Head of Transformation and Portfolio Delivery
- Civil Service
- Full Time
- Edinburgh
- 80,172 - 92,533
Job Description
Job summary
Are you looking for an opportunity to drive portfolio delivery and champion new ways of working?
The Head of Transformation & Portfolio Delivery will lead the delivery of an ambitious, organisation-wide transformation portfolio at the National Records of Scotland (NRS), shaping how services are modernised, digitised and delivered for the people of Scotland.
This is a high-impact leadership role at the heart of strategy, driving prioritisation, governance and outcomes across complex change. You will lead multidisciplinary teams and influence at senior levels to ensure change delivers real public value. This is an opportunity to make a lasting difference; transforming services, strengthening capability, and helping NRS stay fit for the future.
Job description
- Lead and oversee NRS's transformation portfolio, ensuring programmes and projects align with strategic priorities, capacity, budgets, and organisational objectives.
- Accountable for portfolio delivery performance, proactively managing risks, dependencies, priorities, and delivery outcomes.
- Establish and continuously improve portfolio governance, assurance, reporting, and delivery management frameworks across the organisation.
- Drive strategic prioritisation and investment decisions, ensuring delivery activity supports organisational outcomes, public value, and service user needs.
- Lead benefits realisation and continuous improvement, embedding outcome-focused delivery, evidence-based decision-making, and lessons learned.
- Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders, partners, suppliers, and governance bodies, providing influence, challenge, and clear communication.
- Lead and develop the Innovation & Transformation function, the Delivery Management function and the Portfolio Management Office, building organization-wide capability, digital skills, and high-performing teams.
- Oversee portfolio financial planning ensuring value-for-money delivery across major transformation initiatives.
Person specification
- A professional level qualification, such as Axelos Management of Portfolios (Practitioner) qualification or equivalent. APMs PMQ or Axelos P3O qualifications would also be considered relevant.
Proof of qualifications will be checked at the assessment stage.
Success profiles are specific to each job and they include the mix of behaviours, experience and technical criteria (if applicable) that candidates will be assessed on.
- Planning and scheduling - Practitioner
- Governance - Expert
- Benefits management - Expert
- Frameworks and methodologies - Expert
- Stakeholder engagement - Practitioner
- Asset allocation - Practitioner
- Risk and issue management Practitioner
- Digital and data - Practitioner
Applicants for this role are expected to be experienced transformation or portfolio delivery leaders, with a proven track record of operating at enterprise scale and taking accountability for delivering multiple complex changes in demanding environments.
- Extensive experience defining and managing a portfolio of complex projects using Agile, Waterfall and hybrid methods, ensuring proportionate assurance and continuous improvement.
- Significant experience leading a team of delivery and change specialists, ensuring projects deliver the best possible outcomes.
- A proven track record of influencing and negotiating with senior stakeholders and clearly communicating complex portfolio analysis and recommendations to drive strategic alignment and action.
- Experience leading transformational change encompassing culture, ways-of-working and organisation and operating model changes.
- Communicating and influencing
- Seeing the big picture
- Delivering at pace
You can find out more about Success Profiles Behaviours, here:Behaviour levels - Success profiles: candidate guide - gov.scot
