Deputy Director Chief Portfolio Officer

Home Office

Apply before 11:55 pm on Sunday 2nd March 2025

 

Details

Reference number

389472

Salary

£76,000 - £117,800
Up to £117,800 dependent on your qualifications, knowledge, and the relevant experience you are able to offer. No allowances will be payable. The role includes a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%.

Standard Cabinet Office rules on pay will apply to civil servants appointed on level transfer or promotion. Their salary will increase to the minimum of the SCS PB1 range or by a promotion award of up to 10% more than their current basic salary excluding all allowances (whichever is the greater). Individuals appointed on level transfer will retain their existing basic salary excluding all allowances.
A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Job grade

SCS Pay Band 1

Contract type

Permanent

Business area

HO - Capabilities and Resources Group

Type of role

Project Delivery
Senior leadership

Working pattern

Flexible working, Full-time

Number of jobs available

1

Contents

Any Home Office location (including Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Birmingham), regular travel expected to London.

Job summary

The Home Office has a compelling mission: to keep our borders secure and our citizens safe.  Across the Home Office over 30,000 people carry out critical work to make this happen, through our policies, programmes, and front-line operations.  Our programmes and projects range from Policing to Borders, Asylum to Immigration, corporate IT programmes to customer-facing digital services, all of which are underpinned by a thriving community of over 2,000 Project Delivery professionals.

This role is ideal for an experienced portfolio and project professional with strong personal credibility and demonstrable experience as a senior leader working within major portfolios, programmes and projects, with proven leadership and management ability.

You will have a proven track record in leadership and delivery, with the ability to build confidence and trust across a large stakeholder base, from senior project delivery leaders and teams across the organisation.

Above all, you will care about making a difference: transforming how we build a Portfolio function for both the present and the future, over what will be a highly important and exciting time for our country.   

Job description

Key responsibilities 

The Job Holder will be expected to:

  • Provide visible leadership to the project delivery profession, as well as being an active member of PPD’s SLT and deputy Chief Portfolio Officer in the Home Office.
  • Deputise for the Chief Portfolio Officer at InvestCo and other departmental boards
  • Lead and manage across the following teams: Business Partnering, Portfolio Standards and Assurance, Reporting & Data Insights and Portfolio Improvement. (This is subject to change as we implement a new operating model, and is likely to involve additional capabilities and teams)
  • Collaborate with colleagues across the department and third-party consultants, to influence work to refine and implement the organisational design and revised operating model for the Home Office Portfolio.
  • Develop and implement a revised business partnering operating model, and harnessing relationships to enable data driven and informed decisions.
  • Champion and improve project delivery standards across all programmes and driving up compliance through the development of guidance materials, toolkits, and techniques.
  • Maintain and build networks within the Department and more widely, collaborating with other functions including finance, digital, estates and commercial to strengthen the functional model within the department.
  • Driving the maturity roadmap and management of the Home Office Portfolio and its governance through robust, improvement plans.
  • Drive forward-looking analysis and insight to facilitate timely interventions, and leading annual and in-year prioritisation; influencing effectively to deliver change across the department against the agreed strategic outcomes.
  • Iterate the appropriate PPM portfolio practices and lifecycle documentation, as well as building a robust assurance capability at a departmental level.
  • Promote an energised culture focused on collaborative working in the interests of the organisation and the portfolio.
  • Cultivate and manage a range of relationships and key strategic alliances with portfolio stakeholders. Lead senior stakeholders in regularly reviewing the portfolio based on a clear understanding of cost, risk and contribution to strategic objectives.
  • Develop the approach in collaboration with colleagues across the Department to ensure deliverability and alignment with wider thinking on product lifecycle / service management.

Person specification

Essential criteria

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate their knowledge, experience, capability and behavioural approach to a high standard against the following key criteria:

  • A proven people leader, with experience of creating an energised culture focused on collaborative working in the interests of the organisation and the portfolio.
  • Demonstrable evidence of inspiring confidence and working with senior internal stakeholders, such as Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and other senior government officials, or equivalent
  • A senior level collaborator with strong influencing skills who can quickly and effectively build great networks with senior external stakeholders, across organisational boundaries.
  • Demonstrable ability to think strategically and respond quickly and flexibly to evolving priorities.
  • Proven and comprehensive first-hand experience of Portfolio Management and of leading Portfolio teams in a complex, large scale, fast paced operational environment.
  • Demonstrable track record of successfully leading major project / portfolio delivery and in building capability and capacity across a range of Portfolio roles.
  • Experience of the governance and oversight requirements associated with leading a complex public sector project portfolio, such as those within the GMPP Portfolio, or similar.

Desirable criteria

  • Recognised professional qualification, such as Managing Successful Programmes (MSP), PRINCE2, Project Leadership Programme (PLP) or enrolled on/graduate of the Major Projects Leadership Academy (MPLA)
  • Experience of leading programmes/portfolios with a capital value/budget exceeding £100 million
Alongside your salary of £76,000, Home Office contributes £22,017 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
  • Learning and development tailored to your role
  • An environment with flexible working options
  • A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
  • A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

Selection process details

Online Application -  Please submit your application online at the following link: http://www.gatenbysanderson.com/job/GSe118710  no later than 23:55h on Sunday 2nd March 2025.

Provide some basic personal information;

  1. A CV - setting out your career history, highlighting specific responsibilities and achievements that are relevant for this role, including details where budgets and numbers of people managed, relevant achievements in recent posts, together with reasons for any gaps within the last two years;
  2. A Statement of Suitability – (limited to 1250 words) explaining how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experience, provide evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to the essential criteria in the person specification.
  3. Diversity Monitoring - as part of the online application process, you will be asked a number of diversity-related questions. If you do not wish to provide a declaration on any of the characteristics, you will have the option to select 'prefer not to say'. See the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy: 2022 to 2025 (HTML) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) for more information.


Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through building your depth of expertise.

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.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

  • UK nationals
  • nationals of the Republic of Ireland
  • nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
  • nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
  • nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
  • individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
  • Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

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).
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.
The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).
This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.
Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

  • Name : Devon Coates
  • Email : Devon.coates@gatenbysanderson.com

Recruitment team

  • Email : HOrecruitment@gatenbysanderson.com

Further information

Complaints should be sent in writing to:
Civil Service Commission, Room G8, 1 Horse Guards Road, London, SW1A 2HQ.

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