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Job summary

Main area
Digital Services - Technical Datacentre
Grade
Band 8c
Contract
Permanent
Hours
Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Job ref
349-COR-7161991-RL4
Employer
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
Oxford Road Campus ( Corbett House)
Town
Manchester
Salary
£76,965 - £88,682 per annum (pro rata)
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
03/09/2025 23:59

Employer heading

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust logo

Head of Digital Datacentre

Band 8c

Job overview

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust has an exciting opportunity to join a great digital team as the Head of Digital Datacentre Services. This role will manage a dedicated team tasked with delivering dependable and proficient datacentre services, in addition to managing the comprehensive technical responsibilities necessary for supporting the Trust’s system and service operations. The role demands close collaboration with senior leaders within Group Informatics, throughout the Trust, as well as with external stakeholders, to ensure that digital services are provided and delivered in a unified manner.

The successful candidate must possess strong technical knowledge and practical expertise in the administration of multiple datacentres, which includes expertise in computing, networks, and storage infrastructures. The role will be responsible for the  advancement and operational maintenance of server, storage, and datacentre infrastructure for the Trust, embracing cutting-edge technologies, and serving as the design authority on matters such as physical datacentre management alongside private and public cloud utilisation.

Main duties of the job

The Head of Digital Datacentre Services is responsible for establishing a comprehensive approach to planning, organising, and delivering efficient Datacentre technologies and support services at an enterprise scale, while supporting the broader Trust digital strategy. Other key responsibilities include:

  • Performance and Maintenance Accountability: Being accountable for the datacentre performance and maintenance to industry standards, ensuring the implementation of security and compliance standards.
  • Technical Support and Expertise: Provide subject matter expertise and technical hands-on support to establish highly performant Datacentre services, and provide  training, mentorship, and coaching to members of the digital services.
  • Architectural Strategy: Develop and deliver the Datacentre architectural strategy, to support both on-premise and cloud approaches, ensuring adherence to architectural server principles essential for embedding industry best standards.
  • Long-term Sustainability and Adaptation: Being responsible for the long-term sustainability of datacentre technologies and associated support services, adapting and evolving the strategy as technology trends and the Trust's digital strategy evolve.
  • Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration - engage with clinical and managerial stakeholders to develop, agree, maintain, and implement roll-out plans, reporting key milestones, and escalating slippages on the delivery of technical solutions.

Working for our organisation

MFT is one of the largest NHS Trust In England with a turnover of  over £3bn & is on a different scale than most other NHS Trusts. We’re creating an exceptional integrated health & social care system for the 1 million patients who rely on our services every year.

Bringing together 10 hospitals & community services from across Manchester, Trafford & beyond, we champion collaborative working & transformation, encouraging our 30,000 workforce to pursue their most ambitious goals. We set standards that other Trusts seek to emulate so you’ll benefit from a scale of opportunity that is nothing short of extraordinary.

We’ve also created a digitally enabled organisation to improve clinical quality, patient & staff experience, operational effectiveness & driving research, and innovation through the introduction of Hive; our Electronic Patient Record system which launched in September 2022.

We’re proud to be a major academic Research Centre & Education provider, providing you with a robust infrastructure to encourage and facilitate high-quality research programmes. What’s more, we’re excited to be embarking on our Green Plan which sets out how MFT continues to play its part in making healthcare more sustainable.

At MFT, we create and foster a culture of inclusion and belonging, provide equal opportunities for career development that are fair, open, and transparent, protecting your health and wellbeing and shaping the future of our organisation together.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To find out more about the key responsibilities and the specific skills and experience you’ll need, take a look at the Job Description & Person Specification attachments under the ‘Supporting Documents’ heading.  So that you’re even more equipped to make an informed decision to apply to us, you’ll need to take time to read the ‘Candidate Essentials Guide’ that sits with the Job Description and Person Specification. This document provides you with details about the Trust, our benefits and outlines how ‘we care for you as you care for others’. Most importantly, it also contains critical information you’ll need to be aware of before you submit an application form. 

Diversity Matters

MFT is committed to promoting equality of opportunity, celebrating, and valuing diversity and eliminating any form of unlawful discrimination across our workforce, ensuring our people are truly representative of the communities we serve. All individuals regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation are encouraged to apply for this post. As an inclusive employer, we are here to support you. If you have any special requirements to help you with your application, email our team at [email protected].

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria
  • Masters or Equivalent Experience at senior level
  • Relevant Microsoft qualifications
  • VMWare Qualifications
  • ITIL Experience/Qualification
  • Evidence of Personal Develop
Desirable criteria
  • ITIL Practioner
  • Cloud Qualifcations
  • Prince2 /Project management Qualification

Experience and Knowledge

Essential criteria
  • Evident experience in the management of enterprise scale IT services with strong levels of technical understanding across a broad range of applications and infrastructure, with at least 3 years’ experience in managing datacentre support teams
  • Substantial experience in direct, hands-on experience in managing and maintaining complex enterprise IT server environment.
  • Significant experience in installation, configuration, upgrade, managing and monitoring server hardware / software
  • Expert knowledge in Server Virtualisation, Storage Area Networks (SANs), Exchange / Email, Active Directory and Application virtualisation; SCCM.
  • Significant experience in managing a core infrastructure environment that includes VMware, SAN, Citrix and Microsoft infrastructure
  • Significant experience of working with third party suppliers where required to resolve problem.
Desirable criteria
  • Knowledge of Local Area Network / Wide Area Network concepts
  • Previous experience in NHS IT environment
  • Managing cloud service providers.

Skills

Essential criteria
  • Able to convey complex information across multiple audiences, including senior and external partners. Communicate enthusiastically and motivate others by adapting your style to fit the audience.
  • Ability to provide and receive highly complex, highly sensitive or highly contentious information, where developed persuasive, motivational, negotiation, training, empathic or re-assurance skills are required.
  • Ability to make judgements on multi-stranded or complex IM&T problems which may have no precedent or where there are conflicting opinion
  • Ability in making timely, difficult decisions to ensure project priorities meet critical business needs. (Make balanced risk decisions, taking full accountability)
  • Ability to manage, motivate and MFT Digital Page 13 of 13 develop staff, leading diverse teams with ability to provide direction, understand resource capability and successfully get results working with direct reports, dotted line and/or internal or external resources.
  • Ability to work effectively and efficiently under pressure and challenge established views and think differently to deliver the business goals.
  • Ability to coach and mentor staff to support good collaborative team working. creating a recognised and respected talent pool

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Veteran AwareApprenticeships logoArmed Forces Covenant Gold AwardDisability confident employerStep into healthHappy to Talk Flexible Working

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.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Jiten Patel
Job title
Director Of Technology
Email address
[email protected]
Telephone number
0161 527 2103
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