Deputy Director for Large-Scale Change

Cambridge University Hospitals; Cambridge; Remote; GBP 94,000 - 109,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

On-site facilities

Travel subsidies

Parking subsidy

Job summary

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is seeking a Senior Transformation Lead (Band 8d) to drive large-scale change across the organisation. You will oversee multi-year transformation programmes, align strategy with delivery, and partner with clinical and executive leaders to maximise impact.

The role requires senior leadership, governance, and experience delivering benefits across complex portfolios within healthcare.

Qualifications

• Master's level education or equivalent in transformation, programme management or related field.
• Evidence of Continuous Professional Development.
• Experience delivering multi-year transformation portfolios in healthcare.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Large-Scale Change team and portfolio of complex programmes.
• Advise executive/clinical leaders on strategy, priorities and delivery risks.
• Oversee governance, resources, benefits and performance to assure delivery.
• Build partnerships across CUH, the NHS and external organisations, supporting bids and business cases.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic planning

Stakeholder engagement

Programme management

Change management

Governance

Data reporting

Budget management

Education

Master’s degree or equivalent

Prince2 Practitioner

CPD evidence

Tools

Word

PowerPoint

Excel

Job description

Main area Division Corporate - Transformation Grade Band 8d Contract Permanent Hours

• Full time
• Part time
• Flexible working

37.5 hours per week (Full Time or Part Time / Flexible working hours may be considered) Job ref 180-F-CVA1146-A

Employer Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Employer type NHS Site Addenbrookes Hospital-Division Corporate Town Cambridge Salary £94,356 - £108,814 p.a. pro rata Salary period Yearly Closing 20/10/2026 23:59 Interview date 03/11/2026

Job overview

This is an exciting time to join large-scale change at CUH. We are advancing healthcare, research, and education locally by redesigning pathways with community and primary care partners; regionally through specialised services and new Children’s and Cancer hospitals; and nationally through research, innovation, and cross-industry partnerships.

Our large-scale change team delivers major programmes supporting CUH’s five-year strategy. In this highly digitised HIMSS EMRAM Level 7 organisation, you will lead multi-year transformation combining digital innovation and care-model redesign to improve patient care, access, productivity, and efficiency across CUH and partner organisations.

Main duties of the job

• Lead the multi-professional Large-Scale Change team and a rolling portfolio of complex transformation programmes.
• Advise executive and clinical leaders on strategy, priorities, investment choices, and major delivery risks.
• Oversee governance, resources, benefits and performance, resolving barriers and assuring sustainable delivery.
• Build influential partnerships across CUH, the NHS and external organisations, including supporting major bids and business cases.

If you can turn ambitious strategy into better care, access, and productivity—and inspire people to deliver change at scale we would love to hear from you.

Working for our organisation

Our Trust

Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust comprises Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the Rosie Hospital in Cambridge. With over 13,000 staff and over 1100 beds the priorities of the Trust focus on a quality service which is all about people – patients, staff and partners. Recognised as providing ‘outstanding’ care to our patients and rated ‘Good’ overall by the Care Quality Commissioner, is testament to the skill and dedication of the people who work here. CUH’s values – Together - Safe, Kind, Excellent – are at the heart of patient care, defining the way all staff work and behave. The Trust provides accessible high-quality healthcare for the local people of Cambridge, together with specialist services, dealing with rare or complex conditions for a regional, national and international population.

CUH is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive community - a place where we can all be ourselves. We value our differences and fully advocate and support an inclusive working environment where every individual can fulfil their potential. We want to ensure our people are truly representative of all the communities that we serve. We welcome applications for all positions in the organisation irrespective of people’s age, disability, ethnicity, race, nationality, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief, marriage and civil partnership status, or pregnancy and maternity status or social economic background.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see the attached Applicant Information Pack (combined Job Description and Person Specification) for key duties and responsibilities.

This vacancy will close at midnight on 20th October 2026.

Interviews are due to be held on 3rd November.

