Interim Operations Transformation Programme Director
Full Time/Fixed Term Position for 18 Months (potential for permanent role)
Our offer to you
We pride ourselves in being a great place to work, providing a supportive culture with opportunities to grow and develop your career, achieve a healthy work life balance and to be recognised for the great work you do. You will receive:
1. Competitive salary and pension scheme
2. 33 days holiday (inclusive of bank holidays) - increasing to 38 days over 5 years
3. Hybrid, Flexible working
4. Cycle to work scheme Electric Vehicle Scheme
5. Health and Wellbeing portal – access to financial, health and wellbeing support and an Employee Assistance Programme
6. Discounts – you will have access to Blue Light and NHS Discounts as well as discounts on mobile phones, gym membership, cinema tickets, restaurants, holidays and shopping
About Us
This is a fantastic opportunity to join a team of over 1,300 employees and over 28,000 volunteers, united by our goal of saving lives through essential first aid services, training and campaigning. As a charity with rich heritage and a long history of serving humanity, we are proud of our past and excited about creating a healthier, safer, more resilient future.
St John Ambulance works at the heart of communities, supporting and enabling them to access and receive physical and mental health first aid. We do this through developing and providing effective community response and outreach services (e.g. Ambulance Operations) and using our longstanding expertise to empower people with vital clinical skills and the confidence to use them such as our Volunteers and our Young Responders programmes. There is also a buoyant social enterprise network which delivers first aid training and supplies medical consumables to businesses and consumers. And now with a new strategy and after a review of our current structures were recruiting to a new Operations Transformation Programme Director to help take our delivery to the next level and build our services.
Job Summary
As The Operations Transformation Programme Director, you’ll build and lead a new directorate driving major change across Estates, Fleet, Logistics and Supply Chain to ensure St John’s operational services are efficient, future‑ready and deliver outstanding support. Reporting to the COO, you’ll oversee Estates & Facilities, Fleet, Logistics, Clinical Equipment, Health & Safety and Business Continuity, managing a c.£22m budget. You’ll ensure that we implement our new Estates strategy, lead capital investment, transform contract management, and deliver a best‑in‑class logistics and supply chain model. Success means measurable performance improvements, achieving key transformation milestones, strengthening stakeholder relationships, and embedding a culture of innovation, inclusion and continuous improvement while ensuring value for money.
About You
You will bring senior leadership experience from a large, complex organisation, with strong expertise in either estates and FM, or supply chain, logistics, medical devices and contract management. You will have led large, diverse and geographically dispersed teams, delivering major transformation and operational improvement programmes. Degree‑educated with relevant professional development, you will demonstrate inspirational leadership, excellent communication, analytical thinking, confident board‑level reporting, and proven budgetary management.
About the Role
7. Own and be accountable for the development and delivery of transformation plans for estates, fleet, logistics, and supply chain, aligned with organisational strategy and ensuring safety, quality, and efficiency
8. To be accountable for the account management of key external providers across Fleet and Estates
9. To hold overall accountability for a significant P&L and ensure adherence to plan delivering value and measurable improvements.
10. Lead change initiatives, engaging stakeholders and driving adoption of new processes and technologies.
11. To role model, empower and enable your people. To champion and exemplify compassionate, ethical and accountable leadership and St John HEART values.
12. Establish and drive continuous improvement of KPIs and dashboards to measure and drive effectiveness across the various teams and the business and to ensure we meet internal and external compliance requirements, continually measuring and acting on customer/stakeholder feedback
13. Cultivate relationships with external stakeholders, partners and customers.
Please see the job description for more detail (this can be viewed on our website or once you click apply)
If you are a current St John Ambulance employee,