The posting
Together we are Trusted to Serve Scotland.
Business Value Architecture Manager
Lead Enterprise Diagnostics. Turn Hypotheses into Quantified Value.
Help Shape Scotland's Water Future.
Are you an experienced consultant or change leader who's ready to put down the suitcase? Tired of parachuting into organisations for a few months, only to move on before you see the value land? This is a rare chance to bring that same calibre of end-to-end diagnostic and commercial thinking to one organisation, on work that genuinely matters — and stay long enough to see it through.
We're looking for a Business Value Architecture Manager to lead our E2E Diagnostic capability within Transformation, home-based with no extensive travel, no client-hopping, and no living out of a bag — just deep, sustained impact on one of Scotland's most essential services.
What You'll Do
You'll lead and develop a high-performing Business Value Architecture team, establishing and embedding a consistent approach to business diagnostics, value management and benefits realisation. You'll lead end-to-end diagnostics across value chains, services and functions — assessing cost, productivity, demand, service performance, quality and operational effectiveness to identify root causes of poor performance and value leakage.
This is where your commercial acumen comes in: you'll take hypotheses and turn them into quantified business problems and financial opportunities, producing diagnostic assessments, value chain insights and opportunity pipelines that give leaders a clear, evidence-based line of sight to measurable value.
You'll support leaders to identify, shape and track benefits from improvement initiatives, while providing strategic insight and challenge to senior leaders and governance forums. Building strong partnerships across Customer, Water, Waste, CI, Finance, Digital & Innovation, Strategy and Transformation will be essential to driving sustainable value delivery.
What You'll Bring
- Significant experience leading teams in transformation, operational excellence, business architecture, continuous improvement, or related disciplines.
- A strong track record of leading end-to-end diagnostics in complex organisations, and the commercial rigour to turn early hypotheses into quantified, credible business cases and financial opportunities.
- Experience quantifying efficiency opportunities and translating analysis into actionable improvement plans.
- Strong analytical, stakeholder engagement and influencing skills, with the confidence to challenge constructively at senior level.
- A proven record of delivering measurable performance, efficiency or customer outcome improvements.
- A natural team player and collaborative leader — someone who builds trust easily, brings others with them, and genuinely enjoys working as part of a wider team rather than operating in isolation.
Why This Role Matters
You'll lead the capability that helps Scottish Water understand where value is created, where it's lost, and where improvement effort will have the greatest impact. This isn't a one-off engagement — it's a permanent seat at the table, shaping decisions that support delivery of our SR27 efficiency ambitions and the long-term resilience of an essential national service.
If you've spent your career diagnosing other people's problems and want to spend the next chapter solving one that genuinely matters, close to home, this is it.
Leading the capability that connects diagnostics, efficiency improvement, and business value.
Looking out for you
While the work we do is important, we know it’s not the only thing that matters. That’s why we make sure you have everything you need to find a good work-life balance.
You’ll get plenty of time to recharge with 38 days of holiday every year (including public holidays). And you can even buy five more if you need a little extra time. You can also take time off to volunteer in your community.
When it comes to major life events we have family-friendly policies around adoption, maternity, and parental leave. And for the everyday? We embrace flexible working.
For your future, there’s our pension (the ‘know-what-you’ll-get-when-you-retire’ kind), and life assurance.
As for some nice extras? You will participate in a company bonus scheme. Not to mention access to SW Splash – handy rewards that can save you money on holidays, bills, and shopping.
The not-so-small print
This role will be at M1 Level. A competitive package is on offer which includes a salary starting from £69,247 with the ability to advance to £86,887 based on consistent out-performance.
If you’re interested in this role – or know someone else who might be - we’ll be accepting applications until midnight on the 24th November 2026.
We operate Balanced Hybrid working at Scottish Water and we encourage people to work half their time in a Scottish Water location.
Job offers at Scottish Water are conditional, and will be confirmed on completion of our pre-employment screening, e.g. referencing, criminal record checks, license checks, etc. Screening is conducted on our behalf by a third party, and must be completed before your start date. Don’t worry - we’ll only start these checks once you’ve accepted an offer.
A few final things worth knowing…
Research shows that some people avoid applying for jobs unless they can meet every single criteria. If you’re interested in this job, but don’t tick all the boxes, apply anyway! We hardly ever hire people who can do every part of a job from Day One. Everyone has a learning curve. So don’t rule yourself out!
Let us know if there are any changes we can make to our recruitment process to help you perform at your best. Lots of our people have disabilities or neurodiverse conditions (including some of our recruiters!). We're also aware that some people might be experiencing temporary challenges because of life events, like menopause. We’re very used to making adjustments, so please don’t be afraid to ask.
As part of our commitment to developing a flourishing Scotland, it’s important that all our employees are Scottish taxpayers. If you join us, your home address will need to be in Scotland. If you don’t already live here, you'll need to commit to moving here within your first three months.
Candidates should be aware that a valid UK driving licence is required for driving on Scottish Water business and claiming business mileage expenses.
Please note, Scottish Water takes the safety, health and wellbeing of our employees, colleagues and customers very seriously and as such you may be subject to Drug & Alcohol testing in line with our policy.
Finally (finally!), candidates who haven’t submitted an application in the last 12 months will have their records removed from our recruitment database. You won’t need to do anything. Your data will be automatically deleted.
We’re here to help. Ask us anything at [email protected]
