Navy Command, Programme Manager

At Navy Command, we lead, support, and sustain the Royal Navy across every theatre of operations. We coordinate the people, platforms, and missions that keep the Fleet ready for today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities. Together, we uphold centuries of naval tradition while driving innovation that ensures the Royal Navy’s readiness to protect our nation and secure our future.

As the authority for the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarine capability, the Submarine Directorate oversees one of the most complex and critical elements of UK defence. Covering everything from in‑service management to long‑term fleet modernisation, the directorate ensures the Submarine Flotilla remains safe, reliable, and ready to meet national security requirements.

You'll be based at HMNB Devonport, the largest naval base in Western Europe and a powerhouse of Royal Navy capability. It is home to amphibious ships, survey squadrons, submarines, and two-thirds of the frigate force. With its unique nuclear refitting facility, Devonport ensures the Fleet remains ready to support operations worldwide.

This position is advertised at 37 hours per week.

Are you an experienced programme leader ready to shape one of Defence’s most strategically important infrastructure programmes? This is a rare opportunity to play a pivotal role in the long-term transformation of HMNB Devonport, supporting the delivery of major infrastructure investment that will enable future submarine capability, strengthen national security, and support the Royal Navy’s operational outputs for decades to come. As Programme Manager, you will lead complex, high-value delivery across a diverse enterprise, working with senior stakeholders across Navy Command, Defence and industry to turn strategic intent into clear outcomes, effective governance, business readiness and lasting benefits.

What you will be doing:

Leadership, Vision and Team Direction

• Cascade the SRO’s vision and translate strategic intent into clear delivery objectives for the programme team, ensuring that individuals understand their contribution to programme outcomes, benefits and business readiness.
• Provide visible leadership across the integrated programme team, promoting a positive, inclusive and psychologically safe working environment that supports collaboration, resilience, innovation and delivery at pace.
• Inspire, motivate and engage programme and project teams across multiple internal and external stakeholders, empowering teams to take ownership within their area of expertise.
• Provide direction, guidance and coaching to the programme team and more broadly across the Project Delivery profession, supporting consistent application of programme management standards, frameworks, methodologies and good practice.
• Ensure performance is managed consistently and fairly, including Diversity and Inclusion principles, regular feedback, development planning and compliance with mandatory requirements.
• Identify and develop capability needs across the programme team, ensuring robust development plans are in place and that specialist skills, knowledge management and succession considerations are actively managed.
• Support the SRO and senior programme leadership to deliver departmental outputs with minimal supervision, escalating only where senior intervention is required to resolve strategic delivery.

Programme Strategy and Delivery Management

• Lead the programme to deliver the agreed business case outcomes and benefits, maintaining the overall integrity and coherence of the programme and ensuring that constituent projects remain aligned to programme objectives.
• Develop and clear programme business cases with project leads, subject matter experts, finance, commercial and other enabling functions, ensuring that investment decisions are evidence-based, proportionate and aligned to Government and departmental standards.
• Secure resources and direct planning, scheduling, resourcing and estimating activity for complex and large-scale programme delivery, working with project leads and enabling functions to identify gaps, constraints and options for resolution.
• Provide strategic advice and support to the SRO, Project Directors and wider programme stakeholders on delivery confidence, trade-offs, prioritisation, constraints, risks, issues, dependencies and opportunities.
• Exercise delegated authority on behalf of the SRO within documented programme tolerances and decision rights.

Governance, Assurance and Programme Controls

• Establish, maintain and continuously improve the programme governance framework, reporting regime and decision-making rhythm, ensuring that programme boards and senior stakeholders receive clear, timely and reliable performance information.
• Plan, coordinate and commission programme assurance activities, including gated reviews and independent scrutiny, ensuring that assurance is proportionate to programme complexity and aligned to key investment and delivery decision points.
• Oversee programme performance and controls across schedule, cost, risk, benefits, quality, dependencies, assumptions, issues and change control, ensuring that tolerances, escalation thresholds and decision routes are clear and actively used.
• Lead risk and issue management across the programme, ensuring that threats and opportunities are identified, assessed, owned and actively managed, with mitigations agreed through negotiation and escalated where necessary.
• Lead programme financial planning, forecasting and cost control, ensuring that expenditure, commitments, estimates and affordability are understood and managed within agreed delegations and tolerances. Work with finance, commercial, project and delivery leads to provide accurate programme-level financial information, support investment decisions and identify emerging cost pressures, opportunities and corrective actions.
• Work with commercial leads to ensure that commercial strategies, procurement activity, contractual dependencies and supplier performance are aligned with programme objectives, delivery priorities and the approved business case.

Business Change, Benefits and Stakeholder Engagement

• Manage programme dependencies across projects, business-as-usual activity and wider enterprise partners, brokering agreement between accountable parties and escalating where resolution cannot be achieved within the Programme Manager’s delegated authority.
• Establish and maintain the programme benefits-management framework, ensuring that benefits are defined, measurable and aligned to the programme business case. Secure named benefit owners and work with customers, business change leads and operational stakeholders to plan, track and report benefits realisation, ensuring that project outputs meet programme requirements and that benefits are embedded and sustained within the operating environment.
• Lead stakeholder engagement and communications activity for the programme, identifying stakeholder interests, influence and concerns, managing internal and external relationships, and highlighting where senior-level support is required.
• Ensure business change and implementation activity is planned from the outset, including business readiness, transition, adoption and sustainment considerations, so that programme outputs can be effectively embedded into the operating environment.

Open to UK nationals only.

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

As part of Defence Reform, Navy Command continues to review and evolve its Target Operating Model to support more agile ways of working. In this context, the role and responsibilities of this role may develop over time to reflect changing business priorities and opportunities.

At Sift, you will be assessed against the following;

• Candidates will be required to provide CV details to include job history and qualification details.
• Candidates will be required to provide a personal statement. This should be a maximum of 1000 words that sets out your motivation for applying and shows how your skills and experience meet the essential requirements for the role.
• You will be assessed on the Civil Service profiles of Technical and Behaviours

Behaviours:

You will need to write a 250 word statement on the behaviour of: Leadership

Technical:

You will need to write a statement on the technical skill of: P3M23 Independent Assurance - Level 4 Proficient

At Interview, you will be assessed against the following success profiles:

Behaviour :

• Leadership
• Making Effective Decisions
• Seeing the big picture

Technical

• P3M34 Business Case - Level 4 Proficient

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

As a result of the changes to the UK immigration rules which came into effect on 1 January 2021, the Ministry of Defence will only offer sponsorship for a skilled worker visa under the points-based system, where a role has been deemed to be business critical. This role does not meet that category, and we will not sponsor a visa. It is therefore NOT open to applications from those who will require sponsorship under the points-based system.

Should you apply for this role and be found to require sponsorship, your application will be rejected and any provisional offer of employment withdrawn.

The Ministry of Defence requires all candidates who are successful at interview to declare any outside interests. These declarations will be discussed with successful candidates following the interview process and before a formal offer of employment is made, as some outside interests may not be compatible with MOD civilian roles. This will not, in the majority of cases, prevent employment in MOD, but it is a measure that must be taken to ensure that appropriate mitigations can be put in place to manage any potential, perceived or actual conflicts of interest from the first day of employment.

The Ministry of Defence adopts a zero-tolerance approach to unacceptable behaviours, which includes bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, discrimination, and victimisation. You will not be eligible and will not be considered for this post if you have been dismissed from a role for such unacceptable behaviours within the last five years. This will also apply if you resign or otherwise leave a role but, because of an adverse decision, would have been dismissed for gross misconduct had you continued in that employment. Pre-employment checks will be carried out.

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