Planning, Insight and Evaluation Manager

Would you thrive in a fast-paced environment, where you get to play a pivotal and highly visible role coordinating planning, insight and evaluation across government communications?

DfT is a high-profile department at the heart of UK government. We work with agencies and partners to support the transport network that helps businesses and gets people and goods travelling around the country. We plan and invest to make journeys better.

Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
• 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 we encourage a great work-life balance.

Read more in the Benefits section below!

Find out more about what it's like working at DFT Central – Home , Civil Service Careers

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Department for Transport (DfT) communications team, in a role supporting the planning, insight and evaluation function, which sits at the heart of everything we do.

Your role as a Planning, Insight and Evaluation Manager will be interesting and varied, with responsibility for coordinating the department’s communications activity across our low and no cost priority campaigns and our wider business as usual work.

You will lead on short and long-term planning, working with teams across DfT and beyond to ensure our communications land at the right time, with the right audience and with maximum impact, and align with the Government’s overall communications strategy.

You will also support colleagues to ensure our communications are insight-led and properly evaluated as part of a continuous cycle of learning, managing audience research, social listening and evaluating communications activity.

Your responsibilities will include, but aren’t limited to:

• Leading the implementation and continuous improvement of the department’s communications planning and evaluation cycle, ensuring plans for announcements and campaigns are grounded in insight and learnings from the outset and that impact is consistently measured.
• Supporting the coordination of departmental communications activity, commissioning colleagues for input across products and attending regular planning meetings as well as tracking developments in Parliament, cross-government activity and emerging issues, to ensure our announcements are reflected within wider government plans.
• Generating communications insight from a wide range of sources, including by commissioning bespoke research projects (quantitative and qualitative) and using online news and social media monitoring tools to build real-time audience insight to inform live activity and future planning.
• Supporting innovation across the communications function, including automating planning and evaluation products and using AI to improve agility in monitoring breaking news, ensuring innovations are themselves evaluated so learnings can be scaled or discarded.

For further information on the role, please read the attached role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.

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 Behaviours and Experience.

The selection process for this role will be:

Stage 1: Sift of CV and personal statement

Stage 2: Interview

You must be successful at each stage to progress to the next stage.

Stage 1: Sift

At sift, you will be assessed against the following Success Profile elements:

Experience – you will be asked to provide a CV (unlimited word count) and personal statement (maximum 750-word count). Please provide evidence of your experience of the following:

• Coordinating a full communications planning cycle, using insight and lessons learnt to inform strategy, setting measurable objectives and evaluating impact.
• Strong analytical skills, and the ability to scrutinise qualitative and quantitative data and identify key findings that can help improve communications.
• Managing complex schedules and competing priorities, coordinating multiple teams and delivering to tight deadlines across multiple projects.
• Strong knowledge of Excel, PowerBI, PowerPoint and other tools relevant to analysing data/research, developing evaluation dashboards and presenting findings in an accessible and engaging way.

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

The sift will take place from week commencing 5th October 2026.

Stage 2: Interview

At interview stage, you will be assessed against the following Success Profile elements:

• Behaviours – (Communicating and Influencing, Seeing the Big Picture, Working Together, Delivering at Pace)
• Experience – (See role profile)

The interviews will take place from week commencing 19th October 2026.

We will try to meet the dates set out in the advert. There may be occasions when these dates will change. You will be provided with sufficient notice of the confirmed dates.

This interview will be conducted online via Microsoft Teams. Further details will be provided to you should you be selected for interview.

You can find out more about our hiring process, how to apply, and application and interview guidance on our careers site (opens in a new window).

Please note that we will try to meet the dates set out in the advert. There may be occasions when these dates will change.

Further information on the selection process

We will also hold a 12-month reserve list for this role, which may lead to potential opportunities beyond the role you applied for. You can read more about our reserve lists here.

Reasonable Adjustments

As a Disability Confident Leader employer, we are committed to ensuring that the recruitment process is fair, accessible and allows all candidates to perform at their best. If a person with a visible or non-visible disability is substantially disadvantaged, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

Complete the “Assistance required” section in the “Additional requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need during the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at an interview, or if you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.

If you need a reasonable adjustment so that you can complete your application, you should contact Government Recruitment Service via dftrecruitment.grs@cabinetoffice.gov.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs.

Document Accessibility

This job advert contains links to the DfT Careers website. Our website provides useful guidance and information that can support you during the application process. If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert or the information on our website, please contact the email address in the 'Contact point for applicants' section.

Further Information

For more information about how we hire, and for useful tips on submitting your application for this role, visit the How We Hire page of our DfT Careers website. You can find detailed information about the recruitment process and what to expect when applying for a role.

Pre-employment Checking

If your application is successful but you have been dismissed from the Civil Service, your application could be removed at the pre-employment checking stage depending on the nature of the dismissal.

Applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued. Any applicant’s details held on the IFD will be refused employment. A candidate is not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5-year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government.

All external applicants and current employees of accredited non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) will be required to undergo a Social Media Check. A Social Media Check is a review of your publicly available online activity, typically across platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and others. The purpose is to identify any public posts or content that could raise concerns for employers, such as:

• Hate speech or discriminatory behaviour
• Threats or acts of violence
• Illegal activity or substance misuse
• Sexually explicit material
• Extremist views or affiliations

Importantly, this check does not involve hacking into your accounts or accessing private messages. It only considers content you have chosen to make public. Employers use this kind of screening to help ensure their workplace remains safe, inclusive, and aligned with company values. It’s not about judging your personality or lifestyle - it’s about checking for potential red flags that might affect the role or company culture. If you have questions or concerns about the social media check, we would be happy to explain in more detail what’s being looked at and how your data is handled securely and fairly.

Feedback

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