Job Description
Directorate:Health and Disability, Digital Group, DWP
Grade:This post is at SCS1 level. The salary is Circa £100,000 + 27% employer pension contribution
Civil servants applying on promotion will usually be appointed to the salaryminimum (£73,000) or within 10% of existing salary.
Location:
DWP Digital hubs are in Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Sheffield (note: This role is suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home).
Please be aware that this role can only be worked in the UK and not overseas.
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 Laura Grigg as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.
About the Role
Do you want to be part of a team that is delivering services to improve the lives of millions of vulnerable people? If so, we need you!
The role of Head of Engineering is instrumental in ensuring that Health and Disability has the technology strategy, architecture, culture and ways of working so that all products and services are secure, resilient, efficient and able to quickly respond to user needs.
Ensuring Health and Disability isaligned to the DWP technical strategyandarchitecture, enabling the reuseofcommoncomponents anddata to quicklyrelease value to users.
The Senior Leadership Team for Healthand Disability are responsible for runningand improving critical services that arerelied upon by millions of vulnerable peopleincluding Personal IndependencePayments and Access to Work. They areaccountable for both the live running andtransformation activities for services.Supporting our Health & Disability portfolio,including playing a key leadership role inthe Health Transformation Programme.
Our teams work as part of the Health Transformation Programme to improve the Personal Independence Payment and the Health Assessment services. We are transforming Access to Work, the Disability Living Allowance for Children, and Employer Health and Inclusive Employment services, to ensure all our services work for citizens, our service delivery colleagues, and provide value for money to the taxpayer.
Working in DWP Digital
DWP Digital is progressive in finding new ways to use technology, expertise, and innovation to help those who need it most. Were changing how we work, transforming digital services for millions of citizens and their needs are at the heart of everything we do.
Health and Disability are on a mission to help people with a health condition or disability get the right support for them. We aim to support the one in six UK adults that have a disability by providing simple, responsive services and timely, accurate and understandable decisions.
The Deputy Director for Engineering isresponsible for:
As a member of the Health and Disability Senior Leadership Team, working closely with Delivery Leads, the Deputy Director for Engineering will:
Support the delivery of the Health Transformation Programme and wider Health and Disability portfolio.
Set strategic direction for technology and ensure this aligns with the wider Health and Disability mission as well as the technical strategy of the department and government.
Be accountable for the Technical Architecture, Infrastructure and live service across Health and Disability.
Ensure that technology and infrastructure in Health and Disability is secure, resilient, and able to quickly respond to changes in user need.
Carefully prioritise work to avoid and reduce technical debt, developing strategies to retire or replace systems when needed.
Lead, build, inspire and motivate a team of technical architects and engineers.
Senior leaders across the organisation, including directly with Senior Responsible Officers (SROs) of major change programmes.
Embed engineers and empower productteams but ultimately be accountable fortechnology decisions.
Build collaborative relationshipswith a wide range of stakeholdersacross DWP Digital and widerprogrammes toinfluence strategyand ways of working to put theuser at the heart of theorganisation.
Leadtheengineeringandarchitecturalcommunities inHealth & Disability andbuildandexecute theengineeringstrategytofacilitate thedelivery of thevision of theteam.
Drive a comprehensive and cohesiveengineering strategy across a large-scaleagile delivery programme,includingstandards on accessibility,engineering, architecture, testing anddeployment; building a DevOps cultureacross allteams.
Guide a team of technology professionalsto create and maintain services, targetingzero production hours lostwhilstcontinuing to deliver newfunctionality into the Health and Disabilityservice.Oversee security to make sure Healthand Disability has robust security controlsand risk procedures in place topreventservice breaches.
Overall line management responsibilitiesfor team members from the architectureand engineering job roles.
Deliver within headcount and budget,always ensuring value for money for thetaxpayers.
Essential Criteria for the role which will be used to assess your application, alongside Success Profiles:
To succeed in this role, you will be a naturally inspiring and collaborative leader, with relevant digital experience gained within the public or commercial sector, in the following key areas:
A high level of technical experience and knowledge gained working with large scale, complex and rapidly changing digital organisation.
Leading large, technically focused, multi-disciplinary agile teams in building exemplary digital products and services of scale and complexity.
Extensive knowledge gained across the whole technical stack, from infrastructure level through to applications, including integration with and transition from, legacy systems.
Proven track record of successfully implementing a DevOps culture within multi-disciplinary teams, building their capability and capacity to meet the demands of a dynamic user and customer base.
Running large scale applications in the production environment, including incident management and recovery.
Success Profiles
The Civil Service recruits using Success Profiles. This means for each role we advertise, we consider what you will need to demonstrate in order to be successful.
This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, drives up performance and improves diversity and inclusivity.
Throughout the application process we will be considering the following Behaviours:
Leadership
Managing a Quality Service
Working Together
Seeing the Bigger Picture
How to apply
To apply for this post, you will need to complete the online application process outlined below:
This should be submitted no later than 23:55pm on 24th April 2023.
A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years;
Three statements (max. 500 words each) answering the belowquestions, explaining why you want to work for DWP in this role;how you consider your personal skills, qualities and experienceproviding evidence of your suitability for the role, with referenceto the essential criteria in the person specification:
How would you lead and inspire an Engineering team to become a high-performing, cohesive unit that consistently builds exemplary digital products at scale and pace?
What do you consider to be the 3 most important things when considering Engineering and Technical Architecture, and why?
What would be your first 3/5 key deliverables and how would you prioritise them, operating as a leader in a rapidly changing and agile digital environment?
The full campaign pack for this role is contained on our website,please read through the entire pack which will contain all the necessary information to support your application along with the timelines of the recruitment process.
Please note that when you make your application online you will be asked to complete Diversity Monitoring information too.