Head of Digital Capability & Onboarding

Head of Digital Capability & Onboarding

Location: Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham

Salary: £54,857 per annum

Job summary

DVSA is investing in the digital workforce they need to meet future challenges—building a more sustainable, skilled, and in-house capability that reduces their reliance on external contractors. As part of this work, they’ve created the Digital & Data Hub: a central team that brings together recruitment, onboarding, workforce planning, and governance to support the growth of a modern digital profession within the agency.

They’re now looking for a senior leader to head up the Hub. This role will focus on scaling up their recruitment of digital professionals, embedding consistent onboarding and capability support, and helping DVSA meet its ambitious workforce targets in line with government expectations.

You’ll work with colleagues across digital, data, HR, and commercial teams—providing direction, solving delivery challenges, and building the processes that support long-term workforce growth. This is a role for someone who can navigate complexity, influence at senior levels, and lead a team to deliver tangible outcomes that strengthen their internal capability.

If you’re energised by solving workforce challenges at scale and want to shape the conditions that help digital professionals succeed—they’d love to hear from you.

Joining their department comes with many benefits, including:

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary.
• 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 a privilege day for the King’s birthday
• Flexible working options where they encourage a great work-life balance.

Job description

The Head of Digital & Data Hub leads DVSA’s strategic approach to digital recruitment, onboarding, and workforce capability. You will be responsible for designing and running the processes that ensure DVSA can attract, develop, and retain the digital talent it needs—while also contributing to the government’s wider contractor reduction and efficiency targets.

This is a leadership role with both operational and strategic scope, sitting at the heart of the agency’s drive to build a more skilled, sustainable digital workforce.

Key Responsibilities:

Digital Workforce Growth:

Lead end-to-end recruitment campaigns across digital and data professions, ensuring roles are advertised, assessed, and onboarded in a consistent, timely, and inclusive way.

Onboarding & Capability Support:

Oversee the onboarding journey for all digital professionals, including apprenticeships, and develop mechanisms that support retention, development, and career progression.

Contractor Reduction & Efficiency Alignment:

Drive activity to convert and reduce external contractor roles where appropriate, aligning to Civil Service and Spring Budget targets for efficiency and workforce sustainability.

Governance & Reporting:

Ensure the Hub maintains accurate oversight of digital workforce metrics—including headcount, vacancies, contractor usage, and diversity indicators—and reports effectively to DVSA and central government stakeholders.

Cross-functional Collaboration:

Work closely with HR, finance, commercial, and digital leadership to coordinate workforce activity, unblock delivery risks, and provide senior-level assurance on progress.

Person specification

They’re looking for an experienced leader who thrives at the intersection of strategy, operations, and people. You’ll bring the credibility to influence at senior levels, and the focus to deliver at pace. Most importantly, you’ll be driven by a desire to create the conditions where digital professionals can succeed and grow within the Civil Service.

You will have:

• A clear, practical leadership style—focused on delivery, clarity, and collaboration.
• A commitment to inclusion, development, and building professional communities.
• Ability to model high standards while supporting others to grow in capability and confidence.

This post is offered on a Fixed Term Appointment (FTA) basis to complete a finite piece of work.

Working hours, office attendance and travel requirements

Full time roles consist of 37 hours per week. Whilst they welcome applications from those looking to work with they on a part time basis, there is a business requirement for the successful candidate to be able to work at least 30 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. For more information on how this works for this role, please contact the Vacancy Holder (see below for contact details).

Occasional travel to other offices will be required, which may involve overnight stays.

To Apply

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