Manager – Data & Digital in London

The opportunity

Data & Digital is a significant growth area for Social Finance, and we are now looking to grow our team to deliver on the ambitions of our impact strategy and contribute to scaling key impact portfolios. As a Manager, your work will be varied, from leading projects/products, to contributing to our data & digital strategy and shaping new opportunities, to coaching and mentoring colleagues. We are looking for an individual who is passionate about how data and technology can be used to solve social problems, and who has strong experience/interest in working to deliver programmes requiring a combination of technical, strategic and operational expertise.

The Team

Our UK Team comprises around 60 dedicated change‑makers, bringing together a wide range of skills and expertise to deliver better solutions to complex social problems. This role will anchor to the Data & Digital Community of Practice within our UK Team. As a Community of Practice, we bring multi‑disciplinary data & digital skills to solve complex problems and improve outcomes for people and communities. Our portfolio spans Social Finance’s four key impact areas: Children & Young People, Health & Social Care, Employment & Skills, and Housing & Homelessness. Across these, we focus on delivering programmes with the greatest potential for impact at scale, addressing a range of levers for systems change.

Examples of key strategic programmes:

• Developing National Social Care Data Standards: We have partnered with central government to shape the rules, data models and market conditions that enable key information to be shared and systems to interoperate at scale across children’s and adult social care. This includes developing and governing data standards, contributing to improving analytics, identifying opportunities to support children as early as possible, and releasing time to care for social workers. Social Finance has an ongoing role convening strategy, design and implementation of these data standards, triangulating inputs from across technical, commercial, policy and operational domains.
• Scaling a Common Data Platform to Enable Regional Children’s Services Analysis: We collaborated with local authorities to develop a secure data platform that facilitates regional analysis of children’s services data, unlocking insights around critical areas to improve outcomes for children and families, from demand modelling to inform service planning, to analysing sufficiency of care placements. The work started in London in 2020, and the data platform is now used by c. 40% of local authorities.
• Delivering Digital Innovation Support Programmes in Health & Care: We have collaborated with foundation and government partners to deliver 6 digital innovation support programmes with national / international reach, supporting 200+ innovators across impact areas including Mental Health Data, Care Tech and Dementia Tech. Our support combines strategic support for funders with a comprehensive support offer for innovators, enabling teams to tailor their learning journey across technical, human‑centred design and scale & sustainability modules.

The role

We are looking for a manager with data and digital expertise to deliver programmes supporting public and social sector partners to improve outcomes for people and communities. We have a wide range of programmes spanning two key strategic objectives:

• Enabling better strategic and operational decision‑making by advancing data maturity: from improving data quality and standards, to setting up data sharing infrastructure, to data reporting and analysis.
• Scaling data & digital transformation through innovation programmes & partnerships: from partnering with funders to deliver data & digital challenge prizes and learning networks, to designing tailored apprenticeships to build data & digital skills across key impact areas.

This breadth is intentional. Rather than trying to develop our own leadership in a single area, we are trying to achieve social change. We take on this wide variety of challenges because these are the levers needed to change systems. You will need to be excited by that breadth – and by the frequent need for teams to blend technical with policy and service delivery expertise to identify the right solution. Ultimately, social impact should be your driver rather than the use of cutting‑edge data science approaches or the latest technologies, as we are often constrained by the data, technology, and in‑house capability of our partners. This provides you with the opportunity to think of creative ways to work around those constraints and consider that to be part of the fun.

Key responsibilities:

• Manage delivery of data & digital projects/products, often spanning multiple organisations, sectors and delivery partners.
• Work with Directors to set project vision, and define a clear roadmap to coordinate distinct workstreams with different rhythms and stakeholders.
• Identify and manage risks, interdependencies and constraints, managing upwards effectively and coordinating with functional leads where appropriate (e.g. Information Governance, Legal, Finance).
• Build trusted working relationships with key stakeholders across partner organisations (e.g. government departments, foundations, local authorities, NHS Trusts, vendors and delivery partners).
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders, acting as a bridge between individuals from different disciplines to triangulate a shared vision, and enable stakeholders to take important decisions.
• Foster a ‘one team’ approach with partner organisations to share knowledge and expertise so that partners can undertake similar work themselves in future.

Programme team leadership and development:

• Coordinate across a multi‑disciplinary programme team, fostering effective collaboration across disciplines (including e.g. software developers, data scientists, user researchers, service designers and operational or domain specialists).
• Deliver strong project management, providing clarity, structure and momentum for team members.
• Enable effective problem solving through influencing, coordinating and unblocking across teams, rather than directing.
• Contribute to a positive, inclusive team culture, and support staff development, morale and wellbeing.

Working with specialist content as a generalist:

• Operate confidently as a generalist engaging with specialist domains, without needing to be the technical expert. Across programmes, this can include for example:
• Ability to get up to speed quickly on an unfamiliar technical domain, asking the right questions rather than already knowing the answers.
• Triangulating product development decisions & prioritisation, drawing on input from multi‑disciplinary stakeholders.
• Ability to reason across technical, strategic and operational considerations to make strategic recommendations.
• Understanding information governance well enough to track dependencies, identify blockers and know when to engage internal IG experts.

Practice development and business contribution:

• Contribute to the development of Social Finance’s data and digital practice, including shaping approaches, tools and ways of working.
• Support business development by contributing to scoping and developing proposals for new project opportunities.
• Work with the senior team to shape our data & digital strategy across Social Finance’s key impact areas.

About you

We are looking for an individual whose interests and experience align with the ambitions of our impact strategy to bring data & digital skills to delivering complex systems change.

• A clear and sustained interest in data & digital transformation, with motivation to work in this space long‑term.
• Experience managing data and digital projects/products, including working with multi‑disciplinary teams.
• Strong project management capability, including managing ambiguity, interdependencies, phased delivery and evolving scope.
• Familiarity with the product development lifecycle and approaches to navigate from ideation to final solutions.
• Ability to reason about and communicate technical concepts with a range of stakeholders, including helping non‑specialists to understand data and technology and take important decisions, from re‑designing services to choosing a coding language.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with credibility engaging external partners across different roles and levels of seniority.
• Experience leading and developing teams, delivering impact through others.

The following experience would be advantageous but is not required:

• Product management.
• Human‑centred design.
• Experience working in or for the public sector.
• Experience in one or more of Social Finance’s impact areas (Children & Young People, Health & Social Care, Employment & Skills, and Housing & Homelessness).

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

We actively encourage applications from under‑representated and minoritised groups, including those with lived experience of the social issues we are working to address. We are an equal opportunities employer.

Working at Social Finance

The fixed salary for this position is £56,500 per annum. Working for a mission driven organisation is more than just what we pay though, it’s about our culture, our approach and what else we offer.