Business Relationship Manager

Job summary

Do you have excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to develop relationships across an organisation?

Are you someone who enjoys working collaboratively with different business areas?

If so, we'd love to hear from you!

As a Business Relationship Manager, you will ensure effective business engagement and communication between our IT Services Directorate (ITS) and all other business areas within DVLA. You will help to ensure availability of DVLA’s services, continually monitoring and reviewing customer experience to identify improvement opportunities in a way that IT supports business outcomes. For DVLA’s ever expanding portfolio of digital services, you must ensure a thorough understanding of how these underpin business outcomes and how the business’ ways of working are evolving as new and changed services are delivered.

Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays and a privilege day for the King’s birthday
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

Read more in the Benefits section below!

Find out more about what it's like working at DVLA - Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency - Department for Transport Careers

Job description

As a Business Relationship Manager, you will build and nurture strong, collaborative relationships with key stakeholders across designated business areas, ensuring a trusted partnership that supports the delivery of organisational objectives.

You will act as the primary liaison between the business and IT Services (ITS), providing strategic guidance and ensuring technology services are aligned to business priorities. Working closely with colleagues across ITS, you will champion a partnership approach, helping stakeholders understand, prepare for and successfully adopt change, while driving continual improvement in the overall health and effectiveness of business relationships.

This role will provide you with visibility of the work which goes on within ITS and the rest of the business, resulting in a unique dual perspective. You will become the voice of the business within ITS, advocating for their needs whilst balancing this with requirements within ITS. You will also get the exposure to build working relationships with a variety of senior stakeholders across the entire Agency.

Your responsibilities will include, but aren’t limited to:

Act as an overarching contact point for a portfolio of DVLA’s business areas (such as DM, ISG, CAEG, OSG, Contact Centre and non-operational areas), across service and product boundaries. Develop and maintain positive relationships with key stakeholders across your portfolio of business areas, providing an efficient means of engagement with ITS on key operational topics, issues and activities.

1. Engage with project and major change activity to ensure that operational business impacts, outcomes and ways of working are fully understood when new or changed services are transitioning into live status. As part of this engagement, promote sustained investment of user-centred approaches to ensure products and services meet user needs.

2. Provide effective two-way communication between ITS and business areas on IT Service Management issues and activities requiring overarching communication across service and product boundaries, such as Major Incidents and service-impacting changes.

3. Where appropriate, hold regular service review meetings with business areas to discuss hot topics, provide key ITS updates and understand any changes to ways of working within the business that may have a bearing on ITS activities.

4. Partner with stakeholders in the BRM function across other Government departments to provide strategic guidance on meeting goals. Represent and promote DVLA’s BRM function across external forums and in audit activities, as well as in DVLA’s strategic partnership with the Service Desk Institute®.

For further information on the role, please read the attached role profile.

Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.

Would you like to find out more about the role, the digital team and what it’s like to work at DVLA? If so, we are organising a familiarisation session where you can virtually 'meet the team' on Wednesday 9th September at 12pm. Book a place here .

Person specification

• You will have strong internal and external stakeholder engagement experience, with the ability to influence across all levels of seniority within the organisation.
• You will be a strong advocate for change and continual improvement, recognising the benefits of promoting a change culture across your stakeholders and customers.
• Above all you will have outstanding communication skills with the ability to engage an audience and handle challenge strategically and professionally.
• You must hold or be willing to work towards the certifications listed within the attached role profile.

Additional Information

Working for the DVLA Digital Team

At DVLA, licensing is just the start. Every project you implement, touch and deliver has a ripple effect that’ll wash across the nation. Here the work you’re doing has the capacity to change the way 53 million people interact with our services. As we aim to keep our roads some of the safest in the world, our innovative, transformative digital-led services help optimise a nation of individuals and business every single day.

To see how our people are transforming our digital services, head over to our DVLA Digital Services Blog and, to understand more about the great opportunities and benefits of working at DVLA read our Inside DVLA blog .

Working hours, office attendance and travel requirements

Full time roles consist of 37 hours per week. Whilst we welcome applications from those looking to work with us on a part time basis, there is a business requirement for the successful candidate to be able to work at least 35 hours per week.

This role is suitable for hybrid working, which is a non-contractual arrangement where a combination of workplace and home-based working can be accommodated subject to business requirements.

The expectation at present is a minimum of 60% of your working time a month will be spent at either your designated workplace (the location cited in the advert) or, when required for business reasons, in another office/work location. There may be occasions where you are required to attend above the minimum expectation.

If you have a question about hybrid working, part time/job share hours, flexible working, travelling for work, or require a reasonable adjustment, please contact the Vacancy Holder during the recruitment process to avoid possible disappointment later in the process should your working arrangements not be compatible with the requirements of the role (see below for contact details).

Visa Sponsorship

Please note that we do not hold a UK Visa & Immigration (UKVI) Skilled Worker Licence sponsor and are unable to sponsor any individuals for Skilled Worker Sponsorship. Candidates must ensure they have the appropriate rights to work in the UK before application.

Behaviours

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

• Seeing the Big Picture

Technical skills

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

• Stakeholder Relationship Management (Practitioner)
• Ownership and Initiative (practitioner)
• User Focus (Practitioner)

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £44,241, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency contributes

£12,816 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).

Passionate, reliable and always willing to push yourself and those around you, you’ll continue to seek improvement in your own role and challenge us too. Because we pride ourselves on how we approach your development. From training courses to specialist skills workshops and opportunities to grow your expertise, we thrive when you thrive. You can find out more about all of the above here alongside a full list of our benefits:

• Best in class learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity with a range of staff communities to support all our colleagues
• Generous employer contribution of 28.9%, depending on chosen pension scheme
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.
• Digital communities with clear career frameworks
• On-site gym plus personal training available (membership applies)
• On-site nursery, restaurants and coffee bar
• 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays), increasing by 1 each year (up to 30) & 8 Bank Holidays plus an additional Privilege Day to mark the King’s birthday.
• 24-hour Employee Assistance Programme providing free confidential help and advice for staff.
• Free parking

Find out more about the benefits of working at DfT and its agencies (opens in a new window).

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, Experience and Technical skills.

How to apply

Our selection process ensures a comprehensive assessment of each applicant's qualifications, skills, and potential fit within our organisation.

The selection process for this role will be:

Stage 1: Sift of CV and personal statement

Stage 2: Interview

You must be successful at each stage to progress to the next stage.

Stage 1: Sift

At sift, you will be assessed against the following Success Profile elements:

Experience – you will be asked to provide a CV (unlimited wordcount) and personal statement (1000-word count).

Please provide evidence of your Experience of the following:

• Strong collaboration, stakeholder and relationship management skills, demonstrating your ability to engage with stakeholders at all levels of seniority.
• Demonstration of outstanding communication skills, tailoring your approach and communication style to suit your audience, including translation of technical information for non-technical audiences.
• Ability to own a relationship with a user/customer base developing a thorough understanding of their business and dependencies on IT services.
• Ability to work within a complex IT and service environment, evidencing a broad understanding of modern IT industry best practice and philosophies, such as ITIL, Product Mindset, DevOps and Agile.

The sift will take place 16/09/2026.

Should we receive a high volume of quality applications, we may invite a shortlist of the highest scoring candidates to interview. This means that some applications that meet the required standard could be placed ‘on hold’ after the sift and invited to interview if the vacant position(s) remain unfilled. You will be notifie