Director of Communications

Job summary

The Director of Communications leads the Department’s communications team and is Head of Profession for communications staff across the group. You will join Directors of Communications across government leading a fundamental transformation in how the government informs and connects with citizens in an era of rapid technological change, evolving media consumption, and the critical challenge of building public trust.

You will be the Secretary of State’s senior official communications adviser. You will set communications strategy, ensure high performance delivery, and promote a culture of innovation and improve professional standards across the DfT Group. You will be responsible for a wide range of communications activity that supports the Department’s Strategic Outcomes and the Government’s agenda.

Audience-focused and insight-driven, you will bring consumer marketing and storytelling expertise to public service communication. You will boldly champion modern communications - leading the cultural shift from reactive, press-first communications to integrated always-on campaigns, embracing digital innovation, leveraging responsible AI and boldly putting citizens at the heart of our planning and delivery.

You will influence and inform stakeholders inside and outside of Government. You will be able to lead highly effective public and media relations activity, high impact campaign delivery, and targeted stakeholder engagement.

Across the Group you will be accountable for communications strategy, spend and professional standards across the Department’s network of agencies and other bodies, providing professional leadership to all communications staff across this network, and providing the transformational leadership required to keep pace with the rapidly changing media and communications landscape.

You will role model continuous professional development and make sure the Department for Transport’s communications function has the capability and skills it needs to deliver the communications strategy.

You will be part of a senior peer network of Government Communications leaders, collectively responsible for a Civil Service profession of 7,000 communicators across departments, agencies and arm’s-length bodies. As a leader within GCS you will play an active role in raising professional standards and improving efficiency more broadly, including by leading continuous improvement projects.

Job description

• Government Directors of Communications come from a diverse range of backgrounds and experience, including digital and advertising agencies, journalism, television production, marketing, PR, as well as Corporate Public Affairs and not for profit and private sectors. We are less prescriptive about background and are more interested in the skills and behaviours you can bring, with focus on expertise and leadership.
• What matters most is your ability to think strategically, lead transformation, champion innovation whilst navigating complexity, and deliver measurable impact through audience-first communications.
• Accomplished storyteller – articulate, intelligent, pragmatic and creative. Creating stories and narratives that speak to audiences. Knowing when and how to communicate to influence stakeholders, drive behaviour change and deliver impact.
• Influencer and shaper – Politically savvy, emotionally intelligent and tuned in to the needs of different stakeholder groups. Experience advising and influencing at the most senior levels (Board, Ministerial or equivalent).
• Strategic thinker – grasps the organisational mission and central priorities, building insight-informed strategies and plans. Results and impact focused, while alive to reputational risks and the need to be adaptable to changes around you.
• Audience advocate – in a rapidly evolving media landscape, recognises the importance of audience and how to harness the most effective digital platforms, traditional media, relationships and networks to build engagement and/or behaviour change.
• Team leader – collaborative, inclusive style. An inspiring leader who builds and develops multidisciplinary teams, fostering an environment of creativity, growth and high performance
• System leader – Commitment to collective impact across Government, not just departmental outcomes. Brings collaboration, compromise, pace and courage to cross-government working. Models behaviours that signal to teams that system-wide transformation is the future of the profession.

Person specification

You will need to be able to show, through your application, that you have the professional skills, breadth of experience and personal qualities for this post, as well as the leadership skills to succeed at Director level in the Senior Civil Service.

You will be an exceptional senior communications leader with a strong track record of delivery for large, complex organisations. You will be able to demonstrate your capability and potential against the following essential criteria:

• Marketing and storytelling mindset with demonstrable experience of audience-led, insight-driven campaigns. You understand segmentation, targeting and positioning. You have proven success developing multi-channel campaigns and creative content strategies with clear evaluation metrics and measurable impact—including large-scale behaviour-change or trust-building campaigns.
• Senior advisory and influencing skills – excellent interpersonal and influencing skills as a trusted adviser to diverse stakeholders internally and externally, including at Board, C-suite or ministerial (or equivalent) level. You have a track record of influencing senior decision-making, demonstrating political acuity, strategic judgement and emotional intelligence in highly visible and sensitive environments.
• Proven crisis management and transformation leadership - experience leading communications transformation with excellent judgement to manage crises, reputational risk and politically sensitive issues. An awareness of public sentiment and proven experience using this information to inform decision-making.
• Exceptional leadership of multi-disciplinary teams – a resilient and transformational leader with experience of building capability and fostering a creative, inclusive and impact-focussed team. You create a clear vision, inspire performance and lead teams through complexity and change.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £120,000, Department for Transport contributes £34,764 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, and you’ll benefit from 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.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

The Civil Service values and supports all its employees.

We have strong and pro-active staff networks, special leave policies for hospital appointments, reasonable adjustments put in place for those who need them, and diversity talent programmes to help everyone irrespective of background, to achieve their potential.

Pension

Your pension is a valuable part of you