About the job

Job summary

This position is based nationally

Job description

We encourage applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the wider society that we serve. We pride ourselves on being an employer of choice. We champion diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued and a sense of belonging. To find out more about how we do this visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/about/equality-and-diversity.

Grade: Grade 6

(MoJ candidates who are on a specialist grade, will be able to retain this grade on lateral transfer) 

Salary: £70,303 - £84,825 which may include an allowance up to £14,522 (London);

£66,314 - £75,810 which may include an allowance up to £1,955 (National) 

Working pattern: Full time, Part time, Job Share, Flexible working

Contract Type: Permanent 

Vacancy number: 82270 

*We are currently offering hybrid working which includes 2 days per week in your local office. Office locations can be found HERE

The Role

We’re recruiting for a Head of Profession - ITSM here at Justice Digital, to be part of our warm and collaborative Service Operations team. 

As Head of the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) Profession you will be part of the Justice Digital, Technology Services Leadership Team and will be responsible for leading, developing and supporting the Community of Practice relating to IT Service Management. 

There will be a focus on building capability, knowledge, talent and expertise across a large cadre of staff within the ITSM profession through thought leadership, knowledge sharing, collaborative ways of working, common working practices and championing a culture of excellence through continual learning and development across the communities, both within the MoJ and across other government departments. 

You will be a recognised expert in multiple disciplines encompassed within the ITSM profession and have a breadth of knowledge and experience that enables you to lead and motivate across the community. 

You will have a proven track record of identifying, testing and championing the adoption of emerging technologies, techniques and practices within your professional domain, advising digital teams on the art of the possible and examples of innovative thinking. 

Our team culture is based around agile ways of working and keeping our users - both internally (front-line staff, managers and senior leaders) and externally (citizens) - at the centre of our thinking. You will have a proven ability to deliver effectively and at pace within large-scale agile service & delivery teams. You will have the skills to embed professional standards and practices into our user centric and agile culture and will have deep experience in leading and motivating a community of highly capable digitally skilled professionals.

The ITSM profession consists of over 100 Government Digital and Data ITSM Professionals across Justice Digital teams that design, build, support, operate and improve a large-scale complex estate. 

To help picture your life at MoJ Justice Digital please take a look at our blog and our Digital and Technology strategy 2025 

Key Responsibilities: 

Vision and Strategic Leadership

• Collaborate with Justice Digital and MoJ colleagues and set an aligned vision and strategy for the Community of Practice for ITSM. Proactively work across government departments, the wider private sector and academia to develop and promote excellence within the specialism, attract new funding and resources, create opportunities for innovation and collaboration through networks, forums and interest groups – setting up new ones where they don’t exist.
• Mentor and guide members of the community to establish good standards and can contribute towards continually improving the profession and building a thriving, diverse and inclusive Community.
• Support the promotion of the MoJ Justice Digital brand and our employee value proposition; raising the profile of the Community of Practice across MoJ, the wider Civil Service and beyond through thought leadership; public speaking, videos, case studies, events, awards, blogs, social media promotion etc. 

Community

• To be the community leader for the ITSM profession, and to build and grow a thriving community for their profession members, this includes:
• Developing the community vision and strategy in line with the mission, vision and strategy of Justice Digital and wider organisation.
• Scheduling and running community events, conferences, socials/meet-ups, social media channels (i.e Teams/Slack), nominating for and attending industry recognised events
• Sharing knowledge and promoting best practice within the profession and wider Justice Digital community
• Ensuring community members grow their professional expertise, establishing standards and consistency, and ensuring rapid delivery through sharing and learning from one another.
• Achieving internal and external recognition for the Profession and members - this includes awards, case studies and industry PR.
• Ensuring standards are understood and applied within the wider profession, and supporting Leads within the profession in driving continuous improvement across Justice Digital and MoJ.
• Working across MoJ, cross-Government and externally to build connections into professional communities where mutually beneficial opportunities exist.
• Working with the other Heads of Profession and Leads to ensure consistency across Government Digital and Data professions not only within MOJ but across HMG. 

Quality and Standards

• You will own the standards for ITSM and be responsible for defining, leading and continually improving these standards for your profession. You are also responsible for your profession’s ability to meet the Government Service Standard, working with other Heads of Profession to ensure shared standards across professions.
• Curating accessible knowledge, standards and best practice to set the right conditions for people to work effectively within their specialism and adding to this body of knowledge where gaps are identified.
• Being the guardian/steward of quality and standards of the practitioners within the profession and the principles and policies of the profession.
• Ensuring all knowledge relating to the profession including standards, policies and processes is digitally accessible and up-to-date. 
• Define and embed performance metrics and KPIs for the profession and ensure they are effectively embedded within Justice Digital teams. Provide management reports, analysis and insight for the Profession as requested.  
• Ensure the quality and standards support and enable our Agile culture with a governance model that helps us to accelerate both pace and value of delivery.  

