Production Lead

Northumbria Healthcare - NHCT Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust; Seaton Delaval; On-site; GBP 46,000 - 53,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a leading NHS organization as a Production Lead at a state-of-the-art Medicines Manufacturing Centre in Seaton Delaval. This pivotal role involves overseeing sterile production activities while ensuring compliance with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards. You will lead a dedicated team, influence production processes, and play a crucial role in training and developing staff. This is an exceptional opportunity to make a significant impact on patient care by delivering high-quality medicines, all within a supportive environment that values staff experience as much as patient outcomes. Be part of a forward-thinking organization that is shaping the future of NHS manufacturing.

Benefits

Extensive staff health and well-being programme

Flexible working opportunities

Generous annual leave

Pension scheme

Access to lease car scheme

Professional development training programmes

On-site nursery places

Savings scheme via salary sacrifice

Qualifications

• Strong leadership skills in pharmaceutical manufacturing are essential.
• Post-graduate qualifications in relevant fields are required.

Responsibilities

• Lead the cleanroom production team ensuring GMP compliance.
• Develop and optimize production processes for efficiency.

Skills

Leadership

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP)

Process Validation

Team Development

Education

Post-graduate qualification in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Postgraduate diploma in Pharmaceutical Technology and Quality Assurance

Job description

Site Northumbria Healthcare Manufacturing and Innovation Hub Town Seaton Delaval Salary £46,148 - £52,809 per annum Salary period Yearly Closing 19/02/2025 23:59

Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England? Work for an organisation that was voted the best acute and combined acute and community trust in the country, based on the experience of its staff (NHS Staff Survey 2022). Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare and, this is…the Northumbria Way!

What the Northumbria Way means for you :

• Extensive staff health and well-being programme including access to our specialist Wellbeing Hub
• Support and connection through a variety of Staff Network groups
• A range of flexible working opportunities
• Generous annual leave and pension scheme
• Access to lease car and home electronics scheme (qualifying criteria applies)
• Opportunities to improve your professional development through our vast training programmes
• On-site nursery places via salary sacrifice
• Access to savings scheme via salary sacrifice with Northumberland Community Bank

We are proud to be one of the country’s top performing NHS trusts – rated ‘outstanding’ overall by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). We provide a range of health and care services to support more than 500,000 people living in Northumberland and North Tyneside across the largest geographical area of any NHS Trust in England. Our teams deliver care from hospitals, a range of community venues and people’s homes. Our hospitals include a specialist emergency care hospital (the first of its kind in England), three general hospitals and community hospitals. In the community we deliver a wide range of community and public health services.

We lead in innovation and quality, having opened the Northumbria Healthcare Manufacturing and Innovation Hub during the Covid-19 pandemic and have recently launched our Community Promise – a pledge to make a real impact not just in healthcare but on the wider factors that affect people’s lives, such as education, employment and the economy.

If Northumbria Healthcare sounds like somewhere you could belong we would love to hear from you. Visit our website to catch up on our latest news.

Job overview

An exceptional opportunity has arisen to take a pivotal leadership role in the Medicines Manufacturing Centre (MMC)—a state-of-the-art NHS manufacturing facility dedicated to producing sterile injectable medicinal products. Located in Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, MMC will operate under MHRA Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards, ensuring a secure supply chain for Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT) products for the next 10 years.

As Production Lead, you will provide day-to-day leadership within the cleanrooms, overseeing sterile production activities and ensuring compliance with GMP regulations. You will have the unique opportunity to influence production processes, training, and culture, working closely with the Head of Production and Production Manager to build an efficient and high-performing team.

Why This Role Matters

At MMC, patients and quality are at the heart of everything we do. By delivering Ready-to-Administer (RtA) medicines, we enable NHS nurses to spend more time on direct patient care rather than preparing medications. The Production Lead will play a key role in making this mission a reality—ensuring safe, reliable, and high-quality production every day.

Main duties of the job

What You’ll Be Doing

• You will lead the cleanroom production team, ensuring compliance with GMP and safety regulations.
• Developing and optimizing production processes will be key to maintaining efficiency and high-quality output.
• You will also play a crucial role in training programs, developing staff skills, and embedding a culture of excellence.
• A strong, collaborative production culture is essential, and you will work closely with Quality, R&D, and Finance to achieve this.
• Additionally, you will be involved in facility commissioning, process validation, and team recruitment, helping to shape the future of NHS medicines manufacturing.

Working for our organisation

Working at MMC

The MMC is in its final design stages, with facility construction planned through to September 2025. Initially, staff will be employed by Northumbria Healthcare Foundation NHS Trust, with employment transferring to the Medicines Manufacturing Centre Legal Liability Partnership (LLP) upon its formation under TUPE regulations.

This is a unique opportunity to be part of a brand-new NHS manufacturing facility, helping to shape its future from day one. If you’re passionate about leadership, operational excellence, and making a real impact on patient care, we’d love to hear from you.

Apply today and help build something extraordinary.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To have delegated responsibility with the new product introduction process including process validation.
• To assist in the development strategy to ensure a robust and fit for purpose manufacturing workforce.
• To supervise contractors and to lead on the commissioning and qualification of facilities and manufacturing equipment.
• To supervise the storage and distribution of manufactured medicines.
• To support the ongoing maintenance and re-qualification of the MMC facilities.
• To role model compassionate and inclusive leadership in order to shape the creation of a collective leadership culture within the trust. This means demonstrating a consistent leadership style which (a) engages, enables and empowers others (b) uses coaching to promote ownership of learning and quality improvement and (c) facilitates team working and collaboration within teams / departments and across organisational boundaries.

Person specification

Qualifications

• Post-graduate qualification in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing or equivalent experience
• Postgraduate diploma in Pharmaceutical Technology and Quality Assurance

Experience

• Evidence of continuing education/professional CPD
• Evidence of procuring specialist pharmaceutical equipment in compliance with procurement law
• Evidence of pharmaceutical quality system knowledge
• Evidence of ongoing facility compliance monitoring
• Evidence of awareness of the NHSE Aseptic Transformation process

Applicants who are members of the Armed Forces, and those who have a disability that requires support in the work place (two ticks pledge) and who meet the essential criteria will be interviewed under the Trust's interview guarantee scheme.

We recognise the positive value of diversity and inclusion and are committed to a workforce that is diverse, equal and inclusive. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds. We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates as BAME people are currently under-represented in our workforce as well as other under-represented groups such as LGBT+ and disabled candidates. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, we have a Gold award from the Defense Recognition Scheme, and we are delighted to support Apprenticeships, Age Posi+ive and are a mindful employer.

If you require any reasonable adjustments to attend interview please make the recruitment team aware as soon as possible by calling our HR Recruitment Team on 0191 203 1415 option 2.

Applicants who meet the Fit and Proper Person Requirements (FPPR) will require additional pre-employment checks in line with CQC and NHS England statutory guidance.

Make sure to read the ‘applicant guidance notes’ before submitting your application and make sure you know everything there is to know before joining our fantastic trust!

Please note that it is a requirement of this Trust that all successful applicants pay for their own DBS certification if a DBS check is required for the post. The method of payment is a salary deduction from your first monthly pay.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.