Head of Development, Digital Delivery

We’re offering a permanent opportunity within our Digital Delivery portfolio, where you’ll be the vital piece of the digital puzzle that brings together our development teams and our digital stack. You’ll be leading a team of exceptional Technical Leads who oversee around 45 development staff, and ensuring the digital culture is focused on innovation, collaboration and high-quality delivery.

This is a chance to influence our digital teams from the inside, improving engineering standards and delivery approaches, supporting the use of new tech, tools and AI, and creating an environment where everyone feels empowered to deliver their best work.

The key focus of the role is people, not technical prowess, so you’ll be building trust and psychological safety, having honest, constructive conversations that improve performance and drive standards, and solving problems and making decisions in ambiguous situations.

You’ll bring significant leadership experience leading software development teams through other technical leaders, with a strong track record of coaching, performance management and building high-performing, supportive cultures. Alongside experience of driving technology adoption and change and delivering engineering standards, you’ll have credibility, judgement and exceptional communication skills with the ability to engage confidently at all levels and with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

In return, you’ll have the opportunity to shape a supportive and high-performing development environment within a major national organisation undergoing significant digital evolution. You’ll play a central role in building capability across the practice, supporting technical leaders and helping create a culture where people feel trusted, empowered and able to deliver their best work.

We have a critical purpose to drive the digital performance of the energy sector. Join us and help build the leadership, culture and development capability that will enable Ofgem to deliver on that mission., * Lead, develop and inspire: Provide clear direction, coaching and performance management for 6–8 Technical Leads and creating strong career pathways for developers across the portfolio.

• Enhance engineering standards and ways of working: (e.g., SDLC, coding standards, branching/release strategy, security and quality gates), ensuring consistent delivery across multiple teams and suppliers.
• Provide leadership across the portfolio SLT: Influencing investment decisions, and ensuring development capability aligns to scheme priorities and wider organisational objectives.
• Operational planning: Understand team strengths and gaps, allocate resources to projects, support prioritisation/scheduling, and manage dependencies across products and delivery streams.
• Supporting supplier relationship management: Contributing to contract management, assuring quality of partner delivery, and embedding agreed standards and governance.
• Drive continuous improvement through actionable metrics and feedback loops (e.g., DORA, defect trends, lead time, deployment frequency, service health), using insight to remove bottlenecks and raise performance.
• Support effective delivery governance by working closely with Product, Delivery, Architecture, Security and Service Management teams to manage risk, assure outcomes, and communicate progress and issues clearly to senior non-technical stakeholders.
• Lead the strategic adoption of AI-enabled engineering: Working closely with our Innovation lead to define where AI tooling adds value, establish safe/approved usage patterns, upskill teams, and evolve ways of working to improve developer productivity and quality (e.g., assisted coding, test generation, documentation, code review support).
• Build and sustain a healthy engineering culture that supports inclusion, wellbeing, knowledge sharing and high performance, including contributing to hiring, onboarding, and succession planning for critical roles.

What you will NOT be responsible for

• Being the day-to-day individual contributor for coding, feature delivery, or fixing production issues (you will support teams to resolve issues, but delivery is owned by the relevant product teams and technical leads).
• Owning all low-level solution design decisions for every product (you will set direction and assure standards while empowering Technical Leads and teams to design and implement solutions).
• Line managing every developer in the portfolio (you will line manage Technical Leads and lead the practice through them, providing matrix leadership and community support to delivery teams).

Key Outputs and Deliverables

• A clear, communicated development practice strategy and operating model, including standards, governance and ways of working.
• Improved consistency and quality across teams evidenced by measurable engineering metrics (e.g., lead time, deployment frequency, defect escape rate, incident trends, velocity, burndown).
• A high-performing leadership layer across development, with strong Technical Leads, clear expectations, effective 1:1s, feedback, performance management and development plans.
• Effective resource planning and allocation across priority schemes and products, with transparent capacity, skills coverage, and mitigation plans for gaps.
• An agreed AI-enabled engineering roadmap (tools, guardrails, training, and adoption measures) that demonstrably improves developer experience, productivity, and quality.
• Trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, with clear, timely communication of delivery health, risks, and trade-offs, and evidence of issues being addressed at pace., * 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)
• 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

Do you have experience in Software development?, * Significant people leadership experience, leading software development teams through other leaders (e.g., Engineering Managers/Tech Leads), with a strong track record of coaching, performance management and building high-performing, supportive cultures. (Lead Criteria)

• Evidence of driving technology change and adoption (for example, introducing new tooling, automation or AI-assisted engineering practices) with appropriate governance, learning and measurable benefits.
• Proven ability to set and embed engineering standards and improve consistency across multiple teams (including quality, security, testing and release practices).
• Demonstrable experience of operational leadership in a technology function, including prioritisation, capacity/resource planning, dependency management and working across multi-disciplinary teams.
• Experience working with partners/suppliers (e.g., co-sourcing, consultancies) and contributing to contract and performance management to assure quality outcomes., * Seeing the Big Picture
• Leadership
• Delivering at Pace

Technical skills

We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• You will also be asked to complete a presentation during your interview. Details of the presentation will be provided in your invitation to interview., This vacancy is using Success Profiles , and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills., Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Alongside your salary of £63,443, OFGEM contributes £18,379 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides. Ofgem can offer you a comprehensive and competitive benefits package which includes; 30 days annual leave after 2 years; Excellent training and development opportunities; The opportunity to join the generous Civil Service pension which also includes a valuable range of benefits; Hybrid working (currently 1 day a week in the office but is in review), flexible working hours and family friendly policies. Plus lots of other benefits including clean and bright offices based centrally, engaged networks and teams and an opportunity to contribute to our ambitious and important targets of establishing a Net Zero energy system by 2050. This exciting blend of professional challenge and personal reward identifies career opportunities at Ofgem as something to get excited about.

Great technology starts with great leadership, and at Ofgem, we’re looking for a people-first Head of Development to deliver development practice across our digital portfolio.

Ofgem is Great Britain’s independent energy regulator. We’re at the forefront of change across the sector, driving toward Net Zero whilst protecting consumers, especially vulnerable people., At Ofgem, we expect our staff to carry out their roles with honesty, fairness and openness. They should follow the Civil Service code and be free from any influence or bias. We are committed to making sure interests are recognised, declared and managed appropriately so that we can fulfil our duties as an energy regulator. Our Conflicts of Interest policy outlines the types of interests Ofgem staff must declare before onboarding, and the rules they must follow throughout employment so that we can clearly demonstrate that our decisions are not influenced by private interests.

Please note, this role is being recruited to in Ofgem. During 2027, it is expected that this role will move department as part of the Warm Homes Plan. The home department or organisation will be confirmed during 2026. The move between departments will be managed in line with the relevant staff transfer regulations. Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment., Appointment to the Civil Service is governed by the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles. You have the right to complain if you feel there has been a breach of these Recruitment Principles.

In the first instance, you should raise the matter directly via recruitment@ofgem.gov.uk. If you are not satisfied with the response, you may bring your complaint to the Commission. For further information on bringing a complaint to the Civil Service Commission, please visit their website.

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