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Contract Type: Permanent
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Salary: £55,836 to £66,338 – London: £59,450 to £66,338 / National: £55,836 - £62,823 (including allowance)
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Grade: Grade 7
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Number of open roles: 2
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Working pattern: Full-time, Part-time, Flexible working
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Closing date for applications: Tuesday 14th January at 12pm (noon) 2025
Deputy Service Owner
Location: London, Darlington, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham, Salford
About us
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has a clear mission - to grow the economy. Our role is to help businesses invest, grow and export to create jobs and opportunities right across the country. We do this in three ways.
Firstly, we help to build a strong, competitive business environment, where consumers are protected and companies rewarded for treating their employees properly.
Secondly, we open international markets and ensure resilient supply chains. This can be through Free Trade Agreements, trade facilitation and multilateral agreements.
Finally, we work in partnership with businesses every day, providing advance, finance and deal-making support to those looking to start up, invest, export and grow.
The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate develops and operates tools and services to support us in this mission. The team have been nominated three times in a row for ‘Best Public Sector Employer’ at the Women in Tech awards!
About the role
This is an exciting opportunity for to 2 Deputy Service Owners to join our DDaT community and deliver outcomes for the economy as part of a portfolio multidisciplinary team. As part of DDaT you can expect to work across a range of products and services. We:
- support business growth domestically and internationally through a range of advisory, educational, and promotional content on https://www.great.gov.uk/
- manage the UK trade tariff, working with HMRC to enable importing and exporting to and from the UK
- help businesses meet a range of regulations to operate safely and successfully, including licensing of controlled goods
- enable teams in the department to have the greatest impact on the economy through the provision of technology and data platforms such as Customer Relationship Management systems.
In this recruitment round, we are especially looking for deputy service owners that will:
- enable the government's number one mission is to kick-start economic growth, through improving the support on offer to UK businesses
- accelerate the growth of the UK economy by getting good-quality data and insights to those who need it, enabling faster and better-informed decision making
- enable content provision through an omni-channel approach spanning the news agenda, strategic communications as well as DBT’s products and services
In your tenure as a service owner in DDaT, you will have the opportunity to move portfolios to continue in your own learning and development.
As Deputy Service Owner, you will work to ensure our platforms and services are successfully used across the department and externally and delivering their intended benefits. You’ll look after one or more data, tech or digital platform or service and act as a critical point of connection between the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) function, the wider Department, and stakeholders across HMG.
You’ll report into a Service Owner with responsibility for a broader portfolio that your work forms part of. You’ll work as part of the teams delivering the platforms or services you’re working on and the rest of the service ownership team to shape, communicate and deliver against a vision. A big part of the role will involve helping stakeholders understand how the platforms and services you’re working on can support them to deliver the best outcomes for the UK economy, and making sure that the platforms and services continue to deliver against the department’s top priorities.
Find out more about life at DBT, our benefits and meet the team by watching our video or reading our blog!
Main responsibilities
As a Deputy Service Owner, you will be responsible for:
Acting as the first strategic point of contact to represent platforms and services with business areas. This includes:
- Acting as a trusted partner to advise on how DDaT can support the department’s work.
- Leading pre-discovery, understanding if new ideas should be progressed.
- Supporting better prioritisation of improvements (through sound recommendations built on insights, data, and evidence).
- Acting as a steward, driving solutions forward, informed by multidisciplinary colleagues.
- Understanding the user needs for the platforms/services you look after to identify opportunities to optimise our offer, working hand in hand with other professions including policy, operations and other DDaT roles such as technical and data architecture, business analysis, user research and service design.
- Providing strategic direction for DDaT’s services to the delivery team and to the wider department, working particularly closely with the product profession.
- Ensuring take-up of the services to realise their benefits, working with DDaT’s engagement and strategic adoption team & monitoring and evaluation teams as well as the wider department’s strategic communications, media, and marketing team.
- Managing risks, dependencies, and budget within your portfolio, working with the delivery profession.
Skills and experience
It is essential that you have demonstrable skills and experience of:
- Being an expert collaborator, able to bring others along with you.
- Developing a long-term vision and objectives in a digital context.
- Drawing on user-centred design and data to inform high quality products and services.
- An understanding of technology and data service provision, including security and life-cycle considerations.
- Managing and prioritising work and budgets for senior stakeholders with conflicting needs and demands.
- High quality written skills - experience producing a wide range of information including formal written documents for senior stakeholders, meeting papers and/or business cases.
How to apply
As part of the application process you will be asked to upload a two page CV and complete a 500 word personal statement outlining how you meet the essential skills and experience listed above. You can use bullet points and subheadings if you prefer.
Sift will be from week commencing 14th January 2025
Interviews will be 24th and 27th January 2025
Please note these dates are indicative and may be subject to change.
If there is a high volume of applications, we will sift looking at your CV only. You may then be progressed to full sift or straight to interview.
How we interview
At the interview stage for this role, you will be asked to demonstrate relevant Technical Skills and Behaviours from the Success Profiles framework. These are role specific and in line with the DDaT Capability Framework.
Technical Skills
- Agile Working
- Business Partnering
- DDaT Standards outside your discipline
- Experience of working within constraints
- Financial management
- User -centric evidence, qual and quant
- Life cycle perspective
- Portfolio and problem ownership
Behaviours
- Working Together
- Communicating and Influencing
- Seeing the Big Picture
Applicants who are invited to the interview stage will be asked to complete a written exercise and will be informed of the topic following the sift.
How we offer
Offers will be made in merit order based on location preferences. If you pass the bar at interview but are not the highest scoring you will be held on a 12-month reserve list in case a role becomes available. If you are judged a near miss at interview, you may be offered a post at the grade below the one you applied for.
This role requires SC clearance. DBT’s requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years. Failure to meet this requirement will result in your application being rejected and your offer will be withdrawn.
Checks will also be made against:
- departmental or company records (personnel files, staff reports, sick leave reports and security records)
- UK criminal records covering both spent and unspent criminal records
- your credit and financial history with a credit reference agency
- security services record
- location details
Benefits
If you join us, you will get:
- learning and development tailored to your role
- a flexible, hybrid working environment with options like condensed hours
- a culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- a Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
- annual leave starting at 25 days rising to 30 days with service
- three paid volunteering days a year
- an employee benefits programme including cycle to work
More about us
This role can only be worked from within the UK, not overseas. If you are based in London, you will receive London weighting. DBT employees work in a hybrid pattern, spending 2-3 days a week (pro rata) in the office on average. Travel to your primary office location will not be paid for by DBT, but costs for travel to an office which is not your main location will be covered.
You can find out more about our office locations, how we calculate salaries, our diversity statement and reasonable adjustments, the Recruitment Principles, the Civil Service code and our complaints procedure on our website.
Find out more about life at DBT, our benefits and meet the team by watching our video or reading our blog!