and manage suppliers to get optimum value.
- Communicate service performance against key indicators to internal and external stakeholders.
Person specification
Essential Criteria:
- Applying user-centred insights (Expert) - You can: Advocate for a range of effective research approaches across the organisation. Coach others in making decisions that meet user needs across a range of channels. Advocate for continuous use of user insights in teams. Use user insights to make strategic decisions to provide the best user experience.
- Leading performance and benefits (Expert) - You can: Ensure appropriate measures are in place to deliver valuable outcomes to users and agreed business benefits. Ensure metrics are used to monitor, manage and prioritise delivery and inform decision making. Demonstrate the value of the service and build understanding with stakeholders by ensuring effective data and insights are shared.
- Life cycle management (Practitioner) - You can: 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.
- Stakeholder relationship management (Expert) - You can: Direct the stakeholder relationship strategy for your teams. Ensure stakeholder's objectives are set and support teams to meet them. Influence and negotiate with senior stakeholders to resolve issues and enable progress.
- Strategic ownership (Expert) - You can: Support and coach others in creating and implementing a successful long-term strategy and tactical approach that others agree with. Influence and persuade stakeholders to support delivery of the strategy. Support with strategic decision making. Ensure strategic alignment across the organisation.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Seeing the Big Picture
- Delivering at Pace
- Leadership
- Working Together
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.
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 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
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