Head of Transformation Delivery (up to 2 roles)
Grade 6
The Strategy and Transformation Directorate is recruiting on a permanent basis for a Grade 6 Head of Transformation Delivery. This campaign is being run externally and so is open to all who consider themselves suitable for the roles and meet the eligibility criteria in the wider advert within Civil Service Jobs.
Location:
Successful candidates will have the option to be based at one of the following locations:
102 Petty France, London
National
We offer a hybrid working model, allowing for a balance between remote work and time spent in your chosen base location.
Ways of Working
At the MoJ we believe and promote alternative ways of working, these roles are available as:
Full-time, part-time or the option to job share
Flexible working patterns
If we receive applications from more suitable candidates than we have vacancies for at this time, we may hold suitable applicants on a reserve list for 12 months, and future vacancies requiring the same skills and experience could be offered to candidates on the reserve list without a new competition.
We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, including groups currently underrepresented in our workforce and pride ourselves as being an employer of choice. To find out more about how we champion diversity and inclusion in the workplace, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity
Salary
New entrants to the Civil Service will be expected to join on the minimum of the pay range.
If you are already a civil servant and are successful in an external recruitment competition for a role with us, your starting pay will be the better of:
promotion terms or transfer terms, as appropriate; or
pay on appointment arrangements (minimum of pay range)
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ)
MoJ is the largest government department, employing over 90,000 people with a budget of approximately £10 billion. Each year, millions of people use our services across the UK - including at 500 courts and tribunals, and 133 prisons in England and Wales.
Further information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice
This role sits within the Service Strategy & Transformation (SS&T) Directorate, within the Service Transformation Group (STG). STG, is responsible for leading the transformation of the services the MoJ and its agencies deliver to the public. Its mission is twofold: to provide the best justice services in the world, powered by the happiest team in government. The SS&T Directorate within STG is responsible for:
Service Transformation Strategy: Working across Service Transformation Group, to understand and drive collaboration on current transformation and digital plans; bringing together all areas of STG to collectively create a clear and compelling strategy for delivery over the next 3-5 years; baselining and supporting performance and prioritisation across STG.
Transformation Office: Managing the transformation portfolio, including through the Transformation Committee (Director General level); analysing portfolio performance; building transformation programme capabilities; identifying cross-cutting opportunities and issues that block progress towards user outcomes; and recommending rebalancing efforts where needed.
Transformation Delivery: Providing end-to-end service transformation delivery support to embed best practice approaches; identifying, encouraging and delivering new ways of working; acting as a critical friend to delivery partners and collaborating with a wider range of stakeholders to improve user outcomes.
Innovation Engine: Accelerating systems-wide transformation through high-value investments in digital development and product innovation; piloting initiatives to test new ways of working in cross-functional teams to unlock value through innovation and create cutting-edge solutions to challenges in the justice system.
Head of Transformation Delivery - the role
The Grade 6 Head of Transformation Delivery will be responsible for the successful delivery of end-to-end service transformation. This role is one of multiple Head of Transformation Delivery posts, each leading delivery across a portfolio of services or systems, collectively forming the delivery muscle of the MoJ Transformation function.
You will lead a motivated and high-performing team that steps in where change is hardest: intervening where services are falling short of user outcomes, pace or confidence is lacking, or transformation capability needs to be rapidly strengthened. Acting as a senior delivery leader, you will work alongside service owners, programme SROs and digital, data and operational partners to unblock progress, raise standards and embed sustainable ways of working.
You will operate as part of a wider Transformation leadership cohort, closely aligned with the Transformation Office and other central teams. While this role does not “own" the portfolio or governance, you will be a critical delivery partner: translating strategic intent, standards and decisions into tangible progress on the ground within your domain.
Interventions across your domain may include hands-on delivery support, capability building or structured problem-solving. In some cases, challenges will be best addressed through targeted experimentation, in others, through sustained delivery intervention. You will work closely with the Innovation Engine, with both teams acting as complementary levers that may be recommended by the Transformation Office to address different types of transformation need.
You will regularly provide expert delivery leadership, challenge and support to your Deputy Director, programme SROs, Directors, Director Generals and colleagues across the department. The post holder will lead teams through periods of uncertainty, change and significant opportunity, acting as a champion of outcome-focused delivery, pragmatic problem-solving and transformation excellence at scale.
As our Directorate grows, we are adapting our operating model. We are looking for delivery leaders who are motivated not only to deliver at pace, but to help shape and continuously improve how this function operates in practice. This may particularly appeal to candidates with experience in delivery units, priority projects, consultancy and other similar teams, who have informed views on what works (and what doesn’t) to deliver transformation outcomes at high pace and to an exceptional standard.
Key Responsibilities
End-to-end transformation projects: Lead and oversee the delivery of transformation interventions within your domain, ensuring services make demonstrable progress against agreed user outcomes. Step in with hands-on support where required, working alongside service teams to restore pace, confidence and clarity, with clear entry and exit points.
Strategic problem-solving and intervention: Lead structured problem-solving to diagnose root causes of delivery challenges across your domain. Coordinate people, expertise and surge capacity across SS&T, digital and operational teams to address cross-cutting issues, and escalate where necessary with clear, evidence-based recommendations.
Embedding standards, models and ways of working: Implement and embed MoJ service transformation standards and approaches (including outcome-led and product-led ways of working) across your domain. Coach and support service owners and delivery teams to adopt these approaches sustainably, building capability rather than creating dependency on central teams.
Senior stakeholder influence: Build and maintain strong, credible relationships with a wide range of senior stakeholders, including programme SROs, Directors and DG Group colleagues. Act as a trusted delivery partner, able to challenge constructively, align interests, and secure commitment to difficult decisions in service of better outcomes.
Strong leadership and team development: Provide direct line management to G7 Delivery Leads within your domain. Foster a culture of high performance, collaboration and continuous learning, modelling MoJ leadership behaviours, agile delivery practices and cross-functional ways of working. Develop talent and capability so teams can deliver with confidence and pace.
Skills and Experience
The work of this team is highly dynamic and delivery-focused and requires a proactive, adaptive approach. The successful candidate must demonstrate:
Exceptional flexibility and agility, with the ability to respond effectively to changing priorities, delivery risks and emerging user needs within a complex transformation environment.
The ability to create clarity in ambiguity, working iteratively with service teams and senior stakeholders to shape problems, test solutions and drive progress, often using agile and outcome-led approaches.
Strong strategic problem-solving capability, able to operate effectively in complex, cross-cutting delivery environments where issues span policy, operations, digital and wider organisational boundaries.
A proven capacity to influence and deliver through others, building alignment and momentum across multiple teams and stakeholders to achieve shared transformation outcomes.
Essential
Problem-solving: Exceptional at diagnosing complex, high-stakes delivery and transformation challenges that have stalled or resisted resolution. Rapidly structures ambiguous problems into clear hypotheses, priorities and actionable components, drawing on quantitative and qualitative evidence. Cuts through complexity with clarity and judgement, and is comfortable operating without being the domain specialist.
Mobilising and leading teams at pace: Proven ability to stand up high-performing project teams quickly to tackle complex or stalled areas of delivery. Sets a clear direction, restores pace and confidence, and leads teams through uncertainty to deliver tangible improvements. Builds alignment with local leaders and secures agreement to meaningful change, while strengthening capability and ways of working for the long term.
Cross-functional leadership, including digital fluency: Brings sufficient depth of understanding of digital, data and technology-enabled transformation to operate credibly with digital, policy and operational leaders. Able to act as a trusted, neutral translator between disciplines: bridging language, incentives and ways of working to enable effective joint delivery, without needing to be a technical specialist.
