Manager – Data & Digital

Data & Digital is a significant growth area for Social Finance, and we are now looking to grow our team to deliver on the ambitions of our impact strategy and contribute to scaling key impact portfolios. 

As a Manager, your work will be varied, from leading projects/​products, to contributing to our data & digital strategy and shaping new opportunities, to coaching and mentoring colleagues.

We are looking for an individual who is passionate about how data and technology can be used to solve social problems, and who has strong experience/​interest in working to deliver programmes requiring a combination of technical, strategic and operational expertise. 

Our UK Team comprises around 60 dedicated change-makers, bringing together a wide range of skills and expertise to deliver better solutions to complex social problems. This role will anchor to the Data & Digital Community of Practice within our UK Team.

As a Community of Practice, we bring multi-disciplinary data & digital skills to solve complex problems and improve outcomes for people and communities. Our portfolio spans Social Finance’s four key impact areas: Children & Young People, Health & Social Care, Employment & Skills, and Housing & Homelessness. Across these, we focus on delivering programmes with the greatest potential for impact at scale, addressing a range of levers for systems change.

Examples of key strategic programmes include:

• Developing National Social Care Data Standards: We have partnered with central government to shape the rules, data models and market conditions that enable key information to be shared and systems to interoperate at scale across children’s and adult social care. This includes developing and governing data standards, contributing to improving analytics, identifying opportunities to support children as early as possible, and releasing time to care for social workers. Social Finance has an ongoing role convening strategy, design and implementation of these data standards, triangulating inputs from across technical, commercial, policy and operational domains.
• Scaling a Common Data Platform to Enable Regional Children’s Services Analysis: We collaborated with local authorities to develop a secure data platform that facilitates regional analysis of children’s services data, unlocking insights around critical areas to improve outcomes for children and families, from demand modelling to inform service planning, to analysing sufficiency of care placements. The work started in London in 2020, and the data platform is now used by c. 40% of local authorities.
• Delivering Digital Innovation Support Programmes in Health & Care: We have collaborated with foundation and government partners to deliver 6 digital innovation support programmes with national / international reach, supporting 200+ innovators across impact areas including Mental Health Data, Care Tech and Dementia Tech. Our support combines strategic support for funders with a comprehensive support offer for innovators, enabling teams to tailor their learning journey across technical, human-centred design and scale & sustainability modules. 
   

We are looking for a manager with data and digital expertise to deliver programmes supporting public and social sector partners to improve outcomes for people and communities.

We have a wide range of programmes spanning two key strategic objectives:

• Enabling better strategic and operational decision-making by advancing data maturity: from improving data quality and standards, to setting up data sharing infrastructure, to data reporting and analysis.
• Scaling data & digital transformation through innovation programmes & partnerships: from partnering with funders to deliver data & digital challenge prizes and learning networks, to designing tailored apprenticeships to build data & digital skills across key impact areas.

This breadth is intentional. Rather than trying to develop our own leadership in a single area, we are trying to achieve social change. We take on this wide variety of challenges because these are the levers needed to change systems. You will need to be excited by that breadth – and by the frequent need for teams to blend technical with policy and service delivery expertise to identify the right solution.

Ultimately, social impact should be your driver rather than the use of cutting-edge data science approaches or the latest technologies, as we are often constrained by the data, technology, and in-house capability of our partners. This provides you with the opportunity to think of creative ways to work around those constraints and consider that to be part of the fun. 

• Manage delivery of data & digital projects/​products, often spanning multiple organisations, sectors and delivery partners.
• Work with Directors to set project vision, and define a clear roadmap to coordinate distinct workstreams with different rhythms and stakeholders.
• Identify and manage risks, interdependencies and constraints, managing upwards effectively and coordinating with functional leads where appropriate (e.g. Information Governance, Legal, Finance). 

• Build trusted working relationships with key stakeholders across partner organisations (e.g. government departments, foundations, local authorities, NHS Trusts, vendors and delivery partners). 
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, acting as a bridge between individuals from different disciplines to triangulate a shared vision, and enable stakeholders to take important decisions. 
• Foster a ​‘one team’ approach with partner organisations to share knowledge and expertise so that partners can undertake similar work themselves in future. 

• Coordinate across a multi-disciplinary programme team, fostering effective collaboration across disciplines (including e.g. software developers, data scientists, user researchers, service designers and operational or domain specialists).
• Deliver strong project management, providing clarity, structure and momentum for team members.
• Enable effective problem solving through influencing, coordinating and unblocking across teams, rather than directing.
• Contribute to a positive, inclusive team culture, and support staff development, morale and wellbeing. 

