Deputy Director, Defence Innovation Unit

London

The Deputy Director, Defence Innovation Unit leads a successful, high-impact, diverse team at the heart of Defence. The team’s role has become even more important following the publication of the Defence Command Paper Refresh which sets out why Defence must be more adaptable, innovative and capable of harnessing the potential of new technologies.

As Deputy Director, Defence Innovation Unit you would lead this effort for the Ministry of Defence, working directly to the Director of Defence Innovation. Leading a team of 20, you would be responsible for helping the Ministry of Defence become “innovative by instinct”, shaping strategy and policy, providing thought leadership and inspire change throughout the Department. You would oversee the £100M annual Defence Innovation Fund, working alongside colleagues from Defence Science and Technology, and Strategic Programmes, to ensure that the nearly £1Bn that the Department spends annually on Science, Innovation and Technology is targeted at our most pressing problems.

The current responsibilities of the role include:

• Lead one of the most diverse and high performing teams in MOD, developing their capability to drive, enable, accelerate and empower delivery across the ecosystem.
• Role model best practice in innovation, taking appropriate levels of risk to deliver benefits, ‘learning by doing’ and challenging orthodoxy wherever it limits the Department’s ability to deliver battle-winning capability.
• Drive delivery of Integrated Review and Defence Command Paper Refresh commitments to innovation, working across Government and Industry stakeholders.
• Implementation of the Innovation Strategic Framework, working across Defence to deliver outcomes against the People, Process and Pipeline workstreams.
• Working in collaboration with key stakeholders develop the input for the next integrated review, developing the strategy and plan for the next phase of innovation in Defence.
• Maximise the value that is derived from the Defence Innovation Fund (c. £100m/yr) and wider related funding streams.
• Develop and scale the approach to monitoring and evaluation to provide evidence of the value delivered through Defence Innovation and wider Research and Development.
• Identify and address challenges to delivering innovation, securing and scaling the necessary enablers to allow everybody to innovate at pace.
• Provide strategic coordination for international innovation activities of allies, specifically lead on delivery of the innovation elements of the NATO Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) and support delivery against the AUKUS Pillar 2 workstream on innovation.
• Engage extensively with stakeholders within and outside Defence to ensure innovation activity is coherent, and to learn and share lessons across Government, internationally and from elsewhere in the public and private sectors.
• Support Director Defence Innovation in cohering the overall Defence Innovation portfolio, using the Defence Technology and Innovation Board and senior access to embed this as core to the Force Development Process in Defence.

• Application of an Innovative outlook that drives operational delivery.
• Transformation visionary.
• Experienced thought leader, able to influence well beyond your immediate organisation.
• Agility and resilience in a fluid and dynamic environment, making sound judgements and setting direction without having the full picture, applying knowledge and experience to reduce ambiguity and empower others.
• Strong commercial acumen, with experience of managing budgets that matter.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to command credibility at all levels.
• Systematic and creative thinker, able to demonstrate originality.
• A strong track record of leadership, inspiring and uniting high performing team.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

This role has a minimum assignment duration of 3 years. An assignment duration
is the period of time a Senior Civil Servant is expected to remain in the same post to enable them
to deliver on the agreed key business outcomes. The assignment duration also supports your career through
building your depth of expertise.

As part of accepting this role you will be agreeing to the expected assignment duration set out above.
This will not result in a contractual change to your terms and conditions.
Please note this is an expectation only, it is not something which is written into your terms and
conditions or indeed which the employing organisation or you are bound by. It will depend on your
personal circumstances at a particular time and business needs, for example, would not preclude any
absence like family friendly leave. It is nonetheless an important expectation, which is why we ask you
to confirm you agree to the assignment duration set out above.

Open to UK nationals only.

This vacancy is part of the Great Place to Work for Veterans (opens in a new window) initiative.

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Job contact :

• Name : SCS Recruitment Team
• Email : People-CivHR-SCSRecruitment@mod.gov.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : People-CivHR-SCSRecruitment@mod.gov.uk