Senior Project Manager


Company:	NHS Jobs
Salary:	£57,528 to £64,750 a year
Hours:	Full-time
Location:	London/Leeds, SE1 8UG
Job type:	Permanent
Posting date:	8 Oct 2026
Closing date:	22 Oct 2026

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Summary

The Frontline Productivity Programme has been established to raise the digital productivity of the NHS frontline, ensuring that investment in technology and IT infrastructure translates into measurable improvements in productivity, patient safety and the quality of care. It does this by setting national strategy and guardrails, allocating funding through NHS England Regions, and providing the standards, guidance and specialist expertise that individual organisations cannot effectively deliver alone. Background Frontline Productivity (FP) is one of the largest digitally enabled transformation programmes in the country. Following the Chancellor of the Exchequers Spending Review announcement of 11 June 2025, funding has been confirmed for the four years from 2026/27 to 2029/30 covering infrastructure for frontline organisations, cyber for frontline organisations, Connecting Care Records, Electronic Patient Records (EPR) and associated productivity technologies for all care settings, and support to change management. Across the spending review period the Programme represents capital of £0.8bn and revenue of £1.4bn, alongside a further £0.3bn capital and £0.6bn revenue invested by provider organisations. It builds on the achievements of the Frontline Digitisation, Network Connectivity and NHS Wi-Fi programmes, which will have supported 90% of organisations to achieve core EPR implementation targets by March 2026, delivered over 16,000 gigabit-capable network connections and enabled 95% of organisations to begin using cloud infrastructure. The Programmes scope covers all health care settings primary care (general practice) and secondary care (acute, community, mental health and ambulance services) and includes both NHS and Community Interest Company providers. At least 50% of funding and support is expected to be directed to organisations delivering non-acute care, supporting the shift towards neighbourhood health services. Social care funding is out of scope. The Programme directly supports the NHS 10-Year Plan, the Governments health and growth missions, and the NHS ambition of 2% annual productivity growth. It addresses an ageing digital estate that consumes up to 40% of secondary care IT budgets, unreliable infrastructure that costs frontline staff clinical and administrative time, an absence of standardisation that prevents the NHS from realising economies of scale, a rising cyber security threat, and a shortage of digital adoption and change management capability. Delivery is coordinated nationally by NHS England and led locally by Regions, which aggregate need across their provider communities, set local priorities within nationally defined guardrails and oversee delivery. The national Programme decides overall strategy and priorities, determines regional allocations, and provides change management, risk management, implementation and PMO support, knowledge management, skills development and Centres of Excellence. The Programmes investment areas are: Infrastructure networks and connectivity, wireless, end user devices, hosting and cloud. Electronic Patient Records full digitisation, core capability and optimisation, including usability and digitally enabled pathway redesign. Connected Care Records meeting minimum national criteria and achieving national interoperability coverage. Digital Medicines closed loop medicines systems and the structured transfer of medicines information. Frontline elements of the Cyber Improvement Programme. Change management and digital adoption. Support the mobilisation of agreed elements of the Commercial Function, including the design and embedding of processes, governance forums, reporting routes and ways of working. Manage the whole lifecycle of commercial programmes of work containing multiple projects and workstreams planning, resourcing, reporting on progress and managing risks, issues and dependencies acting as a point of escalation for project managers within the team. Support the development and implementation of the Programme commercial strategy and its alignment with the wider NHS England commercial strategy, Government Commercial Function policy, and applicable DDaT, cyber and data standards. Support the assessment of Programme demand and the review of regional plans, working with the Investment Areas and the EPMO to build a consolidated view of the investment pipeline and to identify commercial risks, dependencies and opportunities for aggregation. Lead or contribute to major procurement activity undertaken on behalf of the Programme, including the Delivery Partner procurement developing the route to market, scope and requirements, managing the process to timetable, and supporting evaluation, award and mobilisation. Establish and run market and supplier relationship management activity, including supplier segmentation, market intelligence, price benchmarking and strategic supplier relationships, to improve supply chain resilience and ensure market readiness ahead of regional investment. Develop and deliver the Programmes commercial support offer to Regions and providers guidance, templates, contract management frameworks, business case review and specialist advice and oversee the collection and cascade of commercial lessons learned. Support the interface with NHS England Commercial, DDaT, the New Hospital Programme and the Investment Areas, ensuring that activity delivered on the Programmes behalf is visible, coordinated, and free from duplication or gaps. Support commercial input to Programme business cases and funding decisions, including navigating NHS England, Department of Health and Social Care, Cabinet Office and HM Treasury approvals governance. Manage budgets for allocated programmes of work, including budget setting, monitoring and forecasting, and contribute to resourcing and delivery model decisions for the function. Deliver detailed programme reports to senior NHS England team members and to various Boards across the health and social care system, including where necessary the Department of Health and Social Care. You can find further details about the role, including key responsibilities and accountabilities, alongside the organisational structure and person specification in the attached Job Description and other supporting documents.

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