Head of Operational Management

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.

Be at the heart of one of the UK's most significant data transformation programmes.

Census 2031 represents our most ambitious data collection programme 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 Census 2021, we're pioneering new ways to reach every household and community, ensuring no one is left uncounted. The insights generated will inform policy decisions, guide funding, and support the planning of services and communities across the country for years to come.

Working at the heartbeat of Census 2031, you'll be right in the middle of the action, acting as a central point within the programme and helping to connect people, services, and delivery partners. You'll work closely with senior leaders and colleagues across operational delivery, digital, data, policy, communications, and programme management, providing leadership that ensures activities are aligned, risks are understood, and delivery remains on track. This is a unique opportunity to gain exposure to a high-profile national programme while helping shape a project of national importance.

As a visible senior leader, you will be expected to build strong relationships across teams and stakeholders, leading collaboration and driving delivery in a complex environment. The role requires regular office attendance, participation in meetings, workshops, and key programme events, and being present where important decisions are made. Your leadership, judgement, and influence will be critical in bringing teams together and maintaining momentum across multiple workstreams.

Job description

As Head of Operational Management, you will provide strategic leadership across complex operational services, ensuring delivery teams, suppliers, and stakeholders work together effectively to deliver high-quality outcomes. You will be responsible for shaping and planning operational services, establishing governance, performance, and assurance frameworks, and ensuring risks, resources, budgets, and operational priorities are managed effectively.

Working across multidisciplinary and matrix-managed teams, you will drive operational performance, readiness, and continuous improvement while providing insight and assurance to senior leaders. You will identify emerging risks and opportunities, ensure decisions are informed by evidence and data, and help shape the strategic direction of the Directorate to support wider organisational objectives.

As a senior leader, you will set the vision and direction for teams, champion inclusive leadership, and build capability to deliver both current priorities and future ambitions. For Grade 6 roles, there is an additional focus on leading long-term operational improvement, strengthening leadership capability, and implementing new operating models and organisational change, while maintaining the delivery of critical operational services and strategic objectives.

As a visible senior leader at the heart of the programme, this role is based in Titchfield. Regular office attendance is required to provide leadership and support to teams, lead workshops and engagement activities, strengthen collaboration across workstreams, and ensure the successful delivery of this high-profile programme.

Responsibilities

• Set the strategic direction for operational delivery, ensuring services are designed, integrated and delivered effectively to achieve organisational objectives.
• Establish and oversee operational performance management frameworks, ensuring management information, insight and analysis are used to drive operational performance, inform strategic decisions and support delivery outcomes.
• Provide leadership and assurance across operational governance, controls and decision-making arrangements, ensuring effective oversight and accountability across services and suppliers.
• Lead the management of significant operational risks, issues and dependencies, ensuring appropriate mitigations, escalation and senior decision-making.
• Establish and maintain operational readiness, resilience and business continuity frameworks, ensuring services are prepared to respond effectively to changing demands and disruptive events.
• Provide strategic leadership during major operational incidents and service disruptions, ensuring effective coordination, recovery and organisational learning.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with senior stakeholders, devolved governments, delivery partners and suppliers to enable integrated, effective and efficient service delivery.
• Lead the development and implementation of operational communication strategies, ensuring stakeholders and senior leaders receive timely, accurate and actionable information.
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement, innovation and learning, using operational insight, assurance activities and lessons learned to improve organisational performance and service outcomes.
• Lead, inspire and develop high-performing, inclusive teams, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, wellbeing and continuous professional development.
• Provide strategic leadership across complex operational services, ensuring alignment between organisational priorities, operational delivery, commercial arrangements and supplier performance.

Person specification

Essential Skills Criteria:

1. Proven experience leading complex operational services, programmes, or functions within a large-scale delivery environment, with the ability to navigate change, manage competing priorities, and deliver outcomes in a fast-paced and complex environment. (Lead)

2. Strong experience of operational governance, assurance, risk management and performance management, driving delivery through effective oversight and control.

3. Ability to use management information, data and insight to inform decision-making, improve performance and support the delivery of organisational objectives.

4. Experience working across organisational boundaries, building effective relationships with senior stakeholders, suppliers, delivery partners and devolved administrations.

5. Strong leadership skills with a track record of building, developing and inspiring inclusive, high-performing teams.

Behaviours

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

• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions
• Managing a Quality Service
• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture

Benefits

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).

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 organisati