The Market Development Manager sits within the Adult Social Care Commissioning and Market Development service, leading work to ensure local care and support markets are sustainable, high‑quality, and responsive to changing needs. The team works across commissioning, contract management and market shaping to meet the Council’s statutory market‑shaping duties and deliver better outcomes for people who use services. In this role, you will provide leadership for market development activity, driving innovation, efficiency, and quality across adult social care provision. You will strengthen provider relationships, oversee key projects, and use market intelligence and insight to identify gaps in provision, manage risk, and support the delivery of sustainable care options aligned to the Council’s Market Position Statement and wider strategic priorities By shaping markets proactively, embedding commercial best practice, and leading benefit tracking and value‑for‑money activity, the Market Development Manager helps the organisation manage financial and market pressures, improve service resilience, and support long‑term planning. Your work directly influences commissioning decisions, supports inclusive growth and local enterprise, and ensures adult social care markets contribute to community wellbeing, economic participation, and positive outcomes for residents across Cambridgeshire. For more information or to chat about this opportunity please contact Gurdev Singh gurdev.singh@cambridgeshire.gov.uk. Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Standard Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service. The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. Our benefits We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage… A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes Take a look at our Employment Benefits Brochure attached to this advert to find out more. What will you be doing? You will lead the development of local care and support markets to ensure they are vibrant, good quality and sustainable and meet the authority’s changing needs and statutory market shaping duties. The role will drive innovation and efficiency across commissioning, contract management and procurement activities, identifying and delivering cost-effective solutions that enhance service oversight of quality, financial sustainability, and long-term resilience. You will optimise approaches to sourcing, contracting, and enabling supplier engagement — embedding robust pricing reviews and commercial challenge to maximise value for money. You will provide commercial leadership and direction within a range of commissioning projects and contract management mechanisms, strengthening the Council’s commercial mindset helping to embed best practice across teams. A key focus will be market and supply chain development, supporting the authority’s broader place-based agenda by fostering diverse, resilient, and locally rooted market ecosystems. The role will champion inclusive growth, support local providers, and ensure markets contribute meaningfully to community wellbeing, economic regeneration, and strategic policy outcomes. You will also be responsible for savings and benefit tracking and management, ensuring that planned efficiencies, service improvements, and commercial gains are clearly defined,monitored, and realised across all relevant programmes and initiatives. You will ensure sufficiency forecasts and strategies are continuously reviewed and exploited, resulting in commissioning arrangements that proactively address community needs and adapt to emerging trends. You will also be required to deputise for your manager from time to time. About you You will have experience of hands-on strategy development, team collaboration, and direct involvement in long-term planning activities to deliver organisational goals. You will also have previously led the identification and delivery of continuous improvement and efficiency opportunities, supporting benefit realisation through robust tracking and performance monitoring, leading and developing high-performing teams through performance standards and evaluating team performance and successfully leading and managing projects from initiation through to delivery and benefit realisation. You will have previous experience of project and resource management, risk governance, market stewardship, and the management of provider/market failure. You will also have a proven ability to identify and deliver improvement, efficiency, or transformation opportunities through commissioning, previous experience of market and commercial strategy development within care and support sectors and a proven track record of delivering measurable commercial outcomes through commissioning, procurement, and supplier engagement. You will also be someone with experience in contract evaluation and lifecycle processes, compliance protocols and risk assessment and will be able to demonstrate experience of embedding commercial awareness across multi-disciplinary teams and influencing senior decision-makers. Please use your supporting statement in your application to outline how your skills and experience meet the essential criteria outlined in the Job Description/Person specification. About us Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes. Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do. We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions. Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Through a Guaranteed Interview Scheme, we will offer an interview to all applicants who disclose a disability and meet the essential criteria for a job vacancy. On your application form you can indicate you are disabled. Some examples of reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch. Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion. https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/council/jobs-and-careers