Job Description
Lead Delivery Manager
Location: National*
Closing Date: Sunday 19th April 2026
Interviews: w/c 4th May 2026
Grade: Grade 6
(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer)
Salary: London: £75,674 – £85,257 (which may include an allowance of up to £4,801)
National: £71,381 – £80,419
Working Pattern: Full-time/Part-time/Flexible working
Contract Type: Permanent
Vacancy number: 16533
*We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your local office. Office locations can be found ON THIS MAP
The Role
We’re recruiting for Lead Delivery Managers here at Justice Digital, Data and Science, to be part of our warm and collaborative Central Digital and Prisons teams.
This role aligns against Delivery Manager from the Government Digital and Data Framework
Lead Delivery Managers are accountable for effective delivery of groups of products and are responsible for the recruitment and performance management of delivery managers within their area. They also remain ‘hands-on’, supporting high-priority product delivery.
Lead Delivery Managers define and implement standards and processes for delivery and are experienced in leading multidisciplinary teams that build, support and continuously improve products of significant scale and complexity.
As a Lead Delivery Manager, you will have a proven ability in successfully delivering large software development projects/programmes. This is a high-impact role where you will be building, maintaining and motivating teams; protecting them and making sure the teams in your area collaborate effectively. You’ll coach teams and facilitate a culture of continuous improvement, proactively managing dependencies and risks to overcome obstacles to delivery.
As an Agile delivery leader in our organisation, you will have a proven record of working with senior leaders, stakeholders and third parties to drive agile transformations at an organisational level. You will be part of our digital delivery leadership community driving cultural and procedural change and embedding Agile approaches and ways of working. With a strong background as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach (or similar roles) you will primarily focus on delivery strategy, while supporting the creation of self-organising and high-performing teams, supported closely by Senior Delivery Managers.
You will have the ability and experience of establishing/driving Agile delivery/transformations, through a solid coaching background. As well as demonstrating your leadership qualities in building new teams through hiring of FTEs but also using managed services suppliers.
To learn more about being part of the delivery community in MoJ, please watch some of these videos from Lianne, Nic and Harry, or read a recent blog.
The Team
This campaign is filling multiple vacancies across different agencies in Justice Digital, Data and Science. More detail about the agencies will be given during interview.
We use a combination of the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Profession Capability Framework for the Lead Delivery Manager role to assess technical skills, and the Civil Service Success Profiles Behaviours needed to be successful in this role.
At the interview we will be assessing your technical skills and experience, testing your ability through relevant assessments and asking you questions around the behaviours we require to be successful in this role.
Key Responsibilities:
Build and lead an Agile Delivery Management function with approximately 15 Delivery Managers managing upwards of 50 digital products.
Accountability for product implementation planning with the associated product managers ensuring backlog items are addressed and prioritised alongside other deliverables.
Lead project planning and work closely with the Lead Product Manager ensuring MVPs are clearly defined and value slicing is optimised for delivery
Line management and coaching of Senior Delivery Managers.
Responsibility for managing the contingent labour or other 3rd party suppliers. who augment the civil service workforce, ensuring 3rd party resources are managed effectively and in line with the contractual obligation.
Tracking and reporting of KPIs such as cycle time, throughput/velocity, bug arrival/departure rates, progress against roadmap, project delivery forecasting etc, across a group of products.
Managing escalations to senior leadership. As a senior level professional, providing effective interface with the highest levels within the organisation and bringing strategic value to the relationship.
Defining and monitoring policies and procedures for the Delivery Management profession.
Responsibility for contract and budget management working closely with the Commercial and Finance teams to appropriately manage public finances.
Coordinating the teams' project plans, roadmaps, risk assessments, sprint boards and retrospective lessons to ensure usefulness, engagement, accountability and predictability.
Optimising the teams' backlog, ensuring it has enough buffer, correct priorities, stories are well understood, have adequate acceptance criteria in alignment with definition of ready.
Developing, guiding and improving process related ceremonies (refinement, planning, standups, demos and retrospectives).
If this feels like an exciting challenge, something you are enthusiastic about, and want to join our team please read on and apply!
Benefits
37 hours per week and flexible working options including working from home, working part-time, job sharing, or working compressed hours.
A £1k per person learning budget is in place to support all our people, with access to best in class conferences and seminars, accreditation with professional bodies, fully funded vocational programmes and e-learning platforms
Staff have 10% time to dedicate to develop & grow
Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 28.97% from April 1st 2024 (Contribution Rates)
25 days leave (plus bank holidays) and 1 privilege day usually taken around the Kings’ birthday. 5 additional days of leave once you have reached 5 years of service.
