Senior Programme Manager

Job description

Job responsibilities

The Frontline Productivity Programme has been established to raise the digital productivity of the NHS frontline, ensuring that investment in technology and IT infrastructure translates into measurable improvements in productivity, patient safety and the quality of care. It does this by setting national strategy and guardrails, allocating funding through NHS England Regions, and providing the standards, guidance and specialist expertise that individual organisations cannot effectively deliver alone.

Background

Frontline Productivity (FP) is one of the largest digitally enabled transformation programmes in the country. Following the Chancellor of the Exchequers Spending Review announcement of 11 June 2025, funding has been confirmed for the four years from 2026/27 to 2029/30 covering infrastructure for frontline organisations, cyber for frontline organisations, Connecting Care Records, Electronic Patient Records (EPR) and associated productivity technologies for all care settings, and support to change management.

Across the spending review period the Programme represents capital of £0.8bn and revenue of £1.4bn, alongside a further £0.3bn capital and £0.6bn revenue invested by provider organisations. It builds on the achievements of the Frontline Digitisation, Network Connectivity and NHS Wi-Fi programmes, which will have supported 90% of organisations to achieve core EPR implementation targets by March 2026, delivered over 16,000 gigabit-capable network connections and enabled 95% of organisations to begin using cloud infrastructure.

The Programmes scope covers all health care settings primary care (general practice) and secondary care (acute, community, mental health and ambulance services) and includes both NHS and Community Interest Company providers. At least 50% of funding and support is expected to be directed to organisations delivering non-acute care, supporting the shift towards neighbourhood health services. Social care funding is out of scope.

The Programme directly supports the NHS 10-Year Plan, the Governments health and growth missions, and the NHS ambition of 2% annual productivity growth. It addresses an ageing digital estate that consumes up to 40% of secondary care IT budgets, unreliable infrastructure that costs frontline staff clinical and administrative time, an absence of standardisation that prevents the NHS from realising economies of scale, a rising cyber security threat, and a shortage of digital adoption and change management capability.

Delivery is coordinated nationally by NHS England and led locally by Regions, which aggregate need across their provider communities, set local priorities within nationally defined guardrails and oversee delivery. The national Programme decides overall strategy and priorities, determines regional allocations, and provides change management, risk management, implementation and PMO support, knowledge management, skills development and Centres of Excellence. The Programmes investment areas are:

Infrastructure networks and connectivity, wireless, end user devices, hosting and cloud.

Electronic Patient Records full digitisation, core capability and optimisation, including usability and digitally enabled pathway redesign.

Connected Care Records meeting minimum national criteria and achieving national interoperability coverage.

Digital Medicines closed loop medicines systems and the structured transfer of medicines information.

Frontline elements of the Cyber Improvement Programme.

Change management and digital adoption.

Lead the mobilisation of agreed elements of the Commercial Function, including the design and embedding of processes, governance forums, reporting routes and ways of working.

Manage the whole lifecycle of commercial programmes of work containing multiple projects and workstreams planning, resourcing, reporting on progress and managing risks, issues and dependencies acting as a point of escalation for project managers within the team.

Support the development and implementation of the Programme commercial strategy and its alignment with the wider NHS England commercial strategy, Government Commercial Function policy, and applicable DDaT, cyber and data standards.

Lead the assessment of Programme demand and the review of regional plans, working with the Investment Areas and the EPMO to build a consolidated view of the investment pipeline and to identify commercial risks, dependencies and opportunities for aggregation.

Lead or contribute to major procurement activity undertaken on behalf of the Programme, including the Delivery Partner procurement developing the route to market, scope and requirements, managing the process to timetable, and supporting evaluation, award and mobilisation.

Establish and run market and supplier relationship management activity, including supplier segmentation, market intelligence, price benchmarking and strategic supplier relationships, to improve supply chain resilience and ensure market readiness ahead of regional investment.

Develop and deliver the Programmes commercial support offer to Regions and providers guidance, templates, contract management frameworks, business case review and specialist advice and oversee the collection and cascade of commercial lessons learned.

Manage the interface with NHS England Commercial, DDaT, the New Hospital Programme and the Investment Areas, ensuring that activity delivered on the Programmes behalf is visible, coordinated, and free from duplication or gaps.

Provide commercial input to Programme business cases and funding decisions, including navigating NHS England, Department of Health and Social Care, Cabinet Office and HM Treasury approvals governance.

Manage budgets for allocated programmes of work, including budget setting, monitoring and forecasting, and contribute to resourcing and delivery model decisions for the function.

Deliver detailed programme reports to senior NHS England team members and to various Boards across the health and social care system, including where necessary the Department of Health and Social Care.

You can find further details about the role, including key responsibilities and accountabilities, alongside the organisational structure and person specification in the attached Job Description and other supporting documents.

Applicants from within the NHS will be offered on a secondment basis only, agreement should be obtained from their employer prior to submitting the application.

Person Specification

Professional

• Educated to Masters level in a relevant area of academic commercial or clinical practice
• To have one or more of the below programme/project management qualifications: Managing Successful Programmes Practitioner; Managing Successful Programmes Advanced Practitioner; P3O Practitioner; APM Registered Project Professional.

Knowledge and experience

• Proven experience of managing complex programmes and delivering them within agreed timescales and budgets.
• Extensive experience of leading change projects and wider programmes of work

Inerpersonal Skills

• Excellent communication and presentation skills and an ability to engage successfully with a wide range of people at all levels within the organisation.
• Strong ability to build relations with internal and external partners which are critical in securing the strategic objectives of the business.

Skills and Abilities

• Ability to provide and receive highly complex, sensitive and contentious information where there may be significant challenge
• Ability to draw complex qualitative and quantitative information from a range of sources and present it in a clear and concise way

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Employer details

Employer name

NHS England

Address

London Wellington House/10 South Colonnade or Leeds Wellington Place

London and Leeds

SE1 8UG

United Kingdom

Employer's website

https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/working-for/