• Operate confidently as a generalist engaging with specialist domains, without needing to be the technical expert. Across programmes, this can include for example:
  • Ability to get up to speed quickly on an unfamiliar technical domain, asking the right questions rather than already knowing the answers.
  • Triangulating product development decisions & prioritisation, drawing on input from multi-disciplinary stakeholders.
  • Ability to reason across technical, strategic and operational considerations to make strategic recommendations.
  • Understanding information governance well enough to track dependencies, identify blockers and know when to engage internal IG experts.
• Use this understanding to inform programme delivery decisions and stakeholder discussions. 

• Contribute to the development of Social Finance’s data and digital practice, including shaping approaches, tools and ways of working. 
• Support business development by contributing to scoping and developing proposals for new project opportunities. 
• Work with the senior team to shape our data & digital strategy across Social Finance’s key impact areas. 

We are looking for an individual whose interests and experience align with the ambitions of our impact strategy to bring data & digital skills to delivering complex systems change. 

• A clear and sustained interest in data & digital transformation, with motivation to work in this space long-term.
• Experience managing data and digital projects/​products, including working with multi-disciplinary teams.
• Strong project management capability, including managing ambiguity, interdependencies, phased delivery and evolving scope.
• Familiarity with the product development lifecycle and approaches to navigate from ideation to final solutions.
• Ability to reason about and communicate technical concepts with a range of stakeholders, including helping non-specialists to understand data and technology and take important decisions, from re-designing services to choosing a coding language.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with credibility engaging external partners across different roles and levels of seniority.
• Experience leading and developing teams, delivering impact through others. 

The following experience would be advantageous but is not required:

• Product management.
• Agile delivery methods.
• Human-centred design.
• Experience working in or for the public sector.
• Experience in one or more of Social Finance’s impact areas (Children & Young People, Health & Social Care, Employment & Skills, and Housing & Homelessness). 

We are an ambitious not for profit organisation that helps to design, fund and scale better solutions to complex social problems. Our vision is a fairer world where together we unleash the potential of people and communities.

We do this by working in partnership with local and national governments, funders, communities and the social sector to tackle complex and enduring social problems in the UK and across the world. Our skills include financial analysis, data and digital insight, outcomes-focused partnerships, strategy, research and design. We combine these specialisms in different ways to address specific social challenges. We create effective solutions that blend the expertise of communities and professionals to deliver better outcomes in issues such as homelessness, domestic abuse, children’s services, health, employment and skills.

Our multi-skilled team of over 120 people come from diverse backgrounds in the public, private and charity sectors, all sharing a passion for making change happen. We provide a high-quality training and development programme in-house with great opportunities for career progression. We’re a friendly and intellectually curious bunch, always up for a debate.

Our work improves the lives of people and communities in the UK and across the world. We are experts in systems change – shifting the way a whole system works around a specific social issue in order to ensure long-lasting change. Examples include:

• Employment & skills: Scaling evidence-based employment services through IPS Grow.
• Health & social care: Investing in health transformation, such as in End-of-Life Care services.
• Children & young people: Maximising access to education by building more inclusive systems.
• Housing & homelessness: Developing innovative funding models to help meet government new homes supply.

Our approach is a collaborative one, where we bring the best capabilities and people from across the organisation together to solve the challenges we face. 

Everyone at Social Finance believes that change for communities is possible. To help us achieve it, we have three core values that guide everything we do. We are curious, empathetic and pioneering. 

The fixed salary for this position is £56,500 per annum. Working for a mission driven organisation is more than just what we pay though, it’s about our culture, our approach and what else we offer. 

We actively encourage applications from under-represented and minoritised groups, including those with lived experience of the social issues we are working to address. We are an equal opportunities employer.

We support a range of flexible working options and welcome UK based applications from outside of London/​the Southeast so far as they can meet the in-person meeting requirements for the role. We can also accommodate secondments and part-time working. 

We work on some projects where our clients may require different levels of DBS checking for our employees. Candidates deemed suitable for a role after interview will be asked to declare any unspent convictions to ensure that we are able to resource them to projects appropriately.

Read more about working at Social Finance on our website. 

For this opportunity, we are partnering with Trust in Soda, who are supporting us with the recruitment process.

If you are interested in applying or would like to find out more about the role, please get in touch with the Trust in Soda team using the details provided below. They will be able to answer any questions you may have about the position, the team, and the application process.

We are committed to creating an inclusive recruitment process and welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know and we will work together to support you.

Trust in Soda will manage the initial application process on our behalf and will guide you through the next steps. Suitable candidates will then be introduced to us for consideration.

If you have any queries regarding the role, please contact Dominika Kodadova dom@trustinsoda.com