Chief Medical Officer in Cambridge

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) is seeking an exceptional Chief Medical Officer (CMO) to join its Board and provide dynamic, visible leadership for the next stage of its journey. This is a pivotal opportunity for a senior clinician who combines professional credibility with compassion and can translate ambitious clinical strategy into meaningful delivery through transformation, innovation, and a relentless focus on quality, outcomes, and experience.

CPFT delivers a broad range of mental health, learning disability, autism, and community services across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. The Trust is proud of both the care it provides and the people who provide it, and is focused on redesigning pathways, improving access and flow, strengthening safety and governance, and making care more personalised, integrated, and equitable. As CMO, you will help set this direction and lead the work that turns strategy into impact.

Recognised nationally and internationally for award-winning research, CPFT is a University Teaching Hospital and a member of the University Hospital Association. Partnerships with the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University create a unique environment for shaping the future of healthcare and developing innovation with world-class research capability.

This role requires a highly visible and engaging leader: present in services, connected to teams, and able to build momentum with clarity and purpose. You will set the tone for medical leadership across CPFT by modelling behaviours that sustain a learning culture that is open, inclusive, accountable, and kind. You will build confidence in change and enable high-performing teams to deliver at pace while maintaining compassion at the heart of care.

You will lead an ambitious clinical strategy aligned to system priorities and population need, ensuring it delivers improved care across community and inpatient settings. You will sponsor clinically led transformation and service redesign, improve pathways, champion innovation, and use data and improvement methods to secure measurable gains in quality, safety, access, and productivity through digital enablement, new care models, and evidence-based practice that strengthen prevention, recovery, and independence.

The post provides executive leadership for medical governance, patient safety, and quality improvement, with robust assurance and a just, learning approach to risk. We are seeking an executive-ready clinician with full GMC registration and a proven track record in large-scale transformation. You will bring sound board-level judgement, influence in complex environments, and a clear commitment to visible leadership across diverse teams representing over 50 nationalities.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high-quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting and empowering them to lead a fulfilling life. Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services, not only via inpatient and primary care settings, but also within the community. These services include children's, adult and older people's mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, research and development.

To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high-calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.

Please be advised we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date should we receive sufficient applications. Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all our job roles. If you apply for a role that we cannot offer sponsorship for, unfortunately, your application form will be rejected from the process.

For further information on CPFT, please visit our website.

• Provide strategic leadership to the Trust Board on clinical strategy, quality, safety, outcomes, and transformation.
• Be the Executive Lead for clinical governance including audit and clinical effectiveness, ensuring robust assurance frameworks and effective oversight of clinical governance, risk management, incident response and regulatory engagement.
• Lead major transformation programmes across mental health and community care, including:

• Neighbourhood/community models and integrated teams
• Crisis and urgent care pathways
• Inpatient care redesign and therapeutic environments
• Long-term condition management and rehabilitation