Deputy Director of Operations

Overview

The opportunity to drive benefit realisation across the organisation and to drive cross-portfolio collaboration.

About Our Client

The Welsh Ambulance Service is supported by more than 4,500 staff and volunteers, and everyone has a role to play in providing a service to patients. Our services include:

• Emergency Medical Service (EMS) - Responding to urgent and emergency calls and providing pre-hospital care.
• Non-Emergency Patient Transport Service - Transporting people to and from routine outpatient appointments.
• EMS Coordination Centres - Receiving emergency and urgent calls and dispatching ambulance crews.
• NHS 111 Wales - Providing health advice remotely via telephone, video and the website.
• Support Service Departments - Managing finances, IT, recruitment, and staff communications.

We receive more than 500,000 emergency calls and one million 111 calls a year, and transport more than 1.3 million non-emergency patients to over 200 treatment centres in Wales and England. We respond 24/7, 365 days a year.

The Deputy Director of Operations provides highly visible, senior leadership for the day-to-day delivery of operational, workforce, planning, quality, and financial performance across the Operations Directorate.

The postholder will:

• Act as immediate deputy to the Executive Director of Operations, enabling increased strategic and external engagement.
• Hold directorate accountability for professional standards, culture and safeguarding, ensuring compliance with statutory requirements and high-quality, patient-focused services.
• Lead the directorate's financial sustainability, owning budgets, delivering cost improvement plans, and ensuring robust financial stewardship, including budgeting for major activity and accountability for service portfolios.
• Drive cross-portfolio/departmental/directorate integration, system and pathway flow, and continuous improvement, supporting the Trust's strategic objectives.
• Lead major service transformation, improvement programmes, and strategic projects; include organisation-wide policy development and service redesign.
• Represent the Trust in internal and external forums, fostering system partnership and stakeholder engagement.
• Lead directorate planning to support strategy and the Integrated Medium-Term Plan, translating strategy into measurable outcomes.
• Play a key role in delivering change and transformation, particularly whole-directorate change.
• Work with media outlets to promote the Trust's profile and communicate key messages; handle highly complex, sensitive, and contentious information as required.
• Develop and sustain effective trade union partnerships.

Responsibilities

Professional Standards, Culture & Safeguarding

• Set and uphold clinical, operational/performance, financial, and behavioural standards across Operations, including clinical service delivery standards.
• Champion a positive, inclusive culture, embed Trust behaviours/values, and promote psychological safety.
• Ensure robust safeguarding policies and practices, compliance with Duty of Quality, Duty of Candour, Civil Contingencies Act and regulatory requirements.
• Lead on culture change programmes and organisational development initiatives.
• Responsible for leading directorate-wide cultural transformation programmes.

Financial Sustainability

• Own Operations Directorate budgets, lead cost improvement and efficiency plans, and ensure financial governance.
• Deliver financial recovery plans, monitor expenditure, and report on financial performance, risks, and opportunities.
• Ensure value for money and compliance with Trust and NHS Wales financial frameworks.
• Frequent access to Oracle systems to support operational and strategic functions when acting in a deputy capacity for the Executive Director of Operations.

Strategic Leadership & Transformation

• Lead and integrate the work of all Assistant Directors, aligning portfolios to strategic objectives and operational effectiveness.
• Lead initiatives to enhance system and pathway flow and performance, fostering external partnerships to influence broader system outcomes.
• Lead major service transformation, improvement programmes, and strategic projects as delegated;…