PSE - 7 Forces Commercial Service Head of Category for ICT (Various Locations)

Location of Role: Dependent on appointment /working from home 

Advert Closing Date: 30/11/2026 

Starting Salary: £66,996.00 (pro-rata for part-time vacancies)

Part/Full Time: Full Time 

Contract Type: Permanent 

Working Pattern: Mon-Fri 

Weekend/Evening Working: No 

Manage the multiple commercial disciplines within the ICT and Corporate category, including Category Management, Supplier Relationship Management and Strategic Commercial Solutions, ensuring clear accountability, effective deployment of resources and a joined-up approach to delivering strategic, high-quality commercial outcomes across the seven Forces within these market sectors.

Manage the pipeline of procurement work for the ICT and Corporate Commercial Team members across the 7 Forces, ensuring that procurement projects are appropriately allocated to staff, based on project value, risk and complexity.

Manage the allocation of identified suppliers, to the Supplier Relationship Managers, ensuring appropriate time and resource is dedicated, based on the criticality of the contract, risk, value and complexity. 

Manage the allocation and prioritisation of work to the Strategic Commercial Solutions Manager, ensuring resource is focused on the most strategically important activity, based on regional priorities and anticipated benefits.

Direct and manage all commercial activities for the relevant category including market research, shaping and development, category strategy creation, the identification of new contract opportunities, risk management, supplier & contract performance monitoring, the tendering process of contracts across the 7 Forces with the aim of delivering legally compliant value for money solutions, incorporating and promoting sustainability & innovation into all projects undertaken.  

Lead and deliver ‘Gold’ level procurements, within the allocated category, across the 7 Forces. 

Lead all strategic Contract Management and Supplier Relationship activity, within the allocated category, with a view to securing better value for money from contractual arrangements and ensuring the contracted benefits are delivered. 

Provide regular Category updates to the Head of Category Management, the Director of Commercial Services and other Senior decision makers across the region, as required.

Establish and maintain proactive relationships with ICT and Corporate internal stakeholders across the region, whilst also ensuring links are developed with peers and key bluelight organisations nationally.

Provide expert commercial and legal advice, regarding the allocated category, to the Office of Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) and Chief Officer teams across the 7 Forces, to enable them to deliver their Policing Plans. 

Manage where appropriate, complex and commercial negotiations and disputes that arise, providing expert commercial and legal advice to the OPCC and Chief Officer teams across the 7 Forces, to deliver successful resolution and to defend the relevant Force(s) from contractual claims. 

The post holder must have the ability to interact with all senior level management and represent the 7 Forces as a collective or individually, where necessary. They must have the gravitas to influence external bodies such as the Home Office, Government Commercial Agency, Police Digital Service, PoliceAi and BlueLight Commercial and participate, as appropriate, on nationally led initiatives, providing opinion, guidance and shaping future offerings.  

The post holder must also be able to interact with budget holders and operational contract owners in the 7 Forces, ensuring the procurement pipeline accurately reflects business need priorities.  The post holder is also responsible for ensuring contracts are in place within their allocated category, to enable continuity of goods and services, to support operational policing objectives for delivering the OPCC Policing Plan. 

The post holder will be responsible for ensuring that information being provided to the Senior Leadership Team, Commercial Executive Board and all other Boards, as requested are provided in the correct format, contain accurate & relevant information and are delivered on time. 

The post holder will support and manage their commercial category team, including the monitoring of their health, well-being, fulfilment of annual objectives and their continued professional development, ensuring your visibility and regular attendance at key sites across the eastern region. 

The post holder must ensure regular communication with other Commercial Category teams and Commercial Support colleagues.

How to Apply

In your application we will be looking for you to demonstrate the criteria set out in the job description.

Travel will be required across all seven forces.

For an informal initial discussion about the role please contact esther.beaumont@essex.police.uk in the first instance.

This force is a Disability Confident employer. Should you require any reasonable adjustments for your application process, please contact the HR Service Centre on 01438 75(7777) or the manager for this role directly. We also offer the guaranteed interview scheme; this means that all candidates with a disability covered by the Equality Act 2010, who meet the minimum entry requirements for the role, will be invited to attend an interview.

For the full Essex job description please click here. 

For the full Kent job description please click here.

Kent Police and Essex Police have separate salary grading systems therefore the salary for this position will be dependent on which home office force you are appointed to. This will be discussed with the successful applicant before a final offer is made.

Your application for this role will be shortlisted on the content you provide within the “reason for application” question, within the application form itself. CV’s, covering letters or attachments are not included in the shortlist. Within your “reason for application” answer, please refer to any experience, skills, and abilities you feel you have that will make you suitable for this role, based on the role criteria stated in the job advert or job description. Please provide as much detail as possible as insufficient content may mean you do not meet the shortlisting criteria, however please note this question is limited to 9000 characters and this system will count spaces and blank lines as characters. This count may differ from the Microsoft Word word count function therefore you may wish to use a different online character counter to check the characters used.

All of our posts require a level of vetting and security clearance.  During the recruitment process you will be sent vetting information forms to complete. 

Kent Police and Essex Police welcomes applications regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, sex, or employment status.

Please let us know if you require extra support at any stage of the application process, or for further information regarding this position, please email us at recruitment.business.services@ecis.police.uk stating ‘Application Support and Adjustments’ in the title of your email. Alternatively, you can call us on 01245 452833. Where appropriate we will make adjustments to the selection process, working arrangements and/or the working environment provided it is reasonable in all the circumstances to do so.

If you’re not from the UK, you must be a resident in the UK and have lived here continuously for the last three years. You must also be free from restrictions with indefinite leave to remain. If you’re from the UK you must have lived here continuously for the last three years. This doesn’t apply to those serving abroad in the British Armed Forces.

Essex Police is a Disability Confident Leader, we:

• have subjected our Disability Confident self-assessment to external challenge and validation
• are taking an active leadership role in encouraging and helping other employers on their journey to becoming Disability Confident.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion are central to the values of our organisation. At Essex Police we value and embrace the unique experiences, identities and abilities that each of us bring to our roles. We strive to empower everyone to bring their authentic self openly and safely to work.

Through the dedicated commitment of our support networks, DE&I team and wider HR departments, we are on a journey to embed our DE&I commitments, ensuring Essex Police is an employer of choice; where everyone feels included.

Essex Police and Kent Police are an equal opportunities employer. Communications may be recorded for monitoring purposes.