Deputy Director – Inspectorate Office, Hospitals

Grade E3: £75,183 per annum

Contracted Hours: Full-time 37 hours per week

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: Homebased, with travel as required

Closing Date: Monday 25th May 2026 at 11.59pm

Interview Date: Monday 6th July 2026 – face to face in our Stratford, London Office

Make a difference

Every role at CQC contributes to our mission. If you’re looking for a new role that offers purpose at a pivotal moment for the organisation, you’ve found it.

Picture this

You work at the heart of a Chief Inspector’s Office, helping a small central team run smoothly while supporting clear priorities, strong relationships and confident leadership across the system.

In the last year as a Deputy Director for the Inspectorate Office, you might have helped a Chief Inspector and Directors drive strategic delivery and performance during a period of organisational change, ensuring priorities stayed focused and achievable, and worked alongside other Deputy Directors to align cross‑sector priorities, sharing insight and learning so approaches were consistent across health and care.

The role

You'll work closely with others to deliver shared outcomes. In this role, you’ll:

• Support the Inspectorate’s leadership and delivery: ensure the Chief Inspector and Directors are well supported to lead their Inspectorate, with clear priorities, strong oversight and effective use of time and resources.
• Coordinate and connect teams: make sure relationships and programmes of work across Inspectorates and with corporate partners work well, so the Inspectorate’s work is joined up and well supported.
• Provide strategic insight and assurance: bring together performance, risk and delivery information to give the Chief Inspector and Directors a clear picture of progress, emerging issues and opportunities to improve quality and consistency.

Show us

We will be looking for specific skills, knowledge and experience in your application:

• Executive and strategic support: proven experience supporting a senior leader or executive team to deliver a large, complex portfolio of work, including setting priorities, planning activity, managing budgets, enabling effective governance and tracking delivery against organisational strategy in a national or complex organisation.
• Regulatory leadership and assurance: experience leading or overseeing operational delivery in a regulatory or assurance‑based environment, including managing risk, performance, quality and enforcement activity, and using sound judgement within the health and social care system.
• Collaborative delivery and informed decision‑making: experience delivering results through matrix working across functions, building effective relationships with senior stakeholders, and using data and insight to produce clear advice, briefings or recommendations that support decision‑making during change.
• Quality Management System expertise: demonstrable knowledge and experience in building and implementing a Quality Management system to drive planning, improvement, and assurance.

The Benefits

We offer a wide range of benefits, including:

• Annual leave; starting at 27 days per year, rising to 32.5 days with service, plus bank holidays (usually 8 days per year).
• Training and development opportunities.
• Wellbeing initiatives, such as gym discounts and meditation.
• NHS pension scheme, with around 14% employer contribution.
• Discount schemes (including eligibility for Blue Light Card, costing £4.99 and valid for 2 years), reward vouchers, car leasing and more!

Compliance

To progress your application, you’ll need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK. Without a valid right to work you won’t be eligible for the role. We are unable to offer sponsorship for this role. Some roles may also be subject to a satisfactory DBS check.

Equity for all

We encourage you to apply. Your unique perspective, skills, and experience could be exactly what we need. We want every candidate to feel supported and able to do their best. If you need adjustments to our process, we’ll work with you to remove any barriers.

We promote a workplace where fairness, respect and inclusion are a priority. We welcome applications from everyone, and colleagues can find support and community among many employee networks. This includes people of any age, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, ethnicity, and disability.

Values and vision

We are guided by our core values, which shape our work and our culture: Excellence – being a high‑performing organisation; Caring – treating everyone with dignity and respect; Integrity – doing the right thing; Teamwork – learning from each other to be the best we can. We are a disability confident employer and a carer confident employer.