Job title: SEO Senior Commissioning Manager (Mobilisation and Transition)

Directorate: Chief Financial Officer Directorate

Workstream: Commissioning Team, Contracted Services Division

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About us

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is responsible for the administration of criminal, civil and family courts and tribunals in England and Wales. Our roles support our service users and colleagues, where people and businesses access potentially life-changing justice.  We’re looking for individuals who are committed to public service and want to make a difference in people’s lives in delivering justice. If you’re interested in developing a career with a real purpose, please apply.

About the role

Background

This advertised role sits within the commissioning function of Contracted Services Division. Experience of contract management is therefore not essential.

The Contracted Services Division is part of HMCTS Chief Financial Officer Directorate. It is an exciting, fast-paced and rewarding place to work with responsibilities for a range of high- profile activities. These include the operational contract management of key outsourced services supporting HMCTS and the wider MoJ, as well as overseeing the procurement of new contracts and re-procurement of existing contracts to ensure we purchase the right services with the best value for money.

This is a positive, supportive working environment and one which champion developing staff, diversity, inclusion and equality, and encourages views and input from under-represented groups to support teamwork and deliverables.

The Contracted Services Division has two distinct functions:

1) The ‘live services’ function provides day-to-day operational contract management of key contracted services which support HMCTS and MoJ operational delivery.

2) The commissioning function which oversees and leads procurement of complex and/or large-scale contracts, including those of a transformative and innovative nature

The Team

The Language Services Mobilisation and Transition team works in close collaboration with project, commercial, operations, finance and live services contract management teams to mobilise complex outsourced services for HMCTS and the wider MOJ.

Our key responsibilities include:

• Supporting procurement through mobilisation and transition into operational use and live service contract management.

• Working closely with Workstream Leads and Suppliers to ensure services are fully transitioned and operational.

• Engaging with the Business Change Managers and Operational colleagues to manage change activities effectively.

For procurements of significant scale or complexity, the team works alongside project delivery colleagues to implement innovation and improve the value for money in existing arrangements.

The team also leads and enables continuous improvement activity across HMCTS and MoJ, ensuring the benefits of outsourced services are maximised.

The Project

The Language Services project supports a critical service within HMCTS, enabling the Ministry of Justice to meet its statutory duties to provide access to justice by ensuring participants for whom English is not their first language understand proceedings. The MoJ Language Service contracts are responsible for delivering a consistent and appropriate standard of service to courts, tribunals, and a wide range of other justice organisations.

Job Description

As part of the Mobilisation and Transition team within the commissioning function, you will be responsible for supporting the Head of Commissioning and the wider team. Your responsibilities will include leading specific workstreams, with a focus on leading mobilisation and transition activity for new language services provision. You will help deliver within a complex environment and may also have line management responsibility.

The role includes:

• Building and maintaining strong relationships with key internal and external stakeholders and driving engagement to effectively mobilise and transition from current to new services.

• Leading theme-based activities to identify and map risks, issues and dependencies across mobilisation and transition workstreams to ensure delivery within tight timescales.

• Providing regular updates and reports to the senior leadership team, including preparing and presenting reports to various forums such as project boards.

• Actively contributing to workstream management meetings to support successful delivery of defined key activities and milestones within the agreed timescales.

Other responsibilities may include contributing to submissions, general project support and contributing to corporate activities.

This role will provide you with an opportunity to work alongside a project team with a range of internal and external stakeholder groups.

Main Activities/Responsibilities

The successful candidate will be required to undertake the following duties and responsibilities:

• Coordinate activities with internal and external stakeholders to implement change by documenting constraints, removing barriers to delivery, embedding new ways of working, and ensuring a smooth handover to operations and Live Services.

• Provide ownership and leadership of a complex workstream, lead supplier and business engagement, align priorities and ways of working, and ensuring activities and milestones are delivered to the required standard and within agreed timescales.

• Ensure effective governance and proactive risk management by providing regular progress, risk and issue updates, maintaining the RAID log, escalating issues through the agreed governance route, and managing interdependencies across lots and suppliers by coordinating with Workstream Leads and reviewing deliverables against acceptance criteria.

• Support business readiness and transition by contributing to handover assessments, resolving post‑implementation issues, and leading lessons learned and retrospective activities to drive continuous improvement.

Who are we looking for? (Person Specification)

The ideal candidate for this position should demonstrate:

Essential

• The ability to lead work independently with minimal direction and collaboratively within a team.

• Experience of establishing and maintaining strong, collaborative, and productive relationships across diverse stakeholders and with senior leaders.

• Demonstrable experience of leading successfully in a fast-paced environment.

• Strong planning skills and an ability to deliver quickly within multi-faceted workloads and meet deadlines

• Experience with Microsoft Office applications (Teams, Excel, Word and Powerpoint).

Desirable

• Experience of working in a business change, commercial, or contract management environments

• Experience of aligning workstreams with wider business priorities

How to apply

Application Stage

Please submit

• An anonymised CV. Please ensure your CV is uploaded in a simple format to prevent any formatting issues when it's downloaded or reviewed.

• Statement of suitability demonstrating how you meet the essential criteria (up to 750 words)

Please ensure you cover both ‘what’ you do but also ‘how’ you do it. (i.e., the effective skills, knowledge & experience needed to undertake the role)

Interview Stage

If successful at sift, you will be invited to attend a remote interview, via Microsoft teams. During your interview, you will be assessed against the following Civil Service Success Profiles which will include:

Question(s) in relation to the following Civil Service Behaviours:

• Delivering at Pace

• Working Together

• Communicating and Influencing

Further details

Near Miss

This campaign will also operate a near miss option where, at interview stage, if candidates do not meet the requirements to be appointed to a SEO role but have passed the minimum requirements for a HEO role, they could be offered a role at HEO level.

Working hours

This role requires a minimum of 30 working hours per week to meet operational needs. While term-time only contracts are not available, we are committed to supporting flexible working arrangements wherever possible.

Travel requirements

The successful candidate may be required to travel to HMCTS HQ,102 Petty France, London on an ad-hoc basis in line with business needs. The role will also require infrequent travel to other national premises as required.

Opportunities for development

HMCTS is committed to staff development and offers an extensive range of training and development opportunities.

Fixed Term Appointments (FTA) on Promotion

MoJ employees may apply for FTA opportunities in MoJ that are advertised at a higher grade than their current substantive grade. Where an employee accepts an FTA on promotion, this promotion will be temporary, and the employee will revert to their substantive grade upon return to their home business area, as per the loan policy for OGD loans. Before applying, employees must seek approval from their line managers to ensure they can be released for the duration of the FTA and can return to their substantive role at the end. If there is no role available at the end of the FTA, the employee will be subject to redeployment and potentially redundancy procedures.

About our benefits

We reward our people for their hard work and commitment. We have a number of family

friendly and flexible working polices that will help you achieve a healthy work-life balance. In addition, we offer a range of employee benefits which include generous annual leave, a highly competitive contributory pension scheme, childcare benefits, season ticket and bicycle loans.

Proud to Serve. Proud to keep justice going.