UKHO Chief Executive Officer

The CEO will be leading UKHO as it is goes through a period of significant change, balancing the needs of providing operational support to a broad range of customers such as Defence, UK Government, helping to ensure the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) as well as being commercially focussed providing charts, publications and digital services to the global shipping fleet.The UKHO CEO is directly accountable for ensuring the effective management of the UKHOs financial resources by overseeing annual business plans and budgets, as well as ensuring compliance with regulations to establish robust arrangements for governance, risk management, and internal control. The CEO holds the autonomy and responsibility to make decisions and adapt policies as necessary to align UKHO operations with business needs, operating effectively within the wider civil service and delegation frameworks. In addition, the CEO is tasked with making decisions that have a substantial impact on the long-term commercial success of the UKHO. This includes ensuring the effective delivery of services not only to commercial shipping, which contributes to the prosperity of the UK, but also to Defence, where enhancing service delivery is critical. Strategic decisions must reflect the importance of both the commercial and defence-oriented tasks to ensure the UKHO meets its diverse objectives effectively. The CEO will need to ensure that UKHO transforms how it delivers its services to customers within new and challenging market conditions, whilst taking the UKHOs dedicated people and disparate stakeholder community with them. They have to navigate a complex set of stakeholder relationships ranging from Defence as Owner and Customer, global maritime community, internal hydrographic community, the civil service and the local community as one of the largest employers in the area.They will need to be visionary, resilient and able to drive significant change where there is complexity and uncertainty. Given this, existing experience at Board / CEO level and delivering transformational digital change in a complex organisation and challenging environment would be expected.The CEO leads an executive team consisting of: the National Hydrographer, Chief Customer Officer, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Chief Data Officer, Chief Finance and Corporate Services Officer, and Chief People Officer. In total, the organisation comprises of approximately 1,000 professionals, including experts, technical specialists, and support teams from diverse backgrounds.