Job Description

The Head of Performance Improvement is responsible for the delivery of the Integrated Performance Improvement (PI) programme for Sellafield Ltd. They establish a prioritised approach to identifying and analysing gaps in performance in order to prevent loss and add value through learning from experience.

The role provides leadership of the Sellafield Ltd Performance Improvement team including the Programme Leads for the Corrective Action Programme (CAP), Operating Experience, Trending, Analysis as well as the Enterprise Investigation Team and the Site Sentencing Authority.

Principal Accountabilities

• Define the Sellafield Ltd integrated approach for Performance Improvement (PI) across the Enterprise, addressing the complex and diverse needs of each individual business areas.
• Lead the development and consistent implementation of a standard PI model and fit for purpose arrangements to enable Sellafield Ltd to comply with their statutory and business obligations (e.g. Nuclear Site License Condition 7, LRQA, EH&S legislation, NISR, IRR, NDA, WANO PO&Cs etc).
• Develop, implement and maintain the organisational model for the Performance Improvement capability, including organisational structure, definition of PI roles, and technical competency framework. This includes development and deployment of PI resources according to overall business priorities.
• Provide overall leadership and management of the Performance Improvement function, including:

Corrective Action Programme (CAP) – ensuring a risk-based approach to reporting, screening (sentencing), investigating and correcting of issues. This includes all issues impacting safety, reliability or performance.

Trending and self-assessment – ensuring that event data is subject to routine trending and analysis in order to identify underlying weaknesses and prioritise opportunities to close gaps, make improvements, and establish sustainable solutions for the business.

Operating Experience (OE) – ensuring that key learning opportunities derived from internal and external OE are shared and used to prevent or minimise similar causes occurring and avoid making similar mistakes, and to drive continuous improvement for safety, quality and effectiveness.

Enterprise Investigation; Providing support to the business through leadership and delivery of Board of Inquiry and Management Investigations into more serious events and those with complex organisational, behavioural technical and/or stakeholder management issues.

Site Sentencing Authority; Ensuring that significant events are correctly assessed and classified and that any requirements for incident notification and reporting to external stakeholders (e,g, ONR, EA, WANO, IAEA, NDA) are met.

• Provide oversight and governance of the Integrated PI programme, ensuring a prioritised approach is taken to identifying, analysing and fixing performance gaps, and to promote the behaviours inherent to an effective learning organisation.
• To provide direction on work, goals, targets and priorities to Performance Improvement personnel, and to delegate the appropriate level of authority to PI team members.
• To put in place consistent and uniform working arrangements within the PI team to meet the requirements of the management system, and to provide the required leadership to deliver effective compliance with these working arrangements.
• To lead Sellafield Limited Nuclear Professionalism Standards and Expectations within the PI team, monitoring performance against these standards, and delivering sustained improvements through promoting, stimulating, encouraging, and leading improvement processes.

Authorities & Dimensions

Authorities:
• To engage with relevant site and external stakeholders, and to represent Sellafield Limited at a company level on all PI related matters. Manage the interface with ONR on NSLC 7 matters including effective reporting of incidents and events e.g. SIR/INF1/FUR/INES/FINAS.
• As Process Owner for Performance Improvement the role holder has authority to make decisions on all matters related to NSLC7 compliance.
• Through the Sellafield Site Sentencing Authority has ultimate decision-making authority for the determination of the level of event severity according to the guidelines specified in the company classification scheme.
• To hold team members accountable for adhering to commitments and performance of work according to applicable SL standards, procedures and arrangements and development and deployment of PI resources to meet business need.

Dimensions:
• Head of the Performance Improvement Capability. This includes the Sellafield Site Sentencing Authority, Corrective Action Programme Managers, Trend Programme Manager, Operating Experience Manager, PI Advisers, Trend & Analysis Engineers, PI Co-ordinators, and the Enterprise Investigation team.

Nominated Roles:
• Nuclear Site Licence Condition Owner for NSLC7 “Incident on the Site”.
• Process Owner for SLMS section 3.09 “Performance Improvement” / “Performance Improvement” – Sellafield Enterprise Management System (SEMS)

Essential Skills

• Thorough comprehension of legislative incident reporting obligations spanning Nuclear, Conventional Radiological, Security and Environmental, and application within the nuclear or high hazard industrial sector.
• Broad understanding of the Sellafield Ltd business and management model combined with a general understanding of the function (processes, technologies, operational practices) of the facilities operated on the Sellafield site.
• Effective influencing and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to build relationships with senior managers in order to promote and ingrain Performance Improvement as core business.
• Ability to effectively manage a diverse, varied, and busy workload, with an ability to prioritise and maintain progress on a range of work scopes.
• Confidence and professionalism with good interpersonal skills, high standards and attention to detail.
• Experience in leading SL interactions with external stakeholders (including regulators and certifying bodies) at an enterprise level.

Additional Information

• Open VN
• Number of Vacancies: 1
• Contact: Matt Lee

The interviews for this vacancy are expected to be 6th October 2026.

ASW’s may have the right to apply for internal Sellafield Ltd vacancies. Please note if you are an Agency Supplied Worker you are required to attach evidence of all qualifications obtained to support your application. We require a minimum of A*-C (9-4) GCSE in English Language, Maths & Science/IT or equivalent / higher qualification.

Contracted Supply Workers (CSWs) are not eligible to apply to internal vacancies. CSWs are welcome to apply to external vacancies advertised on our external vacancies board.

If you choose to apply for this role and your application is shortlisted by the hiring manager, you will be invited to a competency based interview. In the interview, you will be assessed against the below competencies:

Behavioural:
3.1.4 Continuous Learning
3.1.6 Collaboration and Teamwork
3.2.2 Resilience
3.3.5 Holding Self and Others to Account

Technical:
315.4 Developing and maintaining an effective safety culture
315.8 Investigating accidents, incidents and near hits

Please see link to the competency framework for further information:
https://slportal.ssa-intra.net/pub/SC001/00027/Competency%20Framework/Forms/AllItems.aspx

If your technical competency is not in the above framework, please refer to the profession’s share point page for further information.

Sellafield Ltd are recognised as a Disability Confident Employer (Level 3). Disability Confident employers offer an interview to disabled applicants that meet the minimum criteria for a vacancy. Sellafield Ltd define the minimum criteria as the ‘essential skills’ which are listed on the vacancy notice. Whilst completing your application form, you will be able to indicate if you wish to be considered under the disability confident scheme. If you would prefer to discuss this directly with us, please contact the GBS Recruitment team on recruitment@sellafieldcloud.co.uk

Please ensure that you save a copy of this advert for future reference if you make an application for this role.

The closing date for this vacancy is 15th September 2026.