All appointments with a start date on or after 1 October 2026 will be subject to a 12-week probationary period. This provides a structured and supportive period to help you settle into your role, with regular reviews and feedback.

Right to Work

As there is a 12-week probationary period, successful candidates are expected to have the Right to Work for a period of at least 6 months from the proposed start date. Immigration and Right to Work status will be discussed with successful candidates at conditional offer. CUH will not offer sponsorship to candidates that have applied for a fee waiver.

Due to Home Office immigration rules, a full-time permanent vacancy cannot be filled by individuals on a student visa. Therefore, please be advised that if you are a student visa holder, we will not be able to offer you a full-time permanent contract unless you have:

- applied for a Graduate visa

- or you will have successfully completed your course and have applied for a Graduate visa before the anticipated start date of your employment

Benefits to you

At Cambridge University Hospitals, we want to do all we can to support good working days. We offer development opportunities and a wide range of benefits, including on-site leisure facilities, shopping concourse and day nurseries. Our good work programme currently includes providing reduced cost Stagecoach bus travel to and from Cambridge University Hospital site. Park and Ride bus journeys between Babraham Road and Trumpington sites are free, as is the route to and from Cambridge train station and our hospitals. We also subsidise the cost of parking on site for eligible staff.

On CUH campus, hot food is available 24/7 and at a reduced cost for colleagues. Recently we launched the first of our staff pod break spaces. Located in the Deakin Centre, we have a purpose-created colleague-only café, with free tea and coffee, a break space and private outside area for colleagues to rest, refuel and recharge. Just one of the ways we are working hard to support good working days at CUH.

CUH is committed to assisting employees in achieving a good work-life balance irrespective of role or personal circumstances. Flexible arrangements may include, but are not limited to, part-time working, job-share, term-time working and flexible start and finish times.

Please note if you would like to discuss the required hours of this role further, you should approach the contact given. In some cases, alternative working hours will be considered.

We welcome applications from the Armed Forces.

Person specification

Qualifications

• Educated to master’s level or able to demonstrate equivalent specialist knowledge and senior leadership experience in transformation, programme management, organisational change or a related field
• Evidence of Continuous Professional Development
• Evidence of managing Successful Programmes/ Prince2 Practitioner (or equivalent experience).

Experience

• Significant senior leadership and planning of multi-year, Trust-wide and system-wide transformation portfolios, including digitally enabled care model redesign and complex interdependencies.
• Experience of utilising digital systems and technologies, to enable the design of new models of care.
• Managing strategic and operational change. Including the impact on clinical service delivery, policies and processes, resources and service users.
• Working across multiple professional disciplines to deliver significant improvement to models of care or organisational processes.
• Set-up of governance structures for a complex portfolio of Trust-wide programmes
• Designing or leading the use of performance tracking systems, particularly in programme management.
• Proven delivery of benefits realisation with clear KPIs and outcomes; experience of recovering under-performing programmes.
• Senior experience managing risks/issues/dependencies and leading cross-organisational teams and suppliers under formal governance.
• Working at a senior level of management on strategic transformation in a healthcare or similar organisation
• Working constructively with internal and external partners to create successful collaboration
• Working collaboratively with senior clinicians across multi-disciplinary professions and services
• Reporting to and working at Board/ executive committee level.
• Reporting complex information and data – verbally, in papers and in presentations, in a succinct manner, to a range of audiences from service users through to executives.
• Identifying, initiating and maintaining partnership activity with other organisations and maximising relations with relevant parties and services (from inception to completion).
• Managing large scale complex change programmes at a senior management level using recognised methodology, including use of service improvement and programme management techniques.
• Developing performance indicators, dashboards and scorecards to monitor project and programme delivery, including tracking and realising benefits.
• Managing programme budgets; knowledge of budgeting and resource allocation
• Evidence of holding direct delegated accountability for substantial revenue and/or capital budgets, including expenditure approval, financial recovery action and delivery of recurrent productivity or efficiency benefits.
• Substantial experience of full line-management responsibility for a multi-tier senior team, including recruitment, appraisal, performance, conduct, workforce planning, talent and succession, alongside leadership of complex matrix teams.
• Experience crafting compelling strategic narratives and business cases or funding bids for senior stakeholders and external partners/government.
• Experience of leading the formulation, approval, Trust-wide implementation and evaluation of policy, strategy or operating standards with organisation-wide impact and, where relevant, securing adoption
• Experience of designing or commissioning structured audit, evaluation or research activity and translating findings into organisation-wide service or programme improvement.

