Chief Digital Officer in Stoke-on-Trent

Your new company is a forward-thinking and rapidly growing multi-academy trust with a strong commitment to ensuring high achievement and equal opportunities for every learner, with academies based in both Staffordshire and Greater Manchester. The trust oversees a diverse family of academies and is driven by the belief that no child's ambitions should be limited by background or ability. Its mission centres on raising aspirations, accelerating progress and enabling ambitious life goals for all pupils, underpinned by a values-led culture and a clear focus on quality, inclusion and consistency across its schools.

As the trust continues to expand, digital leadership plays an increasingly critical role in supporting school improvement, operational excellence and learner outcomes. With a strong emphasis on school support, talent development and continuous improvement, the organisation is well-positioned for a senior digital leader to modernise systems, drive innovation from an AI perspective and shape a trust-wide digital transformation strategy. A Chief Digital Officer will join an ambitious Executive Leadership Team, committed to using technology to remove barriers, strengthen organisational capability and deliver consistently high standards across all academies.

Your new role involves leading the development and delivery of a trust-wide digital and IT strategy, setting clear priorities, investment plans and measurable outcomes. You will maintain oversight of the Trust's digital landscape, establishing a transformation roadmap and driving the transition to a coherent enterprise architecture across platforms, integrations and data flows, working closely with the wider team at head office and in individual academies. The role will champion innovation and modernisation across schools and central services while ensuring all technology decisions support educational priorities and safeguarding expectations.

This includes providing strategic advice to the CEO and Trustees, overseeing core systems and infrastructure to ensure they are secure, resilient and scalable, and driving value for money through effective procurement and vendor management. You will lead the Trust's cyber-security strategy, embedding strong risk management, incident response and digital resilience, while promoting cyber awareness across the organisation. The Chief Digital Officer will also establish and embed a trust-wide data governance framework, ensuring high-quality, consistent and accessible data to support informed decision-making.

They will take a responsible and forward-thinking approach to emerging technologies, with a strong emphasis on AI, identifying opportunities to enhance teaching, learning and organisational effectiveness. Working closely with education leaders, you will ensure digital platforms and tools meet the needs of schools and have a positive impact on teaching and learning, setting high standards trust-wide. As a senior executive leader, you will provide regular updates to the CEO and Board, lead major digital transformation programmes and support the professional development of IT and digital teams across the Trust.

Please note this role does offer hybrid working, however you will need to have a weekly presence at the Head Office based in Staffordshire.

In order to be successful in securing this role, you will be working at an executive level in relation to digital transformation, ideally with education sector experience. You will have spearheaded a digital transformation previously, working across multiple sites and working closely with a wider executive team to deliver change. Ownership of a digital or technology strategy will be essential, with experience developing and leading on cyber security and managing a team being crucial. From an individual perspective, you will have a passion for working in the education sector and understand the impact of technology on the education sector and on learners individually.

In return, you will be joining this executive leadership team where you will become an integral part of the organisation, all working together towards a common goal in this rewarding environment. You will receive a competitive salary of between £115,000 and £125,000 dependent on experience and will also receive a local government pension scheme and an attractive benefits package. This includes 33 days holiday (plus bank holidays) and access to a retail discount scheme, a cycle to work scheme and employee wellbeing platforms.

If you’re interested in this role, click 'apply now' to forward an up-to-date copy of your CV, or call us now. If this job isn’t quite right for you, but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion about your career.