Head of Supplier Management Pillar

Job summary

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it’s really like to work at HMRC.

Visit our YouTube channel to watch the full series and come and discover your potential.

Welcome -Thank you for your interest in joining HMRC’s Supplier Management Practice within CDIO. This role sits at the heart of how HMRC delivers major digital services at national scale. As a Grade 6, you will provide strategic leadership and accountability for supplier management across CDIO, ensuring suppliers deliver value, manage risk effectively and support HMRC priorities.

Job description

About HMRC & CDIO -HMRC is one of the largest and most complex digital organisations in Europe, operating a multi supplier ecosystem supporting platforms, products and services used by millions of citizens and businesses.

CDIO is responsible for:

• Core and enabling digital platforms
• National scale digital services
• Secure integration with external partners
• Technology risk, assurance and operational resilience

Supplier Management is a critical enabling practice across all of these areas.

About the Supplier Management Practice

The Supplier Management Practice ensures:

• Suppliers and their performance are managed appropriately
• Sourcing strategy aligns to HMRC objectives
• Supplier relationships are robust, transparent and compliant
• Value, innovation and service continuity are realised
• Risk and dependency are understood and controlled

• Webinars
• 17th September 15:00 - Head of Supplier Management Pillar - Information Session – Fill in form
• 21st September 13:00 - Head of Supplier Management Pillar - Information Session – Fill in form

Person specification

The Grade 6 Role – What This Means in Practice

At Grade 6 you will:

• Support the strategic direction and maturity of supplier management across CDIO
• Drive Performance and seek operational value across all contracts
• Provide senior oversight of strategic and high risk suppliers
• Sponsor and assure supplier governance, escalation and reporting
• Shape policies, standards and capability development
• Represent CDIO Supplier Management at senior forums

You are not managing individual contracts day to day - you are ensuring you work as a system leader across HMRC.

1. Sourcing Strategy & Strategic Alignment across your pillar

• Work with the supplier management pre-award team and commercial aligned to the contracts you manage to Define, maintain and evolve the CDIO sourcing strategy, aligned to:
• HMRC organisational strategy
• Commercial policy and public procurement principles
• Security, legal and financial controls
• Ensure sourcing decisions support strategic outcomes, not just contractual compliance
• Monitor the effectiveness of sourcing decisions, identifying:
• Strategic objectives impacted by supplier dependencies
• Gaps between sourcing strategy and delivery outcomes
• Drive continuous improvement of sourcing guidance based on performance, value, risk and market insight.

2. Supplier Relationship Management across your pillar

• Work with Commercial teams including the Strategic Supplier Management Team to differentiate how supplier relationships across the segmented suppliers are managed with both teams working collaboratively with the customer at the heart. Collaboration required with wider CDIO stakeholders, Including Service/Product/Platform Owners, Commercial, Finance Business Partners and Business Units to clarify roles, responsibilities and ownership across your contracts.
• Ensure relationships are managed in line with HMRC internal controls and external regulatory obligations
• End to end supplier lifecycle and contract management
• Managing multi supplier ecosystems and strategic partners
• Performance, risk, dependency and value management.

3. End to End Supplier Lifecycle Management of your contracts across your pillar.

• Support and assure the supplier lifecycle of your own contracts including: • Evaluation and selection
• Onboarding and mobilisation
• Performance and relationship management
• Renewal, transition and off boarding
• Ensure consistent use of: • Contract frameworks and SOWs
• Performance and compliance criteria
• Risk and dependency management artefacts
• Ensure supplier information, decisions and performance are visible, auditable and managed centrally.

