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Job overview
Passionate about how digital can transform healthcare, for our donors, patients and colleagues?
We have an exciting Digital Services team opportunity for a Head of Data Platforms, to work collaboratively across the Trust and wider NHS Wales, to provide transformative digital systems and insight-led services.
We are in an exciting period of change including opening a new world class cancer centre to extend and enhance specialist cancer treatment along with delivery of cancer care closer to home at regional sites. For the Welsh Blood Service, we are transforming blood and transplant services, improving current capabilities alongside developing new services including plasma for medicines. An ambitious digital strategy underpins this, which will revolutionise the way in which we deliver services – from co-producing innovative technologies, working on digital inclusion, to embedding data & insight into our everyday.
Our team are here to deliver new digital solutions and excellent everyday digital service, to improve services and outcomes. We recognise that successful digital transformation and service is as much to do with our people and culture as it is to do with technology.
Main duties of the job
You will:
- Provide technical expertise to inform the strategic development of the full analytics platform, spanning ingestion, transformation, storage, analytics, insight, and enablement of AI/ML capabilities.
- Lead the ongoing development and improvement of our current data estate (SQL Server, SSIS) while enabling the change to a cloud-first approach for data and analytics, focusing on technical solutions to support delivery of our digital strategy.
- Be responsible for defining technical standards, architectural patterns, product roadmaps, and governance frameworks to ensure secure, scalable and cost-effective delivery of data services
- applying deep knowledge of NHS service delivery, user requirements and standards, translating organisational needs into technical and architectural solutions that, where required, are interoperable with the NDR.
- work collaboratively with senior leaders to embed data-driven decision-making across the Trust.
- act as the FinOps lead for the data platform(s), responsible for financial planning, cost optimisation and sustainable delivery of cloud services.
- provide expert leadership across multi-disciplinary engineering, analytics and insight, supporting capability development through role modelling, coaching and mentoring.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
You will be able to find a full Job description and Person Specification attached within the supporting documents or please click “Apply now” to view in Trac
The ability to speak Welsh is desirable for this post; English and/or Welsh speakers are equally welcome to apply.
Person specification
Essential Experience & Skills: Technical leadership & data platforms
Essential
- Describe your experience designing and leading enterprise-scale data platforms or architectures. Please outline the technologies used, the scale/complexity, and your role in setting architecture, standards, and governance.
Essential Experience & Skills: Delivery, prioritisation & people leadership
Essential
- Describe your experience leading multidisciplinary technical teams. How have you developed capability (e.g. coaching, mentoring), and ensured effective delivery (workforce planning) in the short term whilst minimising technical debt in the long term?
Essential Experience & Skills: Strategic problem solving, delivery & governance
Essential
- Provide an example of a complex technical programme you have led. How did you manage delivery, influence senior stakeholders, and ensure alignment with organisational strategy?
Desirable Experience & Skills: working with health/regulated data and robust governance frameworks
Desirable
- Describe your experience working with health or regulated data and applying governance frameworks. How did this influence your technical or architectural decisions?
Essential Experience & Skills: Stakeholder engagement & communicating with non-technical audiences
Essential
- Describe a time where you delivered a project or programme with significant senior scrutiny with challenging time pressures. How did you work with, and influence, non-technical senior stakeholders
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Applying for this NHS job
This advert is for Head of Data Platforms with Velindre University NHS Trust in Cardiff, Cardiff, Wales. It is listed as a Band 8 Administrative and IT role. The advertised salary is £67,583 - £78,530 per annum. The contract type is Permanent. The application deadline is 13 Jul 2026.
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