Head of Commercial

The NHS is building a culture that is positive, compassionate and inclusive - and we all have our part to play.
As employers we are committed to protecting and promoting the physical and mental health and wellbeing of all our colleagues. This underpins our values as set out in the NHS Constitution and supports us to be an Employer of Choice, while helping our colleagues to deliver high quality services for our patients and communities.
As a flexible employer, we want to support you to work in a way that is best for the NHS, our patients and you. Talk to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that's a job share, part time, hybrid working or another flexible pattern. In addition, although the role advertised may have a 'home' office base indicated, we remain committed to supporting flexibility around workplace locations. If it works for the service, we will do our best to make it work for you., The Commercial Partnering and Solutions Team exists to support the new NHS England Directorates with their commercial requirements and to lead on establishing the commercial strategy for significant commercial projects.
Our Team Objectives are:
+ To be the Directorate business partner at all levels.
+ To develop a cohesive commercial pipeline to ensure the delivery teams have a forward plan of demand.
+ To develop the commercial strategy and solution and help the delivery teams deliver against the requirements.
+ To be solution driven and find the right solutions that create the best chance of delivering the business objectives.

Main duties of the job
The Head of Commercial - Partnering and Solutions (Clinical), will play a senior leadership role to business partner with Directorates and support development of commercial pipelines to aid business planning, they will also have specific commercial accountabilities, often for NHS England's highest-impact commercial arrangements in terms of criticality, reputational risk and value and will therefore need to proactively drive commercial input and ensure best industry practice, added value and reduce risks.
This role sits in a newly established Clinical Partnering and Solutions Team, so as senior manager you will be supporting the set up of process and procedures, as well as embedding the new ways of working with commercial across NHS England and providing support to Directorates on their commercial activity.
This role is for someone with significant procurement and commercial experience, strong strategic outlook and excellent leadership attributes who is looking to apply themselves at the higher levels of commercial delivery and accountability on complex commercial arrangements.
The role requires experience of operating with a diverse group of senior stakeholders and have effective and extensive stakeholder engagement skills to gain credibility quickly; understanding and digesting complex and detailed information in order to offer advice and expertise. You must have high level engagement experience that is likely to result in successfully influencing outcomes., Please see job description for more information and for an informal discussion please contact; Kate Cassidy - [email protected]
We particularly welcome applications from under-represented groups.
Application Form Supporting Statement Guidelines
To help build a better picture of how you can help us meet our ambitions, we would like you to respond to the following questions in the Supporting Statement section in the job application form:
+ How your extensive leadership experience at strategic level and in-depth expert knowledge of building commercial strategies and solutions, delivers the business objectives.
+ What experience and knowledge do you have of delivering the end-to-end commercial lifecycle and demonstrate that you have extensive skills and leadership behaviours at an expert level when undertaking complex and contentious commercial activities.
+ Provide evidence of your experience of managing change within the commercial environment, including leading the end-to-end project management.
+ Describe how you have used your highly developed communication skills to communicate on complex matters and on difficult situations.
+ How you provide and receive, convey and present highly complex, sensitive and/or contentious information to large groups, responding openly to questions to ensure full understanding and engagement (both verbal and written forms).
Our commitments to you
We are passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity. We know that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger and more creative work environment that delivers better patient outcomes. We strive to ensure our people feel trusted, valued and empowered. We're passionate about nurturing and developing people. When you join us, we want you to grow and excel, and we offer many opportunities for you to do that. We welcome your talent and enthusiasm irrespective of age, disability, neuro-divergence, sex, gender identity and gender expression, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances. We have policies and procedures to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process, including the consideration of reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability and/or who are neuro-divergent.
We welcome applications from disabled candidates. If you meet all the essential criteria, you will be guaranteed an interview.
Applications from job seekers who require sponsorship to work in the UK under the Skilled Worker route are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website.
If applying for this role on a secondment basis, please make sure you have obtained prior agreement from your current line manager to apply for this position.
Please note that we currently do not accept applications via recruitment agencies.
The NHS Business Services Authority is responsible for the processing of your application; a privacy notice is attached to advise you on how we will process your personal data.
If you have applied via NHS Jobs, your submitted application will be imported into our preferred third-party recruitment system. All subsequent information regarding your application will be generated from apps.trac.jobs. If you are appointed to a post, information will also be transferred into the NHS Electronic Staff Records system.

The team has responsibility for all NHS England commercial activity for 3^rd party spend, across all areas of the commercial lifecycle including Market Management, Commercial Strategy, Procurement, Contract Management and Strategic Supplier Relationship Management. The scale of the team is significant with responsibility for over 4,400 live contracts with a total lifetime value of over £14bn and a pipeline of over 2,000 procurements with estimated values of over £11bn. This is one of the largest and most complex commercial portfolios across government and gives colleagues the opportunity to work on high value and high complexity commercial delivery that has a direct and positive impact on patient care., The NHS England board have set out the top-level purpose for the new organisation to lead the NHS in England to deliver high-quality services for all, which will inform the detailed design work and we will achieve this purpose by:
+ Enabling local systems and providers to improve the health of their people and patients and reduce health inequalities.
+ Making the NHS a great place to work, where our people can make a difference and achieve their potential.
+ Working collaboratively to ensure our healthcare workforce has the right knowledge, skills, values and behaviours to deliver accessible, compassionate care
+ Optimising the use of digital technology, research, and innovation
+ Delivering value for money.
If you would like to know more or require further information, please visit https://www.england.nhs.uk/.
Colleagues with a contractual office base are expected to spend, on average, at least 40% of their time working in-person.
Staff recruited from outside the NHS will usually be appointed at the bottom of the pay band., NHS England