Deputy Director, Experimentation, Systems and Enablement

Location: Glasgow or London. Some travel may be required but this will be infrequent.

This is a pivotal and highly influential leadership opportunity for a creative and delivery-focused Deputy Director. You will be responsible for leading two of the most critical functions within the Civil Service Strategy Unit: the Engagement Team and the Experimentation and Openness Team.

Deputy Director roles within the CSSU are stretching and developmental. As a small team in the Centre, the role holder will have significant exposure to senior officials and Ministers and need to navigate government. Their success will in part be down to their approaches, their network and the way they build an empowered and talented team around them.

Your primary role is to act as a catalyst for a movement of reform across the Civil Service, ensuring that the government’s reform agenda is understood, bought into, and tested in a rigorous and evidence-based way. You will be a key driver of cultural change and innovation, helping leaders understand their role in a Productive and Agile State and civil service reform strategy.

By your nature, you will be an agile problem solver, able to quickly define the problem through data and analysis, developing options and communicating recommendations.

You will develop and successfully deliver a triage approach to new work requests. Assessing through scoping their impact, effort and your ability to influence. You will ensure a stretching yet achievable ‘stack’ of experiments which are carefully phased over quarters to ensure deliverability.

You will be a visible role model of reform - utilising new technology, ways of working, outcome focused delivery and user-centric design - all in the aim of higher productivity and increased outcomes for the public. Your team will reflect your role modelling, including in terms of being a thoughtful, collaborative, corporately-minded and caring leader.

Person specification

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

Essential Criteria:

• Exceptional flexibility and agility, with the ability to respond to new and changing strategic priorities. This includes the ability to create clarity in ambiguity by working iteratively on proposals and solutions, often in a sprint-based approach.
• We require critical problem-solving skills to perform effectively in a complex environment and a proven capacity for influencing and delivering through others to ensure strategic objectives are met.
• Analytical thinking: You will be highly proficient in gathering, analysing, and interpreting both quantitative and qualitative data. You’ll use data to form evidence-based conclusions and recommendations.
• Senior Stakeholder Management & Influence: Exceptional skills in engaging with and influencing very senior leaders e.g. C-suite, Board, Ministers, Senior government officials etc and inspiring them to champion reform.
• Innovation & Delivery: A track record of successfully leading large-scale engagement programmes and experimentation initiatives, driving both cultural change and evidence-based reform.
• Team Leadership: Proven ability to lead, motivate and develop leaders and multi-disciplinary teams; also leading in an approachable, thoughtful and caring way that develops people and looks after their wellbeing.

Behaviours

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

• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving
• Leadership

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.

Whatever your role, we take your career and development seriously, and want to enable you to build a really successful career within 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.

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 and one privilege day 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;
• Flexible working patterns including part-time or term-time working and access to Flexible Working Schemes allowing you to vary your working day as long as you work your total hours;
• 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 of 5 April 2018): The government has introduced the Tax-Free Childcare (TFC) scheme. Working parents can open an online childcare account and for every £8 they pay in, the government adds £2, up to a maximum of £2000 a year for each child or £4000 for a disabled child. Parents then use the funds to pay for registered childcare. Existing employees may be able to continue to claim childcare vouchers, so please check how the policy would work for you here;
• Interest-free loans allowing you to spread the cost of an annual travel season ticket or a new bicycle;
• The opportunity to use onsite facilities including fitness centres and staff canteens (where applicable);
• Occupational sick pay.

Want to know more about the role? Join us on our Candidate Engagement Session, which will be held at 15:00 – 15:45 on Wednesday 21 January here.

Closing date: 1 February 2026.