Capability Lead; Commercial

Benefits

• Competitive salary, depending on experience £50,663 - £63,329
• Annual incentive related bonus (£1000 maximum bonus opportunity for the performance year)
• Attractive pension scheme (up to 12% company contribution)
• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays – plus an extra two wellness days!
• Life assurance cover of 4 times pensionable salary
• Great benefits package – choose from a salary sacrifice scheme, health cash plan scheme, critical illness insurance, dental insurance, life assurance flex and partner cover.
• Retail savings scheme
• Online GP service, cycle to work scheme, gym membership discounts and many more!

This role will initially be based in Bradford but we’re moving our office to Leeds Valley Park in summer 2026, so you’ll be based there in the future. There will hybrid working in place, with an expectation to be in the office for 1-2 days per week.

Permanent. 37 hours per week, Monday – Friday.

Everyone has an idea of what a water company does. Here in Yorkshire, we make sure that over 5.4 million people living in the region and the millions of people who visit our region each year, can rely on our services, and have clean and safe drinking water on tap and that their wastewater is taken away. But for us, it’s so much more than this.

We look after communities, protect the environment, and plan to look after Yorkshire’s water, today, tomorrow 24/7, 365 days a year. We provide essential water and wastewater services to every corner of the Yorkshire region, and play a key role in the region’s health, wellbeing, and prosperity.

New environmental legislation, unprecedented levels of investment and changing expectations from customers means that this is an exciting time to discover opportunities within the water industry.

Commercial Services plays a critical role in enabling the business to deliver its long‑term strategy and maintain financial stability through effective procurement and commercial management. The function works closely with the wider business and supply chain to secure value, manage risk, and ensure robust commercial outcomes.

Within Commercial Services, Commercial Excellence leads our Centre of Excellence approach—setting clear standards, improving processes, and building sustainable capability across the department.

This role focuses specifically on designing and embedding the frameworks that enable capability growth, ensuring we have clear learning pathways, structured progression routes and talent management that raise performance across the function.

• Define and own the Commercial capability framework, including learning pathways, job families and progression routes
• Design and embed clear standards for capability and role expectations across the function
• Develop and maintain structured approaches to talent identification, succession planning and capability development across the function
• Create and implement frameworks and tools that enable teams to build capability in a consistent, scalable way
• Work with leaders to identify capability gaps and prioritise development needs
• Ensure alignment between capability, operating models and ways of working
• Support the embedding of frameworks into business-as-usual, ensuring adoption and consistency
• Provide clarity on “what good looks like” for roles and capability across Commercial Services
• Influence leaders to own and drive capability improvement within their teams

• Experience designing and implementing capability frameworks, career pathways, talent development approaches or skills models
• Strong understanding of how people capability underpins performance and delivery outcomes
• Strong understanding of capability maturity models or talent frameworks
• Ability to operate at both strategic and operational levels, turning concepts into practical frameworks
• Strong influencing skills, able to engage and align senior stakeholders without direct authority
• Experience working across complex, multi-team or matrix environments
• Ability to translate complex concepts into clear, practical structures and guidance
• Strong analytical thinking, able to identify capability gaps, talent…