Deputy Director Data Operations

Department for Education

Deputy Director, Data Operations

Locations: Darlington, Sheffield and Coventry

Salary: Up To £80,000

At the Department for Education, we work to achieve a highly educated society in which opportunity is equal for all, regardless of background or family circumstances. Our remit has broadened considerably in recent years and today we’re responsible for education, children’s services, higher and further education policy, apprenticeships and wider skills in England and equalities.

As we strive to provide world-class education, training and care for everyone, data will play a key role in achieving this vision; with a data-led DfE, we know that responsive and confident decision making will lead to better outcomes for all children, young people and adults.

We are transforming the Data Directorate, so that we can succeed in our desire to become an enterprise level, data service function, supporting DfE to become truly insight driven. DfE has a broad range of rich data and data savvy people, but our tools, processes, data services and approach need to evolve to meet growing demand, so that everyone has easy access to an effective evidence-base to meet the needs of those delivering a world-class education system.

We are at the start of our transformation journey and this is one of three key appointments we’ll be making to enable us to deliver industrial, world class data products and services, including data as a service, insight and statistics, knowledge and information management and profession data and statistics advisory services.Such developments will help us to accelerate progress and operate with greater confidence, pace and clarity to ensure that good decisions are made and positive impact maximised.

Reporting to the Chief Data Officer, you will be responsible for delivering the strategic direction for operational excellence in an agile world, at scale, for the Data Directorate. To this end, you will manage a large multi-disciplinary team to ensure that data services arrive on time and meeting all relevant services and quality metrics, which you will work with customers to define.

You will shape the culture of your team and the wider Directorate to have a real customer-service ethos and in conjunction with the Head of Service Lines, will drive a programme of continuous improvement in the efficiency of our services, championing innovation and driving positive change across the Directorate.

This is a new profession for the Data Directorate and we are looking for an exceptional leader and subject matter expert to help contribute to transformation and business performance improvement.If you have performed a similar role at scale and are personally invested in what we’re doing, we’d love to hear from you.

For an informal conversation, please contact our retained advisors at GatenbySanderson: Stephanie Wilson, 07880382745 or Eleanor Lawrence, 07900601622.

Closing Date for Applications: Wednesday 2 October 2019