Director for Working Age Services - Department for Work and Pensions - SCS2
Government Digital & Data -
Location
Caxton House, London
About the job
Job summary
Are you an inspiring digital leader ready to shape services that change lives at scale?
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is looking for an exceptional Director for Working Age Services Digital Delivery.
Within DWP’s Digital and Transformation Group (DTG), you will play a central role in one of the biggest and most ambitious digital transformation programmes in Europe. DTG is the driving force behind modernising DWP services, bringing together digital expertise and project delivery to improve outcomes for millions of people. With more than 400 secure systems supporting almost £288 billion in annual payments to 23 million customers, our work directly contributes to national priorities such as boosting employment, reducing poverty, strengthening financial resilience, and delivering efficient, high quality services.
In this role, you will report to the Service Owner for Working Age Services and provide strategic and inspirational leadership to a team of around 500 civil servants, alongside colleagues from our contractor and supplier community. You will also have a wider leadership influence across 8,000 colleagues in DTG.
Your portfolio will include some of the most important digital services in the UK, including Universal Credit, the jobs and careers service, and New Style benefits. You will be responsible for both the live running and the transformation of these services, shaping how we support people of working age today and in the future. You will also play a major leadership role in the delivery of the jobs and careers service programme.
This is a unique and career defining opportunity for a bold, collaborative and forward thinking leader who thrives in a complex environment and is motivated by the chance to deliver meaningful change for society.
For more information about DWP and this role, please see the Candidate Pack attached.
Location: Caxton House, London
Details of specific sites and the geographical regions they cover can be found on page 6 of the Candidate Pack.
Here more about DWP
Virtual Engagement Session
Date: 27/02/26 Time: 11:15am - 12:15pm
This virtual session is an opportunity for you to find out more about the role and what it's like leading the Working Age directorate. You'll get the opportunity to hear directly from the vacancy holder, Will Garner and HR Director Beverley Morton, who will provide an overview of the role and hold a Q&A session. Join session HERE.
Job description
You will report to the Service Owner of Working Age Services. You will be responsible for up to 7 direct reports, a team of c500 civil servants with additional responsibility for contractors and suppliers and annual spend of c. £100m. In addition, you will be a leadership role model for 8000 colleagues in Digital and Transformation Group (DTG).
The Director for Working Age Services Digital Delivery is responsible for a wide-ranging portfolio covering support for live services, digitally enabled transformation and priority policy reforms. For Working Age Services, they will lead the digital services that support both the current and future services the department provides to people of Working Age. This includes Universal Credit, the jobs and careers service, and New-Style benefits.
The Director will be accountable for both the live running and transformation activities for services including playing a key leadership role in the jobs and careers service programme.
- You will own the delivery strategy delivering transformation outcomes through our services, including working across Directorates to deliver policy intent through user-centred digital services. Ensuring that the right processes, procedures, and technologies align to delivering improved user, policy, and business-related outcomes.
- Development and execution of comprehensive roadmaps for those services, aligning organisational design, governance practices, capability, and 3rd party services to enable delivery of service design and delivery.
- Lead design, development, and delivery of large-scale user-centred services, utilising innovative technologies and data, integrated with DWP’s core platform capabilities.
- Lead multi-disciplinary teams to design, plan, deliver and maintain products - including user experience, development, data models, real-time analytics, machine-learning, APIs, development, and behaviour-driven testing.
- Lead creation of core capabilities to support the service and make available across DWP though loosely coupled services, leading and influencing matrixed architecture, security, and infrastructure operations teams.
- Play an active role within the DWP Director community, and as a senior Digital leader across the Government.
- Lead and embed new ways of working and technology-enabled innovation, driving and building sustainable digital capability across the Department to support Civil Service Reform.
- Role modelling inclusive leadership behaviours and creating the culture and conditions to empower people to work across organisational boundaries, in multi-disciplinary teams, in service of our priorities.
- Provide assurance and oversight of transformation programme activity, ensuring they are managed effectively and represent value to taxpayers.
- Maintain outstanding financial management and control standards, which require financial budgets to be managed to within 1% variance per quarter and per budget allocation.
In addition, the role will require you to:
- Contribute to and actively participate in the executive leadership of DWP as we deliver unprecedented change to the welfare system, and to the products and services it delivers.
- Manage complex relationships with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders including partners and vendors
Person specification
The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate their knowledge, experience and skills against the following essential criteria:
- Significant experience of delivering high performing, transformational digital services at scale and to budget.
- Experience of building and leading high performing teams, proactively setting strategic priorities, communicating delivery impact and issues to senior colleagues.
- Experience in developing and continuously improving digital services, increasing service quality and performance whilst reducing cost.
- High levels of digital literacy and be capable of effectively engaging with design, delivery and technical colleagues, suppliers, and stakeholders to define the best approach to service design.
- Experience of building service strategy based on user-insight, driving value through delivering user-centred digital services.
- Experience of adopting innovative approaches to delivering and procuring services and managing relationships with suppliers.
