Lead Operational Excellence Manager

Job summary

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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 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.

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 Se