Senior Programme Manager

Our Organisation

We share the core values set out in the NHS Constitution, which all colleagues are expected to demonstrate.

We support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you and your colleagues. Talk to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement, whether that’s a job share, part time, hybrid working or another flexible pattern.

As part of our commitment to improving patient safety and maintaining safe and trusted services, all successful candidates will be subject to Baseline Personnel Security Screening (BPSS), which includes a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. By submitting your application, you are confirming your agreement to these checks being undertaken as part of the recruitment process.

Anyone who has received a voluntary or compulsory redundancy payment from NHS England since the start of the 2026/27 financial year is not eligible to apply.

Job overview

The Senior Programme Manager – Commercial is a senior delivery role within the Commercial Function, working in the Commercial team and answerable to the Assistant Director of Commercial. The postholder will lead significant elements of the function’s first-year programme of work and its enduring activity, translating an evolving commercial design into delivered capability. This is a broad role, suited to an experienced programme manager with commercial credibility who is comfortable operating with ambiguity in a function that is still being defined, and who can work effectively across NHS England Commercial, DDaT, the Investment Areas, Regions, providers and the supplier market.

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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.

Working for our organisation

NHS England has a wide range of statutory functions, responsibilities and regulatory powers. These are focused on supporting the wider NHS to deliver high quality care, as well as doing those things that are best done once for the whole NHS.

Our staff bring expertise across clinical, operational, commissioning, technology, data science, cyber security, software engineering, education, and commercial specialisms — enabling us to design and deliver high-quality NHS services.

In March 2025, the Government announced that NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care will increasingly merge functions, ultimately leading to NHS England being fully integrated into the department.

If you currently work within the NHS and if successful at interview, we will initiate an Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). This retrieves key data from your current or previous NHS employer to support onboarding, including competency status, Continuous Service Dates (CSD), and annual leave entitlement. You may opt out at any stage of the process.

Colleagues with a contractual office base are expected to spend, on average, at least 40% of their time working in our offices.

Staff recruited from outside the NHS will usually be appointed at the bottom of the pay band.

We cannot offer visa sponsorship for any vacancies.

Detailed job description and main 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 Exchequer’s 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 Programme’s 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 Government’s 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 Programme’s 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 Programme’s 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 Programme’s 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.

Secondments

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.

Our commitments to you

We are passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity. We know that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better patient outcomes.

We strive to ensure our people feel trusted, valued and empowered. When you join us, we want you to grow and excel, and we offer many opportunities for you to do that.

We welcome your talent and enthusiasm irrespective of age, disability, neuro-divergence, sex, gender identity and gender expression, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances.

We ensure all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process. This includes considering reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability and/or who are neuro-divergent.

We welcome applications from disabled candidates. If you meet all the essential criteria, you will be guaranteed an interview.

Your application is your opportunity to demonstrate how you meet the requirements of the role. While we appreciate you may have had some support with your application (for example, using AI technology or guidance from a trusted individual), it’s important all the information you provide in it reflects your own knowledge, skills and experience and we trust that you apply on that basis.

If you’re applying for this role on a secondment basis, please get agreement from your current line manager before you apply.

We don’t accept applications via recruitment agencies, and we cannot offer visa sponsorship for any vacancies.

NHS Business Services Authority is responsible for processing your application; our privacy can be accessed directly on the application page when you select to apply.

If you are appointed to a post, your information will also be transferred into the NHS Electronic Staff Records system.

If you have a query about your application, please contact the recruitment team: [email protected] or 0300 330 1369.

NHS England