Knowledge

• Highly developed professional knowledge of programme and organisational change management
• Change management, negotiation and influencing internally and externally at all levels.
• Budgeting and resource allocation.
• Clinical and corporate governance
• Translating National policy into local implementation
• Workforce planning, recruitment and retention and staff development including appraisals and performance management
• Patient and public involvement including co-design
• Leading innovation in approaches to patient care
• Understanding of information governance.
• Detailed knowledge of NHS financial governance, standing financial instructions, schemes of delegation, business-case appraisal, contract management and benefits accounting.

Skills

• Exceptional leadership, interpersonal and communication skills including facilitation, and obtaining, providing and presenting information.
• Managing multifaceted, complex projects and programmes to time and budget.
• Communicating highly complex and sensitive information with exceptional verbal and written communication skills to a wide range of audiences; meticulous attention to detail
• Thinking clearly, solving and pre-empting problems, reaching decisions, prioritising and recommending appropriate action through the assessment and presentation of relevant and complex information in an accessible form.
• Translating strategic direction into deliverable, measurable outcomes and engaging others in strategy and planning.
• Building positive relationships, influencing and securing agreement from senior colleagues and other stakeholders including on highly sensitive and complex matters;
• Expert negotiation, facilitation and diplomacy
• Inspiring confidence and trust, commanding respect and creating a sense of community in teams. Ability to motivate and empower others as a positive and effective team leader
• Representing at local, regional and national forums
• Adapting during periods of change
• Work autonomously, managing and prioritising own workload and that of others, meeting tight deadlines and working under own initiative
• Ability to make autonomous, high impact decisions with broader policy
• Using ICT (including Word, PowerPoint and Excel) and digital project management tools
• Ability to translate complex, sensitive issues and problems into plans which are clearly articulated and understandable to others
• Able to deliver flexible and creative solutions to difficult problems and challenges
• Ability to handle conflicting, incomplete and ambiguous evidence
• Analyse, present and tailor complex data and information to a wide range of audiences
• Demonstrable political judgement and astuteness in working with complex policy and diverse interest groups. Working at a very senior level with multi-disciplinary groups
• Intellectual flexibility to work beyond existing structures and ways of working to deliver effective services.
• Leading redesign of services
• Lead change through the senior clinical forums with clear priorities and delivery.

Additional Requirements

• The ability to understand and behave at all times, towards patients, visitors and colleagues according to the Trust values of safe, kind, excellent.
• Methodical, organised, analytical with problem solving capabilities.
• Highly motivated and resourceful.
• Able to learn rapidly, and take in a wide range of information, distilling out the key points into clear succinct well-argued documents.
• Able to maintain high standards of diplomacy and understands the principle of confidentiality.
• Accepts responsibility and accountability for own work and can define the responsibilities of others.
• Able to manage competing demands and produce high quality work to tight deadlines
• Able to establish positive relationships and mutual respect with people at all levels
• Ability to contribute effectively
• A clear communicator with excellent written, analytical and presentation skills
• Demonstrates empathy and concerns for others
• Shows respect for others’ feelings, views and circumstances
• Has realistic knowledge of personal strengths and areas for development
• Learn from mistakes and ask for support where necessary
• Ability to prioritise own and others workload effectively to manage to tight deadlines

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Name Sophie Edkins Job title Director of Improvement and Transformation Email address [e-mail]