Senior Delivery Adviser

The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade drives good growth across the UK by supporting businesses to invest, export and grow, powered by science, innovation and technology.

This is an exciting opportunity to work in the Delivery Unit, at the centre of the department in the Strategy, Delivery and Ministers Directorate. The Delivery Unit plays a vital end-to-end role in ensuring the department prioritises and funds programmes that will have the greatest impact on growth, and delivers them effectively through close monitoring, hands-on support and escalation of emerging issues to leadership.

You will help drive progress on the Secretary of State’s and Permanent Secretary’s priorities, working closely with policy teams, Private Offices, Ministers and senior officials to identify delivery risks, unblock issues and maintain strategic alignment across the department.

The role will suit someone who enjoys working at pace across high-priority, complex and often fast-moving areas. Depending on the portfolio, you may support policy development, coordinate strategic advice, strengthen delivery plans, or provide grip on cross-cutting departmental priorities.

You will build effective relationships with policy teams, develop a strong understanding of your portfolio, and use that insight to provide constructive challenge, escalate issues where needed, and help ensure delivery remains on track.

Job description

Typical responsibilities will include:

• Driving progress on the Secretary of State’s and Permanent Secretary’s priorities, ensuring key delivery risks are identified, understood and escalated where needed.
• Acting as a central link between policy teams, Private Offices, special advisers, Ministers and senior officials to unblock delivery barriers and improve join-up across the department.
• Developing a strong understanding of priority policy areas and delivery plans, using this to assess progress, spot risks and provide constructive challenge.
• Actively troubleshooting problems where delivery is blocked or strategically misaligned, bringing together the right people, applying constructive challenge to different teams and using available escalation routes to resolve issues.
• Coordinating and drafting high-quality briefings, advice and updates for Ministers and senior officials, including for external engagements, cross-government meetings and Parliamentary business.
• Supporting business planning and departmental prioritisation by maintaining a clear view of progress, dependencies and risks across your portfolio.
• Building trusted relationships across the department and with other government departments, helping teams work together to deliver shared priorities.

Person specification

Essential Criteria

The below criteria are essential and will be assessed at application stage.

• Proven experience of seeing the bigger picture, being politically aware, with the ability to understand and respond to a fast-changing landscape.
• Strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to develop and maintain constructive and positive working relationships with colleagues across the department, as well as providing constructive challenge where needed.
• Strong organisational and delivery skills with an ability to deliver at pace, with evidence of working across a number of workstreams to deliver stretching outcomes and solve problems.
• Excellent written, and oral communication skills and attention to detail, with experience of providing usable insights for senior colleagues that have been distilled from complex information.
• Experience of aligning policy and delivery with organisational priorities; experience in a central strategy or coordinating function within either the Civil Service or equivalent external experience with think tanks, consultancies, the digital space, or similar.

Desirable criteria

The below criteria are desirable only. These will not be assessed throughout the recruitment process, but will be used in the event of tied scores between candidates.

• A genuine interest in economic policy, science and innovation, growth, business or trade issues, and how government decisions translate into real world outcomes.
• Experience using business intelligence tools (e.g. Power BI and QuickSight) alongside Microsoft tools (e.g. Lists and Power Apps) to turn data into actionable insight and improve decision making.
• Experience developing and applying digital tools and using AI to deliver efficiencies or improve results.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,913, Department for Business and Trade contributes £13,011 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

• Learning and development tailored to your role.
• An environment with flexible working options.
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.
• A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%.