Digital Senior Delivery Manager

Job summary

Do you thrive on working with people, improving how teams work, and helping deliver outcomes that genuinely make a difference? We are looking for a Digital Senior Delivery Manager to support the upcoming Census!

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.

Census 2031 represents our most ambitious data collection project yet – a once-in-a-decade opportunity to capture a complete picture of everyone living in England and Wales. Building on the digital success of 2021, we're pioneering new ways to reach every household and community, ensuring no one is left uncounted. This vital work will provide the foundation for policy decisions, resource allocation, and community planning for the next decade.

Your work will support delivery of this transformational project that will shape how we understand and support our nation's future. You’ll be part of a team that ensures everyone is counted—and every voice is heard. We're building a culture that values collaboration, fresh thinking, and respect for diverse expertise. Whether you're a seasoned professional or bringing new perspectives, you'll be part of a team that welcomes bold ideas, works transparently, and thrives on solving complex challenges together.

Interview for this role will be in person from either Newport or Titchfield.

Job description

This is a fantastic opportunity to play a pivotal role in shaping the design of Census 2031. As a Delivery Manager, you will lead multidisciplinary teams of researchers, designers, statisticians, operational experts, and delivery professionals to run discovery activities that explore complex challenges and identify innovative solutions for the future census. You will be responsible for planning and leading a programme of innovation events, ensuring insights and evidence are effectively captured, synthesised, and translated into actionable design outcomes.

Working collaboratively across professional disciplines, you will enable further research, design, and experimentation, helping to build a robust evidence base that informs key decisions and drives the development of services, processes, and operating models for Census 2031. A key aspect of the role will be working closely with colleagues in the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), as well as National Records of Scotland (NRS), to support a coordinated UK-wide approach to census design. This will include planning and facilitating joint innovation events, workshops and discovery activities, building strong working relationships across organisations, and ensuring insights from across the UK are considered as part of the development of Census 2031. Regular engagement with NISRA colleagues, including opportunities to work alongside teams on-site in Belfast, will support effective collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and expertise.

As a Digital Senior Delivery Manager, you will be accountable for the effective delivery of complex, high risk products and services. You will have strong communication skills and engage senior stakeholders. You will also coach and mentor other Digital Delivery Managers. You will be accountable for ensuring delivery achieves agreed outcomes, provides value for users, and aligns with wider organisational priorities and strategic goals.

These roles will contribute to delivery across strategic platforms and key organisational objectives, supporting critical services and transformation initiatives.

You will work with multidisciplinary teams and senior stakeholders to plan and deliver effectively in fast-paced, often ambiguous environments.

Key responsibilities

You will:

• Manage the delivery of high-risk products and services, ensuring successful outcomes.
• Share expertise with other team members, nurturing their growth and development.
• Maintain open lines of communication with high-level interested parties, effectively advocating for their team.
• Contribute to strategic decision-making, steering the direction of products and service delivery.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Planning (Expert) - Lead a continual planning process in a very complex environment. Plan beyond product delivery. Identify dependencies in plans across services and coordinate delivery. Coach other teams as the central point of expertise.
  
• Maintaining Delivery Momentum (Expert) - Optimise the delivery flow of teams. Actively address the most complicated risks, issues and dependencies including where ownership exists outside the team or no clear ownership exists. Identify innovative ways to unblock issues.
  
• Life Cycle Management (Practitioner) - 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.
  
• Communicating between the technical and non-technical (Expert) - Mediate between people and strengthen relationships, adopting the appropriate communication method with stakeholders at all levels, manage stakeholder expectations and moderate difficult discussions about high risk and complex topics, even within constrained timescales, speak on behalf of, and represent the community to, large audiences inside and outside the organisation.
• Agile and Lean practices (Expert) - Coach and lead teams in Agile and Lean good practices. Create and tailor the right approach for a team, challenging, evaluating and iterating the approach through the life cycle, experiment with new and innovative ways of working to improve delivery across the organisation, act as a recognised expert and advocate for Agile and Lean approaches.

Behaviours

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

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

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £56,861, Office for National Statistics contributes £16,472 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).

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.

This role is part of the cross-government Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) profession framework. As a role within Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) at the ONS, we also offer benefits such as:

• Protect