Chief Customer Officer, UK Hydrographic Office

The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) is a world-leading centre for hydrography, delivering trusted data and expertise to support safe, secure and thriving oceans. Supporting safe navigation is at the heart of what we do. Through our Admiralty portfolio, we provide a leading range of navigational products and services which are trusted by over 90% of large ships trading internationally today.

We collaborate with a wide range of partners and peers across the globe to collect, process and publish hydrographic and marine geospatial data from seabed to surface. In addition, we represent the UK government internationally as an authority on hydrography and seabed mapping.

As an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence, our expertise also supports vital defence operations, maritime security and marine development in the UK and worldwide.

The primary purpose of the Chief Customer Officer role is to deliver and sustain strong commercial performance, meeting revenue targets across the existing customer base, while identifying and developing new business and revenue growth opportunities that build on our core Admiralty navigation business.

Along with the role holder’s ELT peer group, the CCO role will lead the building and embedding customer-centricity across UKHO as a means to this commercial end, shaping how the UKHO operates and delivers through a deep, data-led understanding of our customer’s needs.

The role holder will drive the use of customer insight and strengthened customer relationships to inform strategy, product development and support high-quality commercial decision-making.

The role spans seven areas of accountability, across the Executive Leadership Team, the Customer Division and the wider organisation:

• Executive Leadership Team - Provide strategic commercial and customer leadership as a member of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT), ensuring that revenue sustainability and growth, customer-centricity, customer data and insight and market understanding are key to decision-making and overall organisational strategy.
• Revenue sustainability & growth - Accountability for delivering sustainable revenue performance, including revenue growth, customer retention and value growth including, but not limited to, across the UKHO’s Admiralty digital products and services, through identifying new product innovation, entering adjacent or new markets and enhancing customer experience.
• Leadership - Providing empowering and inspiring leadership across the Customer Division (circa 100 colleagues) with direct line management responsibility for a small team of Senior Leadership Team (SLT) members, indirect line management for the rest of the division and fostering collaboration across a wider network through dotted line reporting relationships.
• Strategy - Leading the development and delivery of the Customer Division and overall customer strategy, aligned to the UKHO’s Corporate and Business Plans and the Vision for 2034. This includes ensuring that our brand remains competitive and a brand of choice within a changing operating environment.
• Culture - Provides empowering and inspiring leadership within the Customer Division and across the organisation, by acting as a role model for ‘The UKHO way’. The role holder will create a supportive environment of trust and accountability, where people are inspired, confident and empowered to achieve every day.
• Customer experience advocate - Provides direction and clarity of focus by setting and embedding a customer strategy across all functions and touchpoints and will design and continuously improve end-to-end customer journeys based on insight and feedback. Will drive consistent, high-quality experiences across all aspects of the customer journey and will champion customer advocacy at executive level and across the organisation.
• Product management - Ensures that strategy aligns with customer-centricity through understanding customer insights and integrating these into product design and continuous improvement. Will oversee product roadmap prioritisation and will ensure collaboration with multi-disciplinary teams across the organisation to develop products and services.

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Hays Executive is managing this competition on behalf of the UKHO and the MOD. To apply for this post, please submit the following on the below link no later than 23:59 Monday 19th October 2026.

• A CV setting out your career history, with key responsibilities and achievements. Please ensure you have provided reasons for any gaps within the last two years and include contact details for two referees.
• A supporting statement of suitability (maximum 1000 words) that outlines your interest in this organisation and role. The statement should demonstrate how your experience meets the essential experience criteria set out in the person specification as well as the post holder responsibilities set out in the role summary.
• Please complete the diversity monitoring questionnaire included in the application portal, found on the application portal when you press the “Apply now” link. All information gathered is anonymous and is not used as a part of your application.
• If you would like to apply under the Disability Confident Scheme, the Veteran’s Scheme, or the Redeployment Interview Scheme, please complete the “Guaranteed interview declaration form”, found on the application portal when you press the “Apply now” link.

External candidates who join the MOD and are new to the Civil Service will be subject to a six-month probation period.

For further information about this role, please visit UK Hydrographic Office , Role Summary , Hays UK

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.