Role: Technology Director
Contract Type: Permanent
Closing date: 19/09/2025 
Location: Nationwide

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:

• Competitive salary and pension scheme
• 33 days holiday (inclusive of bank holidays) - increasing to 38 days over 5 years
• Hybrid, Flexible working
• Cycle to work scheme Electric Vehicle Scheme
• Health and Wellbeing portal – access to financial, health and wellbeing support and an Employee Assistance Programme
• 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 1,416 employees and over 31,000 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 response & Nighttime Economy) and using our longstanding expertise to empower people with vital clinical skills and the confidence to use them (e.g. our Volunteers and Community Advocates, NHS Cadets and Young Responders programmes). There is also a buoyant social enterprise network which delivers first aid training and supplies medical consumables to businesses and consumers.

This is an exciting time of transformation with an opportunity to lead and mature the charity’s data maturity by leading a new data strategy. 

Job Summary
As the Technology Director at St John Ambulance, you will lead the strategic direction of our technology landscape, driving innovation, transformation, and operational excellence in a healthcare-focused charity.

Working as part of the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate and reporting directly to the Chief Information Officer, you will set a bold vision for the role of technology in enabling our mission and shaping our future.

You will provide leadership across both development and operations, ensuring that our platforms, products, and services are secure, resilient, and safe, supporting the delivery of critical services to patients, volunteers, and communities. Working collaboratively with product managers, senior leaders, and volunteers, you will ensure that technology investments are aligned to organisational priorities while driving forward innovation in areas such as cloud adoption, automation, data insight, and digital service delivery.

This is a pivotal role where you will influence at the highest levels, balance strategic ambition with delivery, and lead a team to deliver exceptional services that make a measurable difference for our people and the communities we serve.

About You

You will be an inspiring and collaborative leader with a proven track record of driving large-scale technology transformation, ideally within complex regulated environments where driving digital services, security, and service continuity are critical. You bring both vision and delivery expertise, and you are motivated by the opportunity to make a meaningful impact through technology.

You should have:

• Extensive experience delivering enterprise-scale technology strategies and modernisation programmes in regulated environments
• Proven leadership of both development and operations, setting architectural direction and ensuring engineering excellence across distributed product and technology teams.
• Strong background in digital transformation, including adoption of cloud-native services, data-driven platforms, and automation, with an emphasis on safety, resilience, and regulatory compliance.
• Demonstrable experience of modern delivery practices, including DevOps, Agile, ITIL, and SIAM, and leveraging them to integrate suppliers, product teams, and operations into a cohesive ecosystem.
• Knowledge of enterprise platforms such as Microsoft 365, Azure, and Power Platform or equivalent environments at strategic scale.
• Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to engage confidently with executives, boards, regulators, and external partners.
• A compassionate, emotionally intelligent leadership style that builds high-performing teams and fosters collaboration and inclusivity across the organisation.

About the Role

• Lead the development and delivery of a forward-looking technology strategy that aligns to organisational priorities and ensures our services are safe, resilient, and user centred.
• Set architectural principles and technology standards across both in-house and third-party solutions, ensuring quality, interoperability, and clinical safety where applicable.
• Drive engineering excellence by embedding modern practices and influencing product managers and teams across the organisation.
• Lead the delivery of transformative digital and technology programmes that improve patient and volunteer experiences, reduce operational risk, and enhance clinical and organisational outcomes.
• Oversee enterprise technology operations, ensuring resilience, security, regulatory compliance, and effective business continuity and disaster recovery planning.
• Champion the use of data, analytics, and digital platforms to improve decision-making and enhance patient and volunteer outcomes.
• Manage strategic supplier relationships and procurement to achieve best value and innovation through a SIAM-based approach.
• Provide strong leadership to the Technology Services team, building a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Influence and inspire across the organisation, ensuring that technology is a central enabler of operational efficiency, and strategic impact.

Please see the job description for more detail (this can be viewed on our website or once you click apply)

Find out more about us, including our new Ask Me campaign, at www.sja.org.uk 

If you are a current St John Ambulance employee, please apply here: Click here

For all other candidates, or St John Ambulance volunteers wishing to apply: please apply below

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive high volume of applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

St John Ambulance are committed to increasing the diversity of our team and making sure we best reflect the diversity of the communities we serve.   At St John, everyone is valued and supported to thrive, we have several networks including Multi Culture, Disability and Accessibility, Pride, Family and Carers and Women’s groups.  We do not tolerate any form of discrimination and engender a sense of belonging for all, by creating an environment of mutual respect, where we value unique differences and demonstrate authentic allyship. We believe passionately in equality, diversity and inclusion.   

'St John Ambulance is committed to safeguarding and we promote safe recruitment practice. Therefore, all successful applicants will undergo pre-employment checks, including DBS Clearance, as part of the onboarding process, if applicable to the nature of the role'.

Please note: St John does not accept speculative CVs and will only review CVs sent in application for an advertised vacancy.