Chief Technical Officer - CO - SCS1

Location

Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
Based in Benton Park View, moving to Newcastle City Centre in Summer 2026.
This is a hybrid role with the expectation of 60% office attendance.

About the job

Job summary

Digital Directorate

The Digital Directorate leads on service ownership, service design and the development of technical services for the Infected Blood Compensation Authority. The team is accountable for designing, developing and maintaining an effective service for the payment of compensation to enable IBCA to achieve our mission.

Our work encompasses all elements of design from processes and guidance to the technical architecture which underpins the digital elements of our service and the infrastructure for the authority to work from. 

We work across all areas of IBCA and directly with users to design a service which has users at the heart, is legislatively compliant and technically robust.

Job Description

Reporting to the Director of Digital, the Chief Technical Officer is pivotal in the design and delivery of IBCA’s strategy and service development. 

The role will be responsible for ensuring the effective technical design and delivery of the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme working alongside the Head of Delivery and Head of Product. The Chief Technical Officer will be leading multiple teams with product, design and technical expertise working alongside operational and data specialists to deliver this incredibly important service in a user centred way, at pace. 

The Chief Technical Officer will engage with all areas across the organisation and beyond to collaboratively define our technology strategy as part of, and aligned to, the overall service blueprint. They will develop a technical roadmap and collaborate on the service level roadmap ensuring that value is delivered incrementally at every stage, considering user needs alongside technical security and robustness.

Job description

Key Responsibilities

Technical Architecture and Roadmap Development: Developing and owning an iterative architecture collectively with service design which shows how the service will develop over time. Ensuring value of technical capability development is clearly articulated and working with product to develop a technical roadmap which is part of the wider service roadmap with technical areas appropriately prioritised.
Technical Leadership: Direct leading of the technical areas of the Digital teams (including architecture, engineers and test engineers) and wider direction setting and leadership across the whole digital team. Development of live service capability for the Digital Service. Ensuring all teams work in alignment to the single service roadmap and balancing technical quality and pace of delivery. 
Digital Leadership: Working with Head of Delivery and Head of Product to jointly assure digital development plans to ensure these are aligned to the roadmap, achievable and clearly communicated. 
Live Service Management: Ensuring that live service elements are included and monitoring and reporting built into development and establishing a robust and comprehensive live service strategy and building the capability to support this.
Stakeholder Engagement: Working in close collaboration with teams across IBCA and wider stakeholders  to ensure shared vision and clarity of plans and build a culture of collective prioritisation which includes technical priorities. 
IT Strategy and Provision:.Working with the Head of Delivery to ensure the organisational IT strategy reflects best practice technical approaches and linking into wider Cabinet Office Digital teams as needed to support this.
Embedding Technical Expertise: Supporting the development of robust engineering and architectural standards across digital teams and actively ensuring these are met by all. Chairing IBCA Technical Design Authority which reports to ExCo. Embedding and ensuring adherence to government service standards across digital teams.

Person specification

It is important that, through your CV and supporting statement, that you provide evidence of the professional skills, breadth of experience and personal qualities for this post. 

Essential Criteria:

  You will have the following skills, knowledge, and experience:
 

An exceptional and authentic leader, with the ability to build, inspire and engage their teams to deliver results even in times of ambiguity.
Experience planning, implementing and maintaining IT infrastructure, networks, systems, applications and hardware that meet user needs.
Experience of leading technical design and delivery of major customer-facing Government digital services, using agile methodologies.
Strong evidence of building excellent stakeholder relationships, creating a wider ranging network across organisational boundaries that supports collaborative working across teams and enables issues to be surfaced early for effective resolution. 
Successful track record of working with user centred design teams to embed technical thinking into the overarching service blueprint and advocate for an interactive technical solution.