Associate Director of Data and Technology

Description

Today, 12 children and young people will be diagnosed with cancer. We’ll stop at nothing to make sure they get the right care and support at the right time.     

When a child or young person is diagnosed with cancer, their whole world (and their family’s) can feel like it’s falling apart. Their anxieties are deep. Their education, mental health and social lives suffer. Their futures feel very uncertain. They need tailored support, and they need to know that their voices and unique needs are being heard and understood.  

We’re there to make sure that happens.    

We believe children and young people with cancer are more than their diagnosis. And we’ll stop at nothing to make sure they have the right support and the same opportunities as everyone else. We know what a better future could look like for children and young people with cancer. And we know what we need to do to make that future a reality. We need to push harder, reach further and work smarter.

And we need the right leaders on our team to help us get there. People like you.  

About the Role

We’re looking for a dynamic Associate Director of Data and Technology to join our Digital, Data & Technology Directorate and shape the future of how we use data and technology to create meaningful impact.

Reporting to the Director of Digital, Data & Technology, you’ll support the implementation of a newly-formed function encompassing IT Infrastructure, Cyber Security, Data Analysis and Insight, and the creation of a new Data Engineering team. With a strong technical foundation in data disciplines, you’ll bring your expertise to ensure best-in-class data governance, management, and stewardship.

This is a unique opportunity to combine strategic leadership with hands-on technical involvement—up to 30% of your time will be spent directly engaging with technology and architecture. You’ll play a critical role in our three-year organisation-wide digital transformation programme, guiding the development of a Technical Design Authority to drive smart, future-focused technical decision-making.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the implementation of the new data and technology unit, developing effective technology and data governance including a Technical Design Authority.
• Collaborate with the Director DDaT and the Associate Digital Delivery to implement a new operating model, ensuring successful adoption and effective IT Governance.
• Able to lead and implement an architecture discipline in the team, ensuring effective enterprise, data, and solutions architecture. Utilising best practices and accessing external expertise when needed.
• Design, develop and recruit a high performing data engineering function to support the organisation’s objective to become a ‘data centre’ able to be a trusted partner that can share data insights with the whole sector.
• Lead infrastructure and cloud services ensuring resilience and disaster recovery.
• Lead our approach to data integrations, ensuring an effective methodology and technical solutions to enable our ambitions.
• Successfully work with multi-disciplinary project teams to design and implement technical solutions for change that engender a positive outcome.
• Proactively identify opportunities for how modern technologies, such as AI, can support innovation or deliver business value.
• Foster a culture of innovation, transparency and accountability that reduces silos, enables collaboration, and can respond to ever changing user needs.  
• Able to manager vendor relationships, develop partnerships, supporting effective procurement, managing value and being able to challenge vendors appropriately on their technical design and ways of working.
• Work with YLvC’s innovation unit to develop a roadmap of technology related opportunities that can enhance outcomes for service users and their families.
• Support bids for external funding / donations with appropriate technical information and recommendations

What We’re Looking For
You’re a proven leader with:

• Hands-on experience with data related technologies – databases, data warehouse, reporting tools - delivering solutions that have provided business value.
• Expertise in building teams, implementing operating models, and delivering solutions for data integration, analytics, or business intelligence, with a focus on governance and best practices.
• Strong knowledge of enterprise, data, and solutions architecture (TOGAF preferred), alongside cloud, DevOps, and cybersecurity, ensuring resilient, secure, and well-governed services.
• Skilled communicator able to engage leadership groups, explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences, and build cross-disciplinary alliances for meaningful collaboration.
• Understanding of oppression and the barriers that marginalised people face, and strong commitment to deliver anti-oppressive practices

Closing date for all applications is Sunday 26 January 2025 at 23:55.

For a confidential discussion about the role, please do contact and we will be delighted to speak with you:

Email: YLVSCData@gatenbysanderson.com Or call Martyn Brereton (Researcher) on 07586 715531 or Sarah Luxford (Partner) on 07812 150386

Should you have any queries about the application process, please contact Toria Lorman-Connolly on 0113 205 6062 or via Toria.Lorman-Connolly@gatenbysanderson.com

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