JOB SUMMARY

Are you an experienced Project Manager ready to lead transformative change in Scotland’s public sector? COPFS is seeking a proactive and strategic individual to join our transformation function, delivering high-impact projects that support justice and public service excellence.
In this role, you’ll lead complex projects from initiation to closure, manage multi-million-pound budgets, and work closely with stakeholders across all levels—including executive leadership. You’ll be instrumental in shaping business cases, mitigating risks, and ensuring successful delivery using Agile, Waterfall, or hybrid methodologies.
We’re looking for someone with strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills, ideally with a degree in a business or technical field and formal project management qualifications (e.g. PRINCE2, MSP). You’ll also have the opportunity to coach team members, influence strategic decisions, and contribute to a culture of continuous improvement.
Join us and be part of a team that values innovation, collaboration, and public impact.

JOB DESCRIPTION

COPFS is current embarking on a number of ambitious transformation projects, which collectively seek the continued modernising of the service for the people of Scotland. These projects are national in scope and seek to support our staff to improve services for victims and families as they seek justice in Scotland.
As a Business Change Project Manager, you will work across some of our high-profile national enterprise level projects, which includes COPFS Body Worn Video (BWV) Project, as it aligns to Police Scotland’s national BWV roll out and other projects supporting significant national change to our service delivery across Scotland.
This is a new role in which you will champion and implement effective project delivery, supporting the vision to attain class leading transformation.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Applicants suited to this role will be experienced Business Change Project Managers who can lead and drive forward enterprise level change, using recognised project management frameworks. You will be experienced in applying a proactive approach, seeking opportunities to effectively engage at all levels and be used to operating with a high degree of autonomy. You will be confident using a variety of Project Management techniques to support project delivery and be comfortable leading workshops and facilitating discussions.
A Degree in a business or technical discipline as well as familiarity with Agile and Waterfall methodologies would be desirable. A driving license would also be beneficial for travel to our offices across Scotland.
Please note that you may be required to carry out an additional assessment or presentation at interview. Further detail on this will be included in your invite to interview letter.

Applicants must be able to demonstrate the below essential criteria which will be tested against Experience:

• Experience of working in a Project Delivery or Portfolio Management environment
• Experience of leading large complex projects, programmes or portfolios and defining / maintaining standards
• Experience in actively managing project governance, risks, issues, plans, dependencies and assumptions
• Strong interpersonal skills (including chairing) and experience of working with boards and a range of stakeholders with confidence to engage with senior leaders
• Ability to chair meetings and communicate effectively; build relationships, confidence and trust and to influence stakeholders to achieve a successful outcome for all those involved
• Present and brief audiences at different levels including executive members on project progress
• Ability to work and lead across multi-disciplinary teams, bringing people together and influencing views to inform decision making
• Successfully delivered transformational outcomes and ability to understand portfolio objectives, the wider organisational strategy and the relationship between the two
• Possess formal Project Management qualifications such as PRINCE2, Practitioner or MSP

TECHNICAL SKILLS

We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Lead project initiation, design, build, test, implementation and review using project management frameworks and tools
• Ability to develop business cases and reporting within governance frameworks
• Ability to manage a project budget and build business benefits into any project
• Analytical and adept problem-solving skills

NATIONALITY REQUIREMENTS

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)
• 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

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead complex project(s) from design through to closure and transition to BAU.
• Develop clear project plans and delivery options using appropriate methodologies ensuring delivery on time, within budget and to quality standards.
• Lead across internal stakeholders and inter-agency partnerships to deliver project plans against challenging objectives and timeline.
• Lead end-to-end development of project Business Cases with stakeholders and manage their production, approval and management of delivery through the project lifecycle.
• Proactively identify and manage risks, issues and assumptions in line with governance frameworks.
• Oversee project budget planning aligned to public sector annual financial planning cycle.
• Track, authorise and report all costs (forecast and actual) at project level which can be up to several million pounds. Work collaboratively to adjust resources/priorities when appropriate.
• Ensure a clear audit trail as per the approved framework standards.
• Lead the development of an integrated testing plan with appropriate stakeholders. Manage the execution of User Acceptance Testing to enable a successful outcome.
• Build a view of Cost v Benefits for the project(s) and monitor their realisation.
• Identify, manage and monitor interdependencies with internal and external projects and lead work with stakeholders to develop plans to address these.
• Work closely with our Portfolio Management Office to report on progress and key deliverables.
• Chair project meetings and present updates to senior stakeholders.
• Build and sustain capability within the project team through coaching training and development.
• Share skill and experience with other Project Managers and project teams, to support the development of the organisation.