Job requirements
Essential
28 listedRequirements the employer expects applicants to meet.
- Knowledge and skills
Knowledge and understanding of the political context, policy environment, and financial regime in which an NHS Foundation Trust operates.
- Knowledge and skills
Highly developed knowledge of digital and/or infrastructure functions and their strategic management in complex organisations, including the challenges of managing a diverse estate.
- Knowledge and skills
Understanding of the NHS digital landscape, including national programmes, frameworks, and regulatory expectations (DSPT, NHSE digital standards, cyber requirements).
- Knowledge and skills
Working knowledge of emerging digital trends and technologies, including artificial intelligence, data analytics, and digital health innovations — including their regulatory and ethical dimensions.
- Knowledge and skills
Understanding of the NHS capital regime and the governance requirements for estates and infrastructure investment.
- Knowledge and skills
Strategic thinker with strong communication, interpersonal, negotiating, and influencing skills.
- Knowledge and skills
Able to translate complex technical and infrastructure concepts into clear strategic choices for clinical and board audiences.
- Knowledge and skills
Strong written and oral communication skills, including the ability to represent the organisation credibly at national and regional level.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Educated to master’s degree level or equivalent, with substantial senior management experience at Board level.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Active member of a relevant professional body.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Significant senior management experience operating at or close to Executive Board level, gained in a comparably complex organisation in the public or private sector.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Extensive experience of delivering effective digital and/or estates transformation programmes within a complex organisation, ideally within healthcare, public services, or a similarly regulated environment.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Proven experience of leading large-scale technology or EPR implementations, with a track record of benefits realisation.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Proven experience of setting, communicating, and translating strategic vision into deliverable operational plans.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Extensive experience of working across organisational boundaries to successfully implement and manage change.
- Essential qualifications and experience
A strong track record of collaboration and productive partnership working with internal and external stakeholders.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Extensive experience of commissioning, contracting, and supplier management for major programmes.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Experience of managing significant capital programmes within a complex, multi-site environment, ideally including a varied estate with a mix of building ages, conditions, and clinical functions.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Proven experience of planning, policy development, and strategic prioritisation at senior level.
- Essential qualifications and experience
Proven success in leading, inspiring, and developing high-performing, cross-functional technical teams, establishing clear performance frameworks and developing critical capabilities.
- Personal attributes and leadership style
Brings absolute personal integrity and a commitment to openness, transparency and candour.
- Personal attributes and leadership style
Is resilient and calm under pressure, with the judgement to act decisively when representing the organisation at the highest level.
- Personal attributes and leadership style
Draws genuine satisfaction from organisational success and team performance rather than personal profile — bringing confidence and authority to their own portfolio while being equally at ease supporting and amplifying the work of the whole executive team.
- Personal attributes and leadership style
Has a collegiate leadership style that combines intellectual independence with the discipline to commit — someone who brings genuine challenge and diverse thinking to collective decisions, but who understands that high-performing teams align fully behind decisions once made and deliver without reservation or revisitation.
- Personal attributes and leadership style
Has the confidence to name uncomfortable truths — to challenge the Executive team, the Board and the Chief Executive where that is the right thing to do — and the judgement to do so constructively.
- Personal attributes and leadership style
Is deeply committed to equity, diversity and inclusion as core organisational values, not a separate programme.
- Personal attributes and leadership style
Holds a genuine passion for high-quality patient care and staff wellbeing as the purpose of everything the Trust does.
- Personal attributes and leadership style
Shows genuine curiosity and a commitment to continuous learning and improvement.
Desirable
Not listed in the available specification.
Job overview
1st Stakeholder Event: 19/10/2026
2nd Stakeholder Event: 23/10/2026
Panel Interview Date: 27/10/2026
For application; CV & Cover Letter must be sent to Hunters via fmcnulty@hunter-healthcare.com
University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest acute provider organisations in the NHS, with an annual operating budget of around £1.7 billion. We employ almost 20,000 colleagues and deliver care to around 1.8 million people through seven hospitals across five main hospital sites, alongside community services and satellite locations across Sussex and beyond. We are now seeking an exceptional Chief Digital and Infrastructure Officer (CDIO) to join our Board and Executive Team at a pivotal point in our development.
This is a newly configured and strategically important executive portfolio, bringing together leadership of digital, technology, estates, facilities and infrastructure. The role reflects our recognition that the physical and digital environments in which healthcare is delivered are increasingly interdependent and must be planned, developed and transformed as a coherent whole.
Main duties of the job
There is a significant agenda ahead. We are implementing a new electronic patient record, accelerating our digital and AI ambitions and continuing to improve and invest in a large, complex and varied multi-site estate. The CDIO will provide the executive leadership and strategic coherence needed to ensure these programmes support our clinical priorities and deliver tangible improvements for patients and staff.
You will have executive accountability for our digital and technology assets, including leadership and oversight of the EPR programme and our wider digital, data, AI and cyber agenda. Alongside this, you will provide Board-level leadership for our estate, facilities and capital programme, ensuring our physical infrastructure is safe, compliant, effectively utilised and capable of supporting outstanding modern healthcare.
Reporting directly to the Chief Executive and working closely with clinical and executive colleagues, this is much more than a functional leadership position. As a full member of the Board, you will contribute to the overall leadership, performance and future direction of UHSussex, while providing clear accountability for a substantial enabling portfolio.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
We are looking for an accomplished senior leader with significant experience operating at or close to Executive Board level within a large and comparably complex organisation. You will bring substantial experience of digital and/or infrastructure transformation, including major technology or EPR implementation, alongside the strategic and commercial capability to lead significant programmes, investment and organisational change. Experience of complex estates and capital programmes will also be important.
Just as importantly, we are looking for the right kind of executive colleague. You will bring integrity, resilience and sound judgement, with the confidence to provide constructive challenge and name uncomfortable truths when necessary. You will be intellectually independent but collegiate, able to create clarity from complexity and committed to collective decision-making and delivery.
Our vision is Excellent Care Everywhere, underpinned by our values of being compassionate, inclusive and respectful. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive executive team and particularly welcome interest from people with backgrounds currently under-represented in NHS executive leadership.
This is a rare opportunity to shape both the digital and physical future of one of the NHS's largest organisations and to ensure that our infrastructure genuinely enables better care, better experiences and better outcomes.
Applicant requirements
The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.
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Applying for this NHS job
This advert is for Chief Digital and Infrastructure Officer with University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust in Worthing, England. It is listed as a Officer (discipline unspecified) role. The advertised salary is Salary is dependent on experience. The contract type is Permanent. The application deadline is 05 Oct 2026.
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