Deputy Director of Cyber and IT Operations

Stakeholder Event: 14th August 2026

Panel Interview: 21st August 2026

Deputy Director of Cyber & IT Operations (B9)

University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust is seeking a dynamic and visionary Deputy Director of Cyber & IT Operations to join our senior leadership team at a pivotal time of transformation. This is a rare opportunity to lead digital operations at scale, supporting over 18,000 staff across seven hospitals and serving a population of 1.3 million people.

Reporting to the Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO), you will play a central role in delivering our ambitious One UHSussex strategy, bringing together digital operations, infrastructure, data, and clinical coding into a cohesive, high-performing service. You will act as a trusted deputy to the CDIO, influencing decisions at Trust, regional and national levels.

This role offers significant breadth and impact. You will lead operational performance and technical strategy across cyber security, infrastructure, networks, service desk, end user support, and data services, ensuring high availability, resilience, and security of critical systems. Your leadership will be instrumental in driving service excellence, improving user experience, and enabling frontline staff to deliver outstanding patient care.

You will bring visible, inclusive leadership to multidisciplinary teams, fostering a positive culture and developing high-performing services. With responsibility for substantial budgets and resources, you will ensure value for money while balancing operational demands with strategic transformation programmes, including the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) programme and Sussex Pathology network (SPN). You will also deputise for the CIO.

A key element of the role is advancing cyber security and data quality, ensuring compliance with national standards and safeguarding sensitive patient information. You will lead incident response, risk management, and continuous improvement, while shaping policies and strategies that strengthen the Trust’s digital maturity.

We are looking for an experienced and credible digital leader with a strong track record in complex IT operations, strategic delivery, and stakeholder engagement. You will be resilient, forward-thinking, and able to navigate competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.

If you are passionate about digital operations and want to make a tangible impact on patient outcomes, staff experience, and system-wide collaboration, this is your opportunity to lead change at scale within a forward-thinking NHS organisation.

Working for our organisation

At UHSussex, diversity is our strength, and we want you to feel included to help us always deliver Excellent Care Everywhere, as shown in our Outstanding for Caring CQC rating. Your uniqueness and experiences will be part of our creative and innovative community where everyone is encouraged to succeed. We have a range of staff networks to help break down barriers, and can offer a buddy to help new members settle in. We’re proud to be a Disability Confident Employer (Level 3) and a Veteran Aware Trust.

Candidate Pack

The Deputy Director of Cyber and IT Operations will support the CIO in leading the provision of an efficient, effective and high-quality professional and well-co-ordinated digital and data services capable of meeting all statutory, regulatory and NHS requirements ensuring alignment with the activity of the organisation.

Duties will include:

Deputise operationally for the CIO

Work with the CIO to deliver the digital and data strategy

Establish and deliver exceptional levels of customer (digital service user) experience and service responsiveness, with a focus on purpose and the need to maximise service user productivity and effectiveness

Improvement of performance, availability, reliability, and security, of service under-pinning technologies (Hosting & Data Centres, Compute, Storage, Networking, End User Computing)

Developing master data management and ensuring data quality to enhance the patient record and optimise income generation through activity recording.

Visible leadership to the digital and information teams, deputising for the CIO as required, and ensuring teams within their remit deliver on strategic, operational and regulatory objectives.

Develop and deliver the technical strategy for the Trust in conjunction with the subject matter experts including, systems and security architecture, integration, cyber-security posture, effective management, reporting, accountability and compliance for all aspects of Cyber & IT Security including compliance with law and guidance, compliance with the annual Data Security protection Toolkit assessment and resolution of Cyber & IT security risks and law issues.