Senior Skills Lead

Competitive Day Rate - To be discussed
Location - Based at any HMRC Regional Centre of your choice (Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Croydon, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Stratford).
Travel required

We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us. We offer a great work life balance. You have the opportunity to work at any of our brand-new Regional Centres and to also work remotely. Contracts vary in length dependent upon the project with the possibility to extend.

Your time spent with us short or long term will be invaluable - your skills and expertise are needed to deliver the largest digital and transformation projects in Government. There really couldn’t be a better time to join HMRC for your new contract opportunity!

This role offers an exciting opportunity to play a central role in shaping HMRC’s journey toward becoming a truly skills-focused organisation, ensuring we have the skills, capability and capacity needed to deliver for the public both now and in the future.

HMRC is moving towards a skills-focused approach, underpinned by:

• A single Civil Service skills taxonomy,
• A developing enterprise capability baseline,
• A programme of skills experiments to test and validate new ways of working, and
• Alignment with Recruitment, Learning, Strategic Workforce Planning, Talent, Professions and technology development.

We are seeking an experienced professional with specialist expertise who can hit the ground running, bring fresh insight, and deliver at pace while also supporting internal capability building. We are looking for someone who can:

• Lead and accelerate the next phase of our skills transformation at pace.
• Oversee skills experiments and convert learning into scalable guidance and models.
• Maintain credibility and influence with senior leaders, Cabinet Office and cross-government stakeholders.
• Ensure continuity while transferring knowledge and developing internal capability.

About the Role

This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of skills in one of the largest departments in government. The Senior Skills Lead will support the Head of Skills to provide strategic leadership, expert guidance and hands-on delivery across the programme, ensuring coherence, stakeholder confidence and tangible progress over the next six months to help:

• Develop and embed a single skills taxonomy, including universal and specialist skills.
• Build a comprehensive Capability Baseline for the workforce.
• Align curriculum, learning pathways and assessment approaches to a skills-based model.
• Support digital transformation and the integration of skills data into future systems.
• Run testing and experiments to help the department learn how to operate as a skills-focused organisation.

This role is critical to maintaining momentum at a time where multiple cross-cutting workstreams are moving at speed.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the next phase of the skills transformation programme, ensuring progress at pace.
• Implement skills experiments to support transition to a skills-focused organisation.
• Provide expert interpretation and application of the Civil Service Skills Taxonomy ensuring it is fit for purpose now and adaptable for the future.
• Build confidence across professions and functional areas by testing and validating taxonomy elements, including universal and specialist skills.
• Support the development of an enterprise capability baseline, working closely with Business Groups, HR, Professions, Strategic Workforce Planning and Capability Academies.
• Provide consultancy for work related to curriculum alignment, assessment models and links to learning and development strategy.
• Drive the requirements and partner specialist teams to bring in relevant technology
• Represent the department credibly across the Civil Service, contributing insights to cross-government skills reform.
• Build strong relationships quickly with senior leaders, professions, functions and delivery stakeholders.
• Ensure knowledge transfer to the internal team is a core part of the role, strengthening long-term capability.