Digital Service Owner in Manchester

Do you want to do meaningful work that makes a genuine difference to society? Our main purpose here at The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is to improve health and wellbeing by putting science and evidence at the heart of health and care decision-making. As an organisation we all collaborate to achieve this goal by empowering our workforce to do great things!

Please note that this role may not be eligible for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker route.

Main duties of the job

The Digital Service Owner (Planning & Scheduling) is accountable for the quality, performance and delivery of digital services that support NICE's strategic objectives. Working with senior business service owners, the role provides strategic leadership across end-to-end services, balancing long-term transformation with effective operation and continuous improvement. The post holder acts as a trusted business partner, ensuring digital, data and technology investments deliver value for users, the organisation and the wider health and care system.

Key responsibilities include:

• Providing strategic ownership of services that support planning and scheduling of NICE guidance production, ensuring alignment with organisational priorities and benefits realisation.
• Developing and maintaining evidence-based service roadmaps, balancing strategic change, risk and live service needs.
• Working with senior stakeholders, advising on digital opportunities, constraints and value-led decisions.
• Overseeing delivery across products and teams using agile or other scalable methods.
• Managing service performance, reporting, governance, risks, dependencies and assurance.
• Managing capacity, budgets and suppliers to ensure effective use of resources.
• Championing continuous improvement and user-centred design.
• Providing inclusive leadership to build high-performing multidisciplinary teams.

About us

The Planning Delivery & Oversight team is responsible for aligning DDAT activity planning to the NICE strategy and overseeing and ensuring that work is completed. It also plays a key role in maximising value from technology through digital change and adoption, and has cross-cutting responsibility for budget, internal and external governance, and reporting.

NICE benefits:

• Generous NHS Pension – Secure your future with one of the most rewarding pension schemes in the UK.
• Flexible Working – Enjoy a healthy work-life balance with options like remote working, compressed hours, and flexible start/finish times.
• Exclusive Discounts – Save on shopping, dining, and more with a Blue Light Card.
• Time to Recharge – Start with 27 days' annual leave plus Bank Holidays.
• Inclusive Staff Networks – Join supportive communities such as Women in NICE, Race Equality Network, Disability Advocacy, and NICE and Proud; we celebrate diversity.
• Tailored Development – Grow your career with personalised learning and development opportunities.

Job responsibilities

To be considered for this role, you should be able to particularly demonstrate the person specification criteria in the job advert in your application. However, applicants should be able to demonstrate all essential criteria through the entirety of the recruitment process to be considered for the job.

This role comes with a current recruitment and retention premium of 10% which is applied against the relevant pay point set by experience at this or equivalent level. The recruitment and retention premium is not a contractual commitment and is reassessed against equivalent market roles periodically. The current premium is in place until end March 2028 at which point a further market assessment will be undertaken to inform future need.

Person Specification

Education/Qualifications

• Master's degree level qualification or equivalent experience, demonstrating highly developed specialist knowledge in digital, data, or technology disciplines.

Experience

• Significant experience as a senior portfolio/services manager developing new functionality and services.
• Experience creating strategic roadmaps to inform portfolio transformation programmes whilst balancing live service priorities.

Skills/Knowledge

• Extensive knowledge in the principles, methods, techniques and tools for the effective management of a portfolio and related activities through to the successful achievement of planned business benefits.
• Extensive knowledge in a range of technology/digital project management and delivery methodologies including agile and waterfall.
• Strong knowledge of tools and processes surrounding application development (building a product and service vision, roadmap development, backlog development and grooming, systems architecture, testing, estimating etc).

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.