Compassionate maternity, adoption, and shared parental leave policies, with up to 26 weeks leave at full pay, 13 weeks with partial pay, and 13 weeks further leave. And maternity support/paternity leave at full pay for 2 weeks, too!
Wellbeing support including access to the Calm app.
Nurturing professional and interpersonal networks including those for Carers & Childcare, Gender Equality, PROUD and SPIRIT
Bike loans up to £2500 and secure bike parking (subject to availability and location)
Season ticket loans, childcare vouchers and eye-care vouchers.
5 days volunteering paid leave.
Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym.
Person Specification
Essential
Agile and Lean practices (skill level: expert) You know how to coach and lead teams in Agile and Lean practices. You are a recognised expert that advocates these approaches, continuously reflecting and challenging the team. You can create or tailor new ways of working; you are always innovating.
Commercial management (skill level: expert) You can act as the escalation point and resolve large or high-risk commercial management issues. You know how to coach others in appropriate commercial management.
Communication skills (skill level: expert) You can mediate between people and mend relationships, communicating with stakeholders at all levels. You can manage stakeholder expectations and facilitate discussions about high risk and complexity even within constrained timescales. . You can speak and represent the community to large audiences inside and outside of government.
Life-cycle perspective (skill level: expert) You know how to successfully lead teams through the full product life cycle. You can identify which tools and techniques should be used at each stage. You can develop sustainable support models. You can identify and deal with potential risks across or between all stages of the product life cycle. You know how to coach others. You can contribute to the assessment of other teams, providing guidance and support as they move through stages of the product life cycle.
Maintaining delivery momentum (skill level: expert) You know how to optimize the delivery flow of teams. You actively address the most complicated risks, issues and dependencies including where ownership exists outside the team or no clear ownership exists. You can identify innovative ways to unblock issues.
Making a process work (skill level: expert) You can identify and challenge organizational processes of increasing complexity and those processes that are unnecessarily complicated. You can add value and can coach the organization to inspect and adapt processes. You know how to guide teams through the implementation of a new process.
Planning (skill level: expert) You know how to lead a continual planning process in a very complex environment. You can plan beyond product delivery. You can identify dependencies in plans across services and coordinate delivery. You know how to coach other teams as the central point of expertise.
Team dynamics and collaboration (skill level: expert) You know how to change organisational structures to fixable and sustainable designs. You can lead on strategy for an entire organisation, joining up business needs with innovative analysis. You can make and justify decisions characterised by high levels of risk, impact and complexity. You know how to build consensus between organisations (private or public) or highly independent and diverse stakeholders. You can solve and unblock issues within teams or departments at the highest level. You understand the psychology of a team and have strong mediation skills. You can coach an organisation on team dynamics and conflict resolution.
You will be required to meet the requirements for BPSS clearance
We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate based on culture, ethnicity, race, nationality or national origin, age, sex, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability status, sexual orientation, educational or social background or any other factor.
Our values are Purpose, Humanity, Openness, and Together. Find out more here about how we celebrate diversity and an inclusive culture in our workplace.
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 and the Civil Service D&I Strategy.
How to Apply
Candidates must submit CV and Personal Statement (500 words max) which describes how you meet the requirements set out in the Person Specification above.
Application Guidance
Please access the following link for guidance on how to apply and how to complete a Personal Statement
In Justice Digital, Data and Science, we recruit using a combination of the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process:
Developing Self and Others
Working Together
Communicating and Influencing
Leadership
Making Effective Decisions
Managing a Quality Service
Your application will be reviewed against the Person Specification above by a diverse panel.
Successful candidates who meet the required standard will then be invited to a 1-hour panel interview, which may include a task, held via video conference.
Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on ‘Agile & lean practices’ will be conducted prior to the sift. The panel will be conducting a sift on the following criteria from the Person Specification above:
“Agile and Lean practices”
“Team dynamics and collaboration”
“Maintaining delivery momentum”
Candidates who do not demonstrate examples/details of their experience of the requirements stated under the Person Specification above in their Cover Letter will be rejected on this basis.
Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for but demonstrate the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and offer you the position without needing a further application.
A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months, from which further appointments may be made.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Terms & Conditions
Please review our Terms and Conditions which set out how we recruit and provide further information related to the role and salary arrangements.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact digitalanddatarecruitment@justice.gov.uk
