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Role Summary

Job title Chief Digital Technology Officer
Salary Maximum of £117,000 per annum
Location: Taunton. We offer a Hybrid working environment however there is an expectation to be on site in Taunton, Somerset three days a week .

This role offers a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all office-based employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in office, subject to capacity and any required workplace adjustments. Requirements to attend other locations for official business, or work in another MOD office, will also count towards this level of attendance. All work-related travel and subsistence costs will be reimbursed except when travelling to your base location in line with departmental policy

Role Overview

We require a Chief Digital and Technology Officer (SCS PB1) to join us at our Head Office in Taunton, Somerset, where we offer excellent flexibility and a hybrid working environment.

You will be a full member of the UKHO’s Executive Leadership Team, empowering and inspiring leadership and contributing to the UKHO’s wider strategic direction.

You will promote creativity and diversity of thought, and help to shape our digital future with changes to our systems, services, culture and ways of working at an unprecedented rate. The UKHO plans to make significant investment over the next 5 years for digital transformation and we seek an experienced leader who is able to support us in harnessing this investment to improve success for our customers and staff, overseeing excellent services.

Our digital & technology services are at the heart of this change and when you join us you will continue our ambitious digital and organisational transformation, enhancing digital services for our customers’ service delivery and broadening our critical activity in response to customer demand and reducing our technology debt.

Reporting to the CEO you will be fundamental to these changes and meeting our obligations to our core customer, the Royal Navy, for national charting, and in sustaining our share of the global merchant shipping market.

Summary of role and responsibilities 

You will lead our passionate and talented team of 200 strong, digital& technology professionals, you will champion, support, and lead, providing clear direction, customer centricity, togetherness, and support, fostering and maintaining a culture that reflects our core values.

As a critical part of our Executive Leadership Team you will be mutually accountable for meeting the UK’s Safety of Life at Sea commitments through the design, ownership, delivery and success of our corporate strategy.

You will lead on our digital and technical vision, defining, innovating, and delivering our strategic objectives and serving as a change agent throughout the organisation, delivering a shift in service delivery and developing cost-effective, sustainable, technological capability.

You will work closely with stakeholders, building strong working partnerships, developing digital and data skills and ensuring effective talent acquisition, people development and performance management.

You will be a part of a wider digital community which will allow you to support and enable UKHO’s strategies to your best ability, whilst ensuring alignment and coherence.

You will foster key high-level partnerships both within, and external to Government, to strengthen and scale the UKHO’s technology delivery capability and deliver value for money.

Working closely with Defence Digital, The Government Digital Service, wider Government and colleagues, this role offers a great opportunity to collaborate and learn from others, whist ensuring the effective delivery of excellent digital services for our customers and staff.

Areas of Responsibility

  • To be a Director of the UKHO, working together with the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) colleagues to deliver the UKHO’s Corporate and Business Plans, and be accountable for the performance of the organisation. ELT are mutually accountable for the design, ownership, delivery and success of our corporate strategy.
  • They will develop an inspiring and motivational culture in line with UKHO’s values by building and supporting their senior leadership team within the division. They will engender a supportive, innovative and engaged ‘can do’ and ‘fail fast’ culture where staff are able to innovate and experiment with new ways to achieve and deliver. They will also embody and uphold the inclusive and supportive ethos of the civil service code.
  • As the Head of the Digital and Technology profession within the UKHO, they will be a visible leader of a complex workforce of around 200 colleagues of varying technology disciplines, both civil servants and contingent labour, in line with UKHO’s strategic objectives and the transformation agenda. They will lead, align, motivate and manage technology, digital and design teams ensuring a high-performance team culture, which is essential in a competitive labour market where there is a skills shortage. They will champion the use of digital technology and practices to engender a digital mindset from the top down. In addition, they will manage a variety of third-party support contracts to enable more specialist digital delivery.
  • The CDTO will be the UKHO’s lead digital and technical visionary, defining, innovating, and delivering the digital and technology strategy, and serving as a change agent throughout the organisation to deliver a shift in service delivery. The post holder will work closely with other executives and the programme teams to proactively contribute and evangelise the use of digital and technology to ensure the success of the digital transformation, by driving the development and availability of digital production and customer-facing services.
  • The post holder will ensure all governance, compliance and security requirements are adhered to, particularly the MOD cyber security requirements for the UKHO technical estate and any business recovery capabilities.
  • The CDTO will champion and strategically develop cost-effective and sustainable digital and technological capability within UKHO in pursuit of achieving our business goals. They will work closely with stakeholders, using their knowledge of the profession to develop skills through talent acquisition, development and performance management of digital skills to the UKHO.
  • The post holder will drive UKHO-wide technology standards to ensure consistent, coherent and controlled product delivery throughout the organisation.
  • They will support and build high-performing agile, diverse and inclusive multi-disciplinary teams that will build products and services that meet our internal and external needs. They will also attract, maintain and build a pipeline of talent and further expand the skills of our experienced and passionate digital and technology experts.
  • Particularly given the current economic and general external environment, the post holder will have a responsibility to ensure value for money for our owner and the public through making the best use of people budgets, investment in technologies (eg: open source, cloud-based and COTS technology) and achieve industry best levels of technology productivity and ensure there is a clear return on investment for digital projects. They will ensure robust business cases are in place for investment in digital and tech transformation.
  • The post holder will be entrepreneurial and build strategic high-level partnerships both within and external to government to strengthen and scale the UKHO’s technology delivery capability using third party providers where appropriate.
  • They will ensure the UKHO technology and digital functions can define and manage effective commercial relationships with a range of modern digital suppliers and delivery arrangements (purchased or developed) from external 3rd parties to achieve more better outcomes and value for money for the UKHO.
  • They will sponsor and commit to organisation-wide initiatives as part of a visible ELT (for example affinity networks, diversity and inclusion or business review events)
  • The CDTO must be capable of leading and directing the whole Tech Division that carry out a wide range of different projects and workstreams. These include:
    • Technical / cyber security of the UKHO technical estate.
    • Enterprise and solution architecture.
    • Software development and test methodologies.
    • Systems administration.
    • Database technology.
    • Helpdesk and 2nd line user support.
    • ERP systems.
    • Database administration.
    • Product and service management.
    • Data Intelligence and Data Engineering.
    • IT governance functions.
    • DevOps.

A place that values you

We pride ourselves on offering a great working environment, with forward thinking policies and reward structures that benefit all our employees.