Commercial Functional Assurance, Improvement & Policy Lead

The Cabinet Office and HM Treasury (COHMT) operate at the strategic center of the UK Government, managing a portfolio of circa £5bn to deliver critical policy outcomes. The COHMT Commercial Team’s vision is to be a top-performing function that sets the standard for excellence across the Civil Service.

The COHMT commercial team has recently undergone a strategic evolution, transitioning into a highly specialised Commercial Delivery and Operations model. The directorate comprises of two delivery clusters and a third cluster containing central strategy, performance and all enabling functions as well as non-category delivery and commercial portfolio management.

The COHMT Commercial team operates with our core values in mind which are:

We are Curious, Collaborative and Kind, we act with Integrity and are Focused on value for money.

We’re looking for a talented commercial professional to join the team and help to deliver strategic, operational and cultural change, transforming how commercial services are delivered across both departments. This will be a stretching and uniquely rewarding position.

This role sits within the central Commercial Portfolio, Enablement & Operations cluster and will have responsibility for enabling continuous improvement in commercial practices and adherence with Government Commercial Standards, helping the directorate realise its vision to be a top performing commercial function in government. The role will also lead on Directorate functional assurance, including CCIAF performance, and ensuring the team has a fully formed and executed Functional Continuous Improvement Plan, achieving intentional improvement in CCIAF and all functional performance measures. This role will be responsible for working alongside the SCS Policy Lead to deliver Commercial Policy assurance, ensuring the team are well appraised of upcoming and live commercial policy, changes are well planned and the team has fit for purpose communications, training, processes and reporting in place to ensure policy is well understood, compliance is upheld consistently and policy performance against targets is measured and consistently applied across the Directorate.

In this role, you will be required to act under your own initiative and lead and drive projects and services, engaging and influencing key stakeholders within your areas of responsibility. You will be expected to maintain strong relationships and provide advice and guidance on commercial best practice across the Commercial Directorate and wider department.

Locations

The successful candidate(s) will be able to agree a contractual workplace from those locations listed in this advert. When selecting your location listed in this job advert please be aware that this will be your contractual base location with a requirement to spend a minimum of 60% of your working time in this organisational workplace.

Your time spent on official duties at workplace locations other than your contractual office such as supplier, customer or partner locations required to perform your role is included in the 60% attendance.

This requirement will however take into consideration any reasonable adjustments agreed upon appointment for people with a disability, flexibilities agreed for those with specific caring responsibilities, or other similar temporary flexibilities.

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)

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Experience and Technical skills.

Your application will be reviewed by a panel and should you be successful at sift we will invite you to attend a Virtual commercial Assessment and Development Centre (VADC). The panel will review results of the VADC and determine which candidates will go through to a subsequent final panel interview.

Please be advised that the Virtual ADC is taking place on Wednesday 9th December 2026 and will require a full day's attendance.

If you are invited to attend a virtual ADC, but for any reason are unable to meet the date outlined then please get in touch with the team on commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible. The ADC is booked and paid for in advance by departments, therefore it is only in certain circumstances we are able to accommodate alternative dates.

For full details of our process, and a likely timeline, please read the attached candidate pack.

Throughout our selection process, we will make decisions about your capability to do the job, based on evidence you provide against the Technical Skills (essential criteria) and your Job History (CV) that you will be asked to provide during the application process. Further help and advice on our application and selection process can be found at this web address https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/gcf-how-to-apply/

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 for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/artificial-intelligence-and-recruitment/

IMPORTANT: If you do not receive an acknowledgement of your application within 2 working days please contact: commercialresourcinghub@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

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