About the team

As Assistant Director, your team is responsible for a broad portfolio of high-profile, citizen-facing and corporate support services. Our work plays a vital role in the experience that residents and businesses have of council services, and our teams work closely with colleagues across the organisation.

What we do

Customer Services, Digital & Data teams are responsible for over 1 million customer enquiries per year by phone via the council’s contact centre; face-to-face at Hackney Service Centre; online; and through the registrars service.

Enquiries range from requests for general information to help recording major life events such as births, deaths and marriages, and providing support for some of Hackney’s most vulnerable residents who are at risk of homelessness and experiencing financial hardship.

As well as being the first point of contact for the council, our teams have the digital, data and technology skills needed to make sure that we deliver an excellent customer experience, and provide well designed and efficient end-to-end service journeys.

The integration of our Customer Services, Digital and Data teams creates huge opportunities to transform the services that our residents and businesses rely upon. By bringing deep insight into the service user’s experience together with data and analytics, digital technology and design capabilities, these teams are able to identify and implement opportunities to radically improve the customer experience.

About the role

As Assistant Director you will lead on delivering change that will fundamentally improve the experience of residents and businesses that use council services, so they can access a range of support that can improve lives.

We are looking for someone who is driven by making things better for people, with ambition, empathy and curiosity.

You will be:

• Passionate about making services better for our residents and businesses Ambitious. This job is for someone who wants to take on big challenges and be a changemaker
• A great leader who can build a strong customer focused and collaborative culture across teams

About Us:

• Empathic and will take the time to fully understand the customer journey and service delivery challenges
• Ready to immerse yourself in the customer journey, asking the right questions, understanding customer pain points and helping us to challenge our approach to how we do things
• Collaborative and influential. Can build high trust relationships with colleagues in other service areas to deliver meaningful improvements to the end-to-end customer journey
• Evidence led. Putting user needs at the heart of everything we do and making data informed recommendations
• Ready to hit the ground running and able to support your teams in delivering focused, fast paced improvements, ensuring that everyone is working towards a common goal.

About you

We don’t expect you to tick every box on our job description. The most important things we are looking for are:

• A strong commitment to public service
• Natural curiosity, openness and optimism
• Great people skills. You’ll have a wide range of different stakeholder relationships to manage and diverse teams to lead and develop
• Able to lead by example. Consistently displaying the behaviours you want the team to mirror
• Excellent communication skills.

Our priorities

Over the next year our priority areas of focus are:

• Using our data, design and technology capabilities to deliver more proactive council services that help residents access the support they need as effortlessly as possible
• Working with colleagues across the council and partners to identify and deploy digital solutions for the long term, which will help Hackney tackle the biggest challenges of the next 10 years, including the cost-of-living crisis, housing crisis and ongoing funding challenges across local government
• Continuing to invest in our workplace technologies and support processes so that colleagues can be productive from Day 1 and every day thereafter
• Maximising the benefits of our investments in simple, secure and reusable cloud based technologies.
• Ensuring that we continue to improve and innovate across our wide range of digital systems, tools and platforms, whilst maintaining the stability and reliability of core business support functions.

What we love about working for Hackney

Some things we love about working for Hackney:

• Doing work that has a positive impact on residents’ lives
• A diverse workforce that reflects our community
• Flexibility of hybrid working and being able to have a good work-life balance
• No one day is ever the same and you’ll get to work across a wide range of services.

In return you will benefit from:

• A generous holiday allowance of 28 paid days, rising to 33 days (after 5 years) plus bank holidays.
• Membership of the excellent Local Government Pension Scheme.
• Standard 36 hour week (7.2 hours per day, Monday to Friday)
• Wide range of learning and development opportunities.
• Comprehensive range of staff benefits.

Where we work

We offer hybrid working. You will be expected to come into our offices in the Hackney Service Centre to work with your team at least once a fortnight, however many of us prefer to come in more frequently. Like many organisations, our hybrid arrangements are evolving and you may be expected to work from the office more frequently in future.

Talk to us or ask any questions.

If you’d like an informal chat about the role, please email our Director, rehana.ramesh@hackney.gov.uk to book a call.

As a Council, our most outstanding asset is our staff, who are highly dedicated to serving our residents and committed to our goals as an organisation.

If you want to work in a place where you can represent our values so we achieve the best for our residents, please click on the apply button below.

We operate a fair and open anonymous selection process. Therefore, we do not accept supporting statements or CV’s.

To proceed with your application, you will need to create an account and submit your application.

As part of the application process, you will need to complete a number of competency based questions. These questions allow you to demonstrate your suitability for the role and provide examples of your skills, knowledge and experience outlined in the job description.

We understand the benefits of using AI in the workplace. However, if you are thinking of using this tool to submit your application, we ask you to think about what value it will add. AI tools tend to lack the personal touch and authenticity we value in candidates. We encourage you to showcase your unique knowledge and skills using your own voice.

This application process replaces a supporting statement.

Closing date for applications: 21 September 2025 (22:59).

Interview date: W/C 13 & 20 October 2025.

We are also working towards our vision, which is to be a place for everyone; where residents and staff can be proud; a place that celebrates diversity and where everyone can feel valued, included and involved. In order to achieve this, we look for people who are: Proud; Ambitious; Pioneering; Open; Proactive; Inclusive.

Hackney Council works to eradicate discrimination on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.We also recognise that people can be disadvantaged by their social and economic circumstances, so we will also work to eliminate discrimination and disadvantage caused by social class. We also welcome those interested in flexible working. We particularly welcome applications from disabled people, as this group is currently under represented in our workforce.

The Council has a dedicated employment support service (Hackney Works), which offers Hackney residents guidance in relation to applying for jobs. If you are thinking about applying for a job, please contact the Hackney Works team to find out what support is available: hackneyworks@hackney.gov.uk