Department recruits for head of data strategy and head of data transformation

The Department for Work and Pensions is offering over £100k apiece for two senior roles dedicated to helping fulfil its goal of “revolutionising the use of data” across the organisation.

The DWP is advertising for two vacant positions: head of data strategy; and head of data transformation. 

The strategy role comes with a remit to develop “departmental data strategy that fully supports the citizens DWP serves and enables DWP to run as an effective business”. 

This will involve identifying projects where the department could derive the most “strategic value” from the data it holds. Such projects could involve “improved customer segmentation or customer journey modelling”, the job advert said.

Once the strategy has been created, the successful candidate will be tasked with seeking out “appropriate new models and technologies that will enable DWP to continually iterate and improve how it applies the data strategy”.

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The ultimate goal of the post is to support the department make good on its ambition of “revolutionising the use of data in accordance with the strategy, and having a key objective to enable both operations and policy makers to better understand our 20 million customers”.

The post comes with a salary of up to £115,000.

The role as head of data transformation brings with it a responsibility to “define an operating model that delivers data and analytics as a live service, as well as supporting data-driven change across DWP”. 

The job will necessitate working with other job functions, including operations, policy, and digital, and as well as requiring the successful applicant to “sell the vision for transformation of the data function to senior stakeholders across the department”.

The data-transformation chief will also be responsible for assembling “the team we need to make DWP data driven”, and for spearheading the necessary cultural changes, according to the job posting.

The postholder will be expected to “build and deliver an open-data programme for the DWP”, and also work with other departments and agencies “to improve cross-government service delivery by joining up data”.

In return, the chosen applicant will be paid up to £110,000 per annum.

Applications for both roles are open until 31 August. In each case, a shortlist is expected to be drawn up during the week commencing 3 September, with a long list to follow two weeks later. Interviews are due to take place during the latter half of October.