Programming Team Leader - Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit - 18508 - Grade 8

Position Details

Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit, School of Health Sciences, College of Medicine and Health

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £46,485 to £55,295 with potential progression once in post to £62,098

Grade: 8

Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to two years

Closing date: 2nd February 2025

Our offer to you

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University, and we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high-quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus, we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Role Summary

The role of the post is to lead a team of analyst programmers responsible for the development, oversight and maintenance of Clinical Trial Management Systems. The post holder will apply their specialist knowledge of data systems and programming to lead and inspire the programming team to deliver programming tasks to time, target and budget, to create and maintain the requisite quality standards and generate and maintain all required documentation, including specification versions, programming and validation efforts, in support of database build and maintenance. A key function will be to lead on the development and design of novel and bespoke systems, as required, to continue to progress technology and ensure delivery of effective clinical trial databases.

Main Duties

• Lead a programming team responsible for the provision and maintenance of clinical trial management systems.
• Report directly to the Unit Director of Operations and liaise with the Unit Director and other BCTU Team Leaders.
• Develop the team’s capacity to provide software solutions required by or useful to the Unit.
• Provide specialist advice to Investigators/collaborators, statisticians and trial management staff on data collection tools and protocol design issues.
• Prioritise software projects in liaison with the Unit’s senior management and trial team leads.
• Oversee the team’s software projects ensuring compliance with applicable regulations and quality standards.
• Be responsible for the (line) management of the programming team, including supervision, motivation, recruitment and training needs.
• Represent the Unit at (inter)national meetings and contribute to working parties/committees.
• Actively contribute to the Unit’s Quality Management System (QMS).
• Keep up to date with changes in software development methodology and clinical trial methodology.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Strong multi-threaded programming skills.
• Graduate (higher degree preferred) in a relevant computer science subject with strong experience in a senior role.
• An in-depth understanding of relational databases and programming languages such as C#, ASP.NET, SQL.
• Proven ability to manage software development projects and experience of writing trial system documentation and reports.
• Experience of contributing to data collection tool design.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, presentation and inter-personal skills.

Informal enquiries to Margaret Grant, email: m.r.grant@bham.ac.uk