Deputy Director, Faculty

Job summary

This role reports into the Director of Capability and People Services with overall responsibility for the strategic direction of a broad, diverse and expanding L&D offering that services a growing customer base across the civil service and wider public sector.

The role has three integral components:

Strategic leadership and operational delivery of strategic priorities (60%):

• Overseeing the strategic direction and delivery of GCF strategic commitments regarding broadened capability uplift, including the existing commercial and contract management L&D programmes.
• Leading a multi-disciplined team of L&D, accreditation, and operational delivery experts, driving a culture of delivering the minimum viable product and practising continuous improvement.
• Financial responsibility for GCF Faculty and its products and services.
• Representing the GCF at internal and industry events as the Learning and Development lead for the Function.

Designing, developing and delivering L&D products (20%)

• Overseeing and optimising the design and operational delivery of all L&D products, making use of current and new digital technology such as AI and cloud tools.

Assessing and translating commercial requirements into L&D products (20%)

• Overseeing expansion and diversification of L&D products to upskill the evolving needs of the GCF, ensuring L&D aligns with the pragmatic delivery of career pathways and functional workforce strategy.

Job description

Key Responsibilities

The role holder responsibilities include:

• Strategic Leadership: Drive the strategic direction and expansion of GCF commercial and contract management L&D, ensuring accessibility across the civil service and wider public sector. Champion the consolidation and improvement of existing programmes while investing in critical new skills, including digital capability, AI fluency, social value, and sustainability.
• Organisational Impact: Advocate and foster a collaborative, inclusive culture as a key member of the Capability and People Services Senior Leadership Team, steering organizational objectives whilst creating and maintaining an excellent employee experience which prioritises employee well-being.
• Commercial Accountability: Hold full financial responsibility for the GCF Faculty Team, including the costs of delivering products and services.
• Team Leadership: Lead, mentor, and inspire a high-performing, multi-disciplinary team of training, accreditation, and operational experts.
• Product Excellence: Drive the design, delivery, and diversification of industry-leading commercial and contract management training, ensuring content remains agile and responsive to shifting government needs.
• Digital Innovation: Optimise L&D design and delivery through digital innovation—leveraging AI, cloud-based tools, and data-driven product roadmaps to maximize operational efficiency.
• Workforce Alignment: Ensure all L&D offerings are tightly integrated with GCF career pathways, directly supporting wider workforce strategy and professional progression.
• External Representation: Act as a key ambassador for the GCF and the Director of Capability and People Services at internal boards, governance forums, and external industry events.

Person specification

It is important that, through your CV and supporting statement, you provide evidence of the professional skills, breadth of experience and personal qualities for this post. The following skills and experience are essential for the role.

Essential Criteria:

• Strategic & Operational Leadership: Proven senior leader with experience in high-profile organisations, with a track record of setting direction and driving the end to end delivery of complex, large-scale initiatives and successful outcomes (at scale) in ambiguous environments. This includes bridging and leveraging expertise from across the public and private sectors to maximise value across all commercial activities.
• L&D Expertise: Extensive experience leading and motivating multi-disciplinary teams in professional-grade learning design, applying institutional design models and learning methodologies to drive high-impact interventions, including, but not limited to the following: ADDIE Model, SAM (Successive Approximation Model), Bloom's Taxonomy, Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction, Action Mapping, Kirkpatrick Model, Merrill's Principles of Instruction (MPI).
• Commercial Acumen: Strong understanding of commercial, procurement, and contract management lifecycles, with an ability to demonstrate how L&D strategy improves commercial outcomes across public and private sectors.
• Delivery & Budget Management: Consistent success in managing large-scale project lifecycles, ensuring high-quality delivery on time and within budget.
• Capability Assessment & Evaluation: Experience in developing rigorous accreditation frameworks and deploying evaluation systems that articulate return on investment (ROI) and business impact.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Exceptional ability to influence and build consensus among senior stakeholders, programme leaders, and cross-functional teams.
• Digital, Data, & AI Innovation: Proficiency in leveraging AI, digital tools, and complex data analysis to optimize learning delivery and inform strategic business decisions.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Changing and Improving
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £81,000, Cabinet Office contributes £23,465 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).

Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career with the Department and wider Civil Service. It is crucial that our employees have the right skills to develop their careers and meet the challenges ahead. You’ll benefit from a wide range of training and development opportunities, regular performance and development reviews to ensure this development is ongoing. As a Civil Service employee, you’ll be entitled to a large range of benefits.

This includes:

• 25 days annual leave on entry, increasing on a sliding scale to 30 days after 5 years’ service. This is in addition to 8 public holidays.
• This will be complimented by one further day paid privilege entitlement to mark the King’s Birthday;
• A competitive contributory pension scheme that you can enter as soon as you join where we will make a significant contribution to the cost of your pension; where your contributions come out of your salary before any tax is taken; and where your pension will continue to provide valuable benefits for you and your family if you are too ill to continue to work or die before you retire;
• Generous paid maternity and paternity leave which is notably more than the statutory minimum offered by many other employers;
• Childcare benefits (policy for new employees as