Location
City of Westminster

Hours
Full Time

Salary
£105,000 per annum

About the Role
Home Office Digital designs, builds and runs the technology and services that deliver, at scale, some of the UK’s most critical and well-used public services. The engineering capability plays a vital role across the Home Office, supporting missions such as securing the border, controlling immigration, issuing passports, and reducing crime. The Home Office Digital estate includes over 600 systems enabling critical services including 13 million Electronic Travel Authorisations, 3 million visa applications, 130 million border checks, 7 million passport applications, and 140 million police checks annually.

You will work closely with the Chief Data Officer to translate strategic priorities into tangible outcomes, ensuring data programmes deliver measurable improvements in operational performance, decision-making, and service delivery. You will be part of the Digital & Innovation Group and the wider Data and Innovation leadership community, collaborating with senior leaders across Digital, Data, Technology, Analysis, and Operational functions.

We are recruiting for two roles:
1. Deputy Director – Data Modernisation: Lead the enhancement and modernisation of the department’s Data Services and Analytics capabilities to provide a single source of truth within the department and across government, enabling AI deployment at scale. This includes leading the Data Services and Analytics (DSA) modernisation programme, implementing market-leading third-party packages, simplifying the data technology landscape, and enabling self-serve analytics for senior stakeholders.
2. Deputy Director – Data Innovation: Lead a rapid action team to deploy automation and AI at scale across business, technology, and corporate teams. This role focuses on delivering quick wins to unlock cost savings and improvements, as well as incubating long-term strategic capabilities through research and development engagements with external partners including corporates, academia, and other government departments.

Both roles are critical to delivering the Home Office’s strategic data transformation portfolio, driving complex cross-government data programmes that support operational priorities such as Foreign National Offender management, public protection, border security, and immigration services.

Experience
- Proven senior data leadership with a strong track record of influencing, negotiating, and building trusted relationships across functions, organisational boundaries, and at board and executive levels.
- Significant experience leading complex, cross-boundary programmes involving multiple stakeholders and governance structures, improving data sharing and delivering outcomes in regulatory, public service, or similarly complex environments.
- Deep understanding of operational data environments and challenges related to managing, sharing, integrating, and extracting value from data in law enforcement, criminal justice, border, immigration, or comparable systems.
- Strategic expertise across data, analytics, and AI, including data management, quality, governance, architecture, integration, reporting, analytics, cloud technologies, and market knowledge of suppliers and industry trends.
- Exceptional leadership and people management skills, with experience building high-performing, inclusive teams, leading through others, driving delivery at pace, and achieving outcomes in complex, fast-moving environments.
- Outstanding stakeholder engagement and communication skills, able to align senior operational, policy, analytical, and technology communities and translate complex issues into clear advice for boards and senior leaders.

About you
You are a strategic and influential leader passionate about data-driven transformation. You thrive in complex environments, excel at building collaborative relationships, and are committed to fostering an inclusive culture. You have a strong focus on delivering measurable operational outcomes and value through innovative data programmes and AI-enabled capabilities.

Qualifications
While specific qualifications are not detailed, the roles require extensive senior leadership experience in data, analytics, and AI domains within complex operational environments, ideally in public sector or regulated industries.