Commitment to public service reform: A strong belief that the Civil Service must transform how it designs and delivers services, with ideas and experience that demonstrate how change can be delivered at pace and at scale. This role is open to candidates from inside or outside the Civil Service who bring relevant delivery experience and a clear reform mindset.
Senior stakeholder management and influence: Exceptional ability to engage with, challenge and influence senior leaders, including programme SROs, Service Owners and their teams. Comfortable navigating complex organisational and political contexts, building trust quickly, and securing alignment around difficult delivery and transformation decisions.
Agile and outcome-led ways of working: Experience of agile and outcome-focused operating models. Comfortable applying these approaches pragmatically in complex public service or mission-driven environments, and iterating the model in response to learning.
Desirable
Justice system knowledge or domain depth: Experience working within, or in close partnership with, parts of the justice system with an understanding of the operational, policy and user context.
Rapid domain learning and credibility-building: Alternatively, a track record of rapidly immersing yourself in new, complex domains, learning the landscape quickly, building trust with subject-matter experts, and becoming a credible delivery partner in unfamiliar systems.
Candidates applying from HMPPS should note that the Ministry of Justice does not have the same conditions of employment as HMPPS. It is the candidate’s responsibility to ensure they are aware of the terms and conditions they will adopt should they be successful.
The MoJ is proud to be Level 3 Disability Confident. Disability Confident is the approach through which we offer guaranteed interviews for all people with disabilities meeting the minimum criteria for the advertised role as set out in the job description.
Application process
You will be assessed against the Civil service success profiles framework.
You must ensure that any evidence submitted as part of your application, including your CV, statement of suitability and behaviour examples, are truthful and factually accurate. Please note that plagiarism can include presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own.
Selection process details
Experience
You will be asked to provide a CV during the application listing any experience, career history and achievements that are relevant to the role. This will not be assessed.
You will also be asked to upload a Statement of Suitability of no more than 750 words stating how you meet the following criteria:
Problem-solving: Exceptional at diagnosing complex, high-stakes delivery and transformation challenges that have stalled or resisted resolution. Rapidly structures ambiguous problems into clear hypotheses, priorities and actionable components, drawing on quantitative and qualitative evidence. Cuts through complexity with clarity and judgement, and is comfortable operating without being the domain specialist.
Mobilising and leading teams at pace: Proven ability to stand up high-performing project teams quickly to tackle complex or stalled areas of delivery. Sets a clear direction, restores pace and confidence, and leads teams through uncertainty to deliver tangible improvements. Builds alignment with local leaders and secures agreement to meaningful change, while strengthening capability and ways of working for the long term.
Cross-functional leadership, including digital fluency: Brings sufficient depth of understanding of digital, data and technology-enabled transformation to operate credibly with digital, policy and operational leaders. Able to act as a trusted, neutral translator between disciplines: bridging language, incentives and ways of working to enable effective joint delivery, without needing to be a technical specialist.
Commitment to public service reform: A strong belief that the Civil Service must transform how it designs and delivers services, with ideas and experience that demonstrate how change can be delivered at pace and at scale. This role is open to candidates from inside or outside the Civil Service who bring relevant delivery experience and a clear reform mindset.
Candidates invited to Interview
Candidates who are successful at sift will be invited to interview 1.
Please note that interviews will be carried out remotely.
Interview 1 - We will invite candidates to a short (15 minutes) suitability conversation to understand more about your background and motivation at this stage. This will include strengths-based questions to explore what you enjoy, and your motivations relevant to the job role.
There is no expectation or requirement for you to prepare for the strengths-based questions in advance of the interview, though you may find it helpful to spend some time reflecting on what you enjoy doing and what you do well.
You can refer to the CS Strengths dictionary for more details: Success Profiles - Civil Service Strengths Dictionary (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Interview 2 - Short-listed candidates will complete a take-home task, with a 45-minute follow up interview covering:
Discussion of the task
In depth experience-based questions to explore in detail how you meet the essential experience criteria.
Interviews expected to take place April 2026 (dates are indicative and subject to change).