AMR Surveillance Manager

You may not have heard of the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD), but have you ever:

• eaten meat, eggs, fish or honey
• drunk milk
• owned a pet or animal
• taken antibiotics

If you said yes to any of the above, you are directly affected by what the VMD does. The VMD is the regulatory and policy lead responsible for issues concerning the authorisation, use, and manufacture of veterinary medicines in the UK. Our aim is to protect public health, animal health, and the environment, and promote animal welfare by assuring the safety, quality and effectiveness of veterinary medicines.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the biggest threats to global health. Robust evidence is essential to support interventions that reduce the impact of AMR on animal and human health; accordingly, surveillance and research are key priorities in the UK's National Action Plan for AMR (NAP). The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) leads governmental decision-making for AMR in animals in England. The VMD has a dedicated AMR Surveillance & Evidence team to ensure we understand, detect, and respond to AMR risks effectively, and make evidence-based policy decisions.

Surveillance is a key foundation of the UK's AMR strategy, providing the evidence base needed to detect and understand emerging risks and better support interventions that protect human health and animal health. In this role, you will be instrumental in strengthening the UK's surveillance capabilities and improving the data that informs national AMR policy. The VMD oversees two major AMR surveillance programmes in animals: the UK-wide monitoring of healthy animals at slaughter, and clinical surveillance in England and Wales. These programmes are delivered in partnership with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) and other cross-government collaborators.

As AMR Surveillance Manager, you will be responsible for managing our AMR surveillance programmes, ensuring their scientific robustness, value-for-money, and alignment with evolving policy needs. You will lead the delivery, governance, and continuous development of these programmes. You will also ensure that surveillance outputs are clearly and accurately communicated, particularly in the VMD's flagship publication, the annual UK Veterinary Antibiotic Resistance and Sales Surveillance (UK-VARSS) report. This role sits in the AMR Surveillance & Evidence (S & E) team, which is part of the wider AMR Team. The role involves significant coordination and engagement with delivery partners, government departments, and external stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the VMD's AMR surveillance programmes by managing contracts, setting up requirements and timelines, and monitoring delivery of AMR surveillance outputs.
• Manage and coordinate the validation, interpretation and reporting of results, as provided by delivery partners, for the AMR monitoring and surveillance programmes.
• Oversee the response to notifications of resistant bacteria of concern to animal and public health (ResAlert).
• Work alongside other AMR team members to bring specific expertise to individual ResAlert notifications.
• Lead the continuous development of our current surveillance programmes and work with others in the Surveillance & Evidence team to strengthen the overall system.
• Line manage two people, to help you deliver the AMR surveillance programmes and support wider Surveillance & Evidence team activities.
• Oversee the data quality, drafting, and production of the AMR chapters of the UK-VARSS report, ensuring AMR surveillance data is clearly and accurately presented.
• Contribute scientific input as required to National Action Plan (NAP) reporting, policy briefings, articles, and other outputs from the AMR Team.
• Complying with ISO 9001 (quality management) and ISO 27001 (information security) standards, and GDPR and Information Management requirements.
• Act corporately - meeting, role-modelling, embedding, and championing the corporate objectives set by the VMD.

A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer.