Skip to main contentHead of Advanced Analytics (Deputy Director)
Department for Work and Pensions
Apply before 10:00 am on Monday 25th September 2023
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About the job
Job summary
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is a major Department of State that plays a critical role in UK life. Operating at significant size and scope, we provide services and support to more than 22 million people every year, and are responsible for more than 730 million benefits payments, exceeding £180 billion.
DWP has a role to support the most vulnerable people in society. Our departmental aims are to:
- Support those who can work; whilst protecting those that cannot
- Increase saving for, and security in, later life
- Run an effective welfare system.
Digital Group in DWP designs services based on user needs and are driving several major programmes of change where data is a key differentiator. These Change Programmes include Universal Credit, Service Modernisation as well as Fraud, Error and Debt. Our challenge is to best support individual citizens gain financial support needed, prevent fraud, error and debt and maximise their ability to progress all whilst reducing the overall cost to serve.
As we move from heritage systems and on-premise hosting we are actively delivering the next generation of cloud-based digital services which will be able to accommodate policy changes and everyday operational improvements. With digitally enabled services comes improved data. Data and associated technologies like machine learning or artificial intelligence bring unprecedented opportunities for DWP but at the same time significant responsibilities around the safe and ethical use of that data.
Against this backdrop, DWP’s ambition is to become a truly data-driven department. We collect and manage a vast array of data; we want to use Advanced Analytics to:
- Improve labour market progression
- Prevent fraud and error and all forms of failure demand
- Improve customer experience through high quality digital services.
We are looking for an experienced professional to be the Head of Advanced Analytics and lead this capability within DWP Digital. You will directly manage a mixed disciplinary team of up over 100 staff that will include agile product teams plus data scientists, digital performance analysts, data engineers and software engineers. The role reports directly to Digital’s Director of Data & Analytics, who is also DWP’s Chief Data Officer.
Job description
The successful candidate will have a wide remit to support major change, lead on DWP Strategic Reference Architecture (SRA) and be the domain leader for Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Generative AI, for the department. The post holder will tie these areas together, operating at executive-level across multiple programmes and all areas of Digital to drive forward the analytics agenda.
The DWP Head of Advanced Analytics has a leading voice across Government in this domain due to our progress, experience, and scale in this field.
Supporting Major Change: Data & Analytics (D&A) provide our services and major Change Programmes with the analytics capabilities, insights, and specialist skills to meet critical DWP objectives. This includes the highest priorities for DWP such as labour market progression, Fraud & Error reduction, better customer experience and reduced operating costs. All these need Analytics capabilities that enable the Dept to continuously improve everyday user journeys and maximising their outcomes.
Strategic Capabilities: Analytics is also a key component in the Dept’s Strategic Reference Architecture. D&A product teams are evolving the cloud-based capabilities that enable sophisticated machine learning, faster time to insights and also ways to operationalise analytics into user journeys. This needs leadership to manage competing priorities, onboard more lines of business and lead the roadmap for both performance and risk-related analytics. This ultimately means enabling everyday service design decisions to be data driven, individual customer journeys to be personalised and strategic processes to be optimised.
Responsible AI: We are at a point where technology like AI is moving at a rapid pace. This needs domain leadership to accelerate our adoption but to do so responsibly. This means preserving key principles and ensuring we do not discriminate or disadvantage our customers.
Person specification
The successful candidate must demonstrate the following key skills and experience:
- Experience of leading an Analytics function in a large and complex organisation, such as financial services or retail
- Evidence of strategic thinking and problem solving in the application of a range of advanced analytics approaches such as supervised and unsupervised machine learning, segmentation and personalisation, graph analytics, natural language processing, process mining, optimisation, andlarge language models
- A proven record of building, developing, and coaching diverse data teams whether data science, performance analysts or engineering teams
- Strong appreciation of the analytics technology landscape (including cloud services and open-source technologies) allied to a good appreciation of data solutions architecture and related tools and technologies
- A proven track record of building partnerships with senior stakeholders in a matrix organisation. Communicating and presenting with conviction to persuade and influence others of the benefits of data analytics in the face of scrutiny and challenge
- A strong appreciation of risk management relating to data security, data protection and ethics
- A proven track record in successfully managing projects and programs within agile and/ or waterfall approaches.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Seeing the Big Picture
- Making Effective Decisions
- Delivering at Pace
- Leadership
Benefits
- An employer pension contribution of up to 27% For further information please click here
- Annual leave rising up to 30 days, (based on your working pattern)
- 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 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
- Interest-free loans allowing you to spread the cost of an annual travel season ticket or a new bicycle
- Occupational sick pay.
For further information on why you should join the Civil Service, please click here.
Things you need to know
Selection process details
As part of the assessment process, we ask you to submit a CV and a personal statement of up to 1250 words explaining why you want to work for DWP in this role; how you consider your Personal skills, qualities, and experience providing evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification by close Monday 25th September 2023 via https://www.gatenbysanderson.com/job/GSe101501.
If successful at sift stage, you will be expected to complete a series of assessments, followed by an interview.
During the selection process you will be assessed on behaviours, experience.
For further information on the process, please refer to the candidate pack.
At DWP, we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce.
We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions, or mental ill health. Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, or schizophrenia.
If you feel that you may need a reasonable adjustment to be made, would like to discuss your requirements in more detail or require a hard copy of the information, or an alternative format e.g. Audio, Braille or large font please contact Toria.Lorman-Connolly@gatenbysanderson.com as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above. This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions. Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.
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Working for the Civil Service
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
Apply and further information
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : DWP Senior Recruitment
- Email : senior.recruitment@dwp.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : Shoaib.haroon@gatenbysanderson.com
