Commercial Lead

Welcome to the Home Office Commercial Directorate and thank you for your interest in the roles we are offering.

I joined the Home Office in 2016 to lead the Collaborative Law Enforcement Programme, delivering £320m in cashable savings and transforming how policing approaches commercial activity. Before that, I served as Commercial Director at the Metropolitan Police Service, where I repositioned the department as a strategic function through commercial insight and ambition—ensuring operational policing had the tools to serve stakeholders while achieving best value for the public purse.

The Home Office works to keep citizens safe and the country secure. We reduce crime, enforce the law, protect borders, and safeguard the most vulnerable, while shaping public policy at the highest level. Our commercial teams have played a critical role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthening border and societal protections.

Each year, the Home Office spends around £3bn with third-party suppliers, managed by our Commercial Directorate—a team of approximately 300 procurement and contract management professionals. We source a wide range of goods and services, including complex programmes unique in Europe, supported by multi-million-pound contracts.

Joining us means making a tangible impact on the UK’s future. You will work across diverse missions, from Borders and Migration to Public Safety, Homeland Security, the Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme, and Digital, Data & Technology.

We are midway through a transformation programme and are recruiting across all grades. We now seek enthusiastic individuals to help deliver our objectives; you are our leaders and managers who will strengthen our reputation as a strategic partner, improve business outcomes, and deliver value for money through the contracts we source.

Whatever your background—public or private—if you are passionate about delivering first-class outcomes, we invite you to join our journey.

The Home Office has one of the most challenging and critical jobs in Whitehall: to keep Britain safe and secure. We operate at the heart of the Government's agenda, leading on immigration and passports, drugs policy, crime policy, counter-extremism and counterterrorism and work to ensure visible, responsive, and accountable policing in the UK. The challenges the Department faces are significant and can change rapidly in the global environment in which we operate, making this one of the most exciting and stimulating Government Departments in which to work.

The Commercial Directorate manages the conduit between the Home Office and those supplier markets that help us provide key services to the public. It provides strategic commercial services such as market intelligence, procurement and contract management activities and its principal aims are to deliver efficiency savings, support the strategic agendas of our client groups by procuring the right products and services in a timely manner and dynamically managing contracts and suppliers, whilst delivering activities in a transparent and compliant manner.

This is an exciting opportunity to join Home Office Commercial Directorate with roles within Missions: across Homeland Security Group and Public Safety Group.

Role Summary:

In this role, you will be a true leader, driving development, innovation and creating a cohesive, positive mind-set to deliver great commercial outcomes with real accountability and collaboration with business and project teams. Your key focus will be planning and executing the Category Strategies for goods and services compliant with regulations and governance in support of business strategies.

The successful candidate can expect themselves to be working across a varied portfolio leading procurement and strategy development and be involved working as part of a wider commercial team leading procurement activity to deliver the business objectives.

All roles will involve the opportunity to lead individuals or a small team of other commercial professionals. You will develop and maintain positive relationships with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders and encourage collaborative relationships as appropriate. Your professional expertise and judgement will be relied upon and valued by senior colleagues.

Locations:

The successful candidate 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 the 23rd of September 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.