4. Performance, Risk & Value Management across your pillar

• Define and maintain supplier performance measurement frameworks, including KPIs, SLAs and outcome measures
• Ensure supplier reporting supports HMRC defined success measures, not supplier defined metrics
• Track and manage: • Performance issues and service impacts
• Risks, dependencies and continuity concerns
• Financial value, benefits realisation and cost drivers
• Lead resolution of supplier issues and conflicts through structured governance and escalation routes via your operational performance board
• Measure, track, and report supplier performance, value realisation, risks, costs, and benefits
• Implement and maintain supplier performance metrics, SLAs, and reporting methodologies to drive accountability and improvement
• Address supplier issues, conflicts, and dependencies through effective governance and escalation mechanisms

5. Third ‑ Party Integration & Dependency Management across your pillar

• Ensure third ‑ party services are effectively integrated into HMRC digital products and services
• Work with the supplier management pre-award team to Identify, analyse and manage critical supplier dependencies across CDIO value streams
• Work with the supplier management pre-award team to ensure alternative sourcing options are identified for strategic and high ‑ risk services
• Work with the supplier management pre-award team to embed dependency considerations into service design, delivery and operations , not treated as an afterthought

6. Governance, Reporting & Continuous Improvement across your pillar.

• Provide clear and timely supplier management reporting to CDIO governance forums (e.g. OPBs, Portfolio Boards)
• Support assurance, audit and compliance activity across supplier arrangements
• Champion lean, standardised and collaborative ways of working across supplier management
• Build a culture of continuous improvement , accountability and “one CDIO team” working.

Essential Criteria:

• Senior Supplier or commercial management in large, complex private, public sector or enterprise environments.
• Experience and Working knowledge of managing multiple suppliers and contracts driving value and performance outcomes effectively.
• Experience and Working knowledge of CI and innovation making improvements to drive better customer outcomes.
• Strong people leader who has experience in uplifting a team’s capability in a positive way to deliver outcomes.
• Ability to manage complex and demanding stakeholders in a collaborative way.
• Analytical and reporting skills, outcome focused and evidence led
• Commercial awareness and structured decision making

Desirable Criteria:

• Knowledge of ITIL 4 practices, value streams and service management principles but not essential and you will be provided with training.

Further Location Information

Please ensure that you only apply for a location that you are willing and able to work from, as we will only make one offer of employment. Any additional notes included in a ‘Further Location Preferences (optional)’ field within the application form, will not be considered. Please be aware that you cannot change your location preference after submitting your application.

Office closures

For more information on where you might be working, review this information on our locations .

If your location preference is for one of the following sites, it’s important to note that these are not long-term sites for HMRC and we will require you to move to a new building in the future, subject to our location strategy and the applicable employee policies at that time.

These sites are:

• Benton Park View, Newcastle - moving to Pilgrims Quarter, Newcastle
• Telford Plaza, Telford - moving to Parkside Court, Telford
• Trinity Bridge House, Salford - moving to an alternative office in Manchester/ Salford
• Lynx House, Portsmouth – moving to an alternative office in Portsmouth

You will be given more information about what this means at the job offer stage.

Leeds Locations

Moves Adjustment Payment will be available for this role, provided the successful applicant is a current HMRC colleague in Bradford and meets the eligibility requirements outlined in the HMRC’s Moves Adjustment Payment guidance.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Managing a Quality Service
• Delivering at Pace
• Communicating and Influencing
• Developing Self and Others

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £71,725, HM Revenue and Customs contributes

£20,778 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.

We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.

• Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues’ Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
• Family friendly policies.
• Personal support.
• Coaching and development.

To find out more about HMRC benefits and find out what it’s really like to work for HMRC hear from our insiders or visit Thinking of joining the Civil Service

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

How to Apply

As part of the application process, you will be asked to provide the following:

• A name-blind CV including your job history, previous skills and experience, full qualification details. CV to include last 5 roles with max 300 words per role.
• A 1250-word Personal Statement. Your Personal Statement should be used to describe how your skills and experience would be suitable for the advertised role, making reference to the essential criteria and person specification outlined in the advert.

Please complete a separate statement (Max 250 words) for the Desirable Criteria where applicable. This is not essential for the role but may be considered by the vacancy-holder where candidates have the same scores at interview.

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Prior to applications being sifted, candidates will be asked to complete an additional IKM assessment. Candidates will be sent details of the assessment once the advert has closed. This assessment is timed and is pass or fail; only those who pass will be considered at the sift stage. If you have any queries about the assessment, or require any reasonable ad