People

• Building and growing a forward-thinking and diverse community within the profession. Working with Service Operations leadership and ensuring a strategic workforce plan is in-place and there is a pipeline of associate practitioners who have clear routes of progression through career pathways and structured learning and development plans.
• To ensure we attract, develop and retain high calibre digital talent with the profession, building the digital capability, skills and competencies needed within Justice Digital and across the MoJ.
• To define & own the recruitment, competency, professional practice, skills, role profiles, career pathways, performance management and expertise expectations at different grades across the profession.
• Collaborate with Digital Capability teams to define and implement approaches for recruitment, onboarding, retention, early talent pipelines, learning and development.
• Collaborate with Digital Capability teams to develop the framework for professional development of people in their specialism and tracking capability.
• Support Service Owners and Team Leads to identify skills gaps and development opportunities and effective management of under-performance.
• Provide support to the community in the form of coaching, mentoring, training, 1:1s, etc. 

Organisational Delivery

• Proactively build close relationships with Justice Digital senior leaders and their teams to understand the needs and challenges and to be able to identify areas of community-related interventions and collaboration.
• Advising and consulting for the Justice Digital senior leadership team on questions relating to their specialism.
• Providing consulting support where professional expertise is required, this includes programmes with performance issues or where a particular specialism is lacking or causing delivery issues.
• Provide up-to-date performance and capability information relating to your profession to Justice Digital senior leaders and into the workforce planning team 
• To advise on the choice of tools, equipment, technologies, platforms, services, and content needed for your profession to thrive; driving consistency and best practice of use across all Justice Digital and MoJ teams. 

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.
• We are committed to nurturing our staff and provide lots of training and development opportunities with learning platforms such as: Linux Academy, O’Reilly, Pluralsight, Microsoft Learning, Civil Service Learning, GDS Academy, etc.
• 10% dedicated time to learning and development with a budget of £1000 a year per person
• Generous civil service pension based on defined benefit scheme, with employer contributions of 26-30% depending on salary.
• 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 Careers & 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.
• Free membership to BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
• Some offices may have a subsidised onsite Gym. 

Person Specification 

Essential 

• Business analysis (IT operations). You can lead investigative work into problems and opportunities in existing processes. You can lead the collection of information and creation of recommendations for improvements. You can absorb large amounts of conflicting information and use it to produce solutions.
• Continual service improvement. You can analyse current processes, and identify and implement opportunities to optimise them. You can lead and develop a team of experts to deliver service improvements. You can help to evaluate and establish requirements for the implementation of changes by setting policy and standards.
• Ownership and initiative. You can take accountability for issues that occur and be proactive in searching for potential problems. You can achieve excellent user outcomes.
• Service management framework knowledge. You have an expert certificate in the service management framework qualification. You can demonstrate an industry understanding of how to implement the framework into numerous environments.
• Service reporting. You can use your data analytics skills to enhance business performance.
• Stakeholder relationship management (IT operations). You can determine strategic vision and direction. You can positively influence important senior stakeholders. You can provide an arbitration function.
• Strategic thinking. You can lead the design and implementation of strategy, directing the evaluation of strategies and policies to ensure business requirements are being met.
• User focus. You can give direction on which tools or methods to use. You can demonstrate experience in meeting the needs of users across a variety of channels. You can bring insight and expertise in how user needs have changed over time to ensure they’re met by the business. You can apply strategic thinking to provide the best service for the end user. 

Willingness to be assessed against  the requirements for SC clearance 

We welcome the unique contribution diverse applicants bring and do not discriminate on the basis of 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. 

Person specification

Please refer to attached Job Description

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £66,314, Ministry of Justice contributes £18,501 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

How to Apply 

Candidates must submit a CV and a Personal Statement.  Your Personal Statement should be no more than 1000 words and should describe how you meet the following three requirements from the Person Specification: 

• Ownership and initiative. You can take accountability for issues that occur and be proactive in searching for potential problems. You can achieve excellent user outcomes.
• Service management framework knowledge. You have an expert certificate in the service management framework qualification. You can demonstrate an industry understanding of how to implement the framework into numerous environments.
• Service reporting. You can use your data analytics skills to enhance business performance. 

Please note, applications submitted without a Personal Statement will not be considered. 

In Justice Digital, we recruit using a combination of the Digital, Data and Technology Capability and Success Profiles Frameworks. We will assess your Experience, Technical Skills and the following Behaviours during the assessment process: 

• Leadership
• Communicating and influencing
• Changing and Improving
• Making Effective Decisions
• Seeing the Big Picture 

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 held via video conference, in which they will be required to deliver a short presentation.  Details of the requirements for this presentation will be given to candidates a minimum of 5 working days prior to their interview. 

Should we receive a high volume of applications, a pre-sift based on the following will be conducted prior to the sift: 

• Service management framework knowledge. You have an expert certificate in the service management framework qualification. You can demonstrate an industry understanding of how to implement the framework into numerous environments. 

Should you be unsuccessful in the role that you have applied for, but demonstrated the capability for a role at a lower level, we reserve the right to discuss this opportunity with you and potentially offer you the position without the need for a further application. 

A reserve list may be held for a period of up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.