Head of Engineering and Operations - Cabinet Office - SCS1

Location

London

About the job

Job summary

Role Purpose

The Head of Engineering and Operations is a pivotal Senior Civil Service (SCS) leadership role within the Cabinet Office's Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) leadership team. Reporting directly to the CDIO, you will serve as the Head of Profession for all Development and Infrastructure Engineering disciplines, overseeing the capability, competency, and capacity of the engineering and operations profession.

The core mandate of this role is to drive technical excellence and high delivery velocity across all digital programmes and services, specifically by embedding and governing engineering best practices within a large-scale Agile delivery model. You will work in close partnership with the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure technology standards are not only defined but are rigorously and consistently applied in execution across all technical teams.

Job description

Key Responsibilities 

1. Delivery and Velocity Leadership.

• Accelerating Flow: Systematically identify, analyse, and remove technical debt and bottlenecks within the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, focusing on optimising engineering practices to significantly increase delivery velocity across all Agile teams and value streams and digital services.
• Execution Governance: Ensure that engineering teams operate effectively within the Agile structure, supporting key delivery roles (e.g., Delivery Managers, Product Owners) to achieve frequent, reliable, and high-quality releases.
• Engineering Tooling: Own the strategy and lifecycle management of core engineering platforms, CI/CD tooling, observability, and testing frameworks to maximise developer productivity and automation.

2. Technical Standards and Assurance (In partnership with the CTO and Chief Information & Security Officer (CISO).

• Standards Adherence: Work collaboratively with the CTO, who defines the target technical architecture and standards, to establish robust mechanisms for the governance and consistent application of these standards by all engineers.
• Technical Integrity: Be accountable for the technical integrity, quality, security, and sustainability of the entire digital estate, ensuring all services are built to be secure, resilient, and scalable by default.
• Security & Compliance: Ensure all infrastructure-as-code and development practices align strictly with Cabinet Office security policies and government-wide technical mandates.

3. Head of Profession & Capability Management.

• Professional Strategy: Act as the strategic Head of Profession for the Engineering Development (e.g., Software, Data, DevOps) and Infrastructure (e.g., Cloud, Platform, Network) communities.
• Talent and Skills: Define the technical capability frameworks, recruitment strategy, and career pathways for all engineering roles, ensuring the Cabinet Office can attract, retain, and develop world-class technical talent.
• Community Leadership: Lead and sponsor thriving Communities of Practice (CoPs) to drive knowledge sharing, mentorship, and a culture of continuous learning and technical mastery across the organisation.
• People Leadership: Provide inspirational line management, coaching, and direction to senior engineering leaders (e.g., Principal Engineers, Heads of Engineering), fostering an inclusive, high-trust, and performance-driven culture.

4. Corporate and Stakeholder Leadership.

• Strategic Influence: Serve as a key DDaT representative in corporate and cross-government forums, advocating for the strategic importance of engineering capability and infrastructure investment.
• Budget Management: Strategic oversight of the budget and commercial relationships related to engineering tooling, platforms, cloud consumption, and professional development.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Effectively communicate complex technical strategy, progress, and risks to non-technical senior stakeholders, including SCS colleagues and Ministerial private offices.

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:

• Significant experience in a senior technical leadership role (e.g., Chief Engineer, VP of Engineering, Head of Technology) in a large, complex, and high-scale digital environment.
• Deep expertise acting as a successful Head of Profession for multiple DDaT specialisms, with proven success in defining capability and managing technical talent.
• Demonstrable track record of successfully implementing and operating within a large-scale Agile delivery framework or equivalent large-scale delivery model.
• Expert knowledge of modern cloud-native architectures, DevOps principles, infrastructure-as-code, and platform management in a major public cloud environment (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Proven ability to work in a demanding environment with senior stakeholders (SCS level and above), demonstrating excellent influencing and collaboration skills.