Head of Contracts - Major Projects

We’re seeking a Head of Contracts – Major Projects to play a critical leadership role within our Major Projects function at National Grid.

This role carries commercial responsibility for a portfolio of circa £400m annual spend and will focus on building a new commercial team within Major Projects. You will design, implement, and embed commercial processes that enable effective cost control, value tracking, and robust measurement of progress against spend. As a member of the Major Projects Leadership Team, you’ll help shape strategy and culture, ensuring cost consciousness, strong governance, and value delivery sit at the core of how we operate.

This is a high‑impact role requiring strategic influence, strong commercial judgement, and the ability to drive meaningful transformation across a complex organisation.

And because we know flexibility matters, this role offers a hybrid working approach—a mix of home and office working and you’ll also have the freedom to base yourself at any of our sites across the East Midlands, West Midlands, South West, or Wales, with travel to NGED locations 2–3 times a week.

• ities
  Hold end‑to‑end commercial accountability for the Major Projects portfolio, with approximately £400m annual expen
• diture
  
  Report to the Director of Major Projects, ensuring commercial strategy is aligned with wider business obje
• ctives
  
  Build and lead a high‑performing commercial function within Major Projects, establishing clear cost control, progress measurement, and value tracking pro
• cesses
  
  Act as a key member of the Major Projects Leadership Team, contributing to strategy, performance, and cultural devel
• opment
  
  Set commercial standards and governance, owning commercial systems and embedding best‑practice processes and ways of w
• orking
  
  Provide commercial expertise and thought leadership across supply chain and contracting
• topics
  
  Drive change and transformation across the organisation, delivering consistent commercial disc
• ipline
  
  Partner with Procurement to develop effective contracting strategies that embed cost and progress controls within supply chain con
• tracts
  
  Act as Commercial Counsel to the Major Projects Director, supporting financial target setting, budget development, and ongoing budget moni
• toring
  
  Ensure compliance with contractual obligations, managing and resolving disputes as re
• quired
  
  Lead performance reporting, budgeting, and governance processes to support effective decision‑
• making

• ndidate
  Proven experience in a Commercial Director, Head of Commercial, or similar senior commercial leaders
• hip role Extensive experience leading commercial subject matter experts within an engineering or infrastructure env
• ironment
  
  Demonstrated success building a new commercial function within an existing
• business
  
  Strong experience managing, compiling, and controlling large, complex, multi‑million‑pound
• budgets
  
  Proven capability in leading performance reporting and budgeting processes in comparable organ
• isations
  
  Strong analytical approach to complex commercial and contractual ch
• allenges
  
  Deep knowledge of NEC4 contracts and programmatic contract ma
• nagement
  
  Ability to influence strategically at all levels of the organisation and with external stak
• eholders
  
  Track record of communicating compelling business cases and securing buy‑in for significan
• t change
  
  Strong people leadership skills, including coaching, developing talent, and creating cohesive, high‑performi
• ng teams
  
  Commercial excellence underpinned by a strategic
• mindset
  
  Excellent leadership, organisational, communication, and interpersonal

We’re National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED), the owner and operator behind the electricity distribution systems for the Midlands, the Southwest of England and South Wales.…