Principal Operations Radiographer | The Christie NHS Foundation Trust

Posting date:	04 March 2026
Salary:	Not specified
Additional salary information:	£55,690 - £62,682 per annum, pro rata
Hours:	Full time
Closing date:	03 April 2026
Location:	Manchester, M20 4BX
Company:	The Christie NHS Foundation Trust
Job type:	Permanent
Job reference:	7848970/413-104109-CNS

Summary

The Christie at Withington is seeking a highly skilled and motivated Principal Operations Radiographer to play a key leadership role within our radiotherapy service. You will oversee the daily operational management of the department, ensuring safe, effective, and high‑quality radiotherapy for all patients. Working closely with clinical, scientific, and managerial teams, you will coordinate service delivery, support pathway development, and lead on quality, governance, and workforce planning.

This role requires a radiographer with extensive senior clinical experience, strong leadership ability, and a proven track record in service improvement. You will work collaboratively across Christie sites and with external partners to ensure seamless patient care, while also contributing to teaching, training, audit, and research. As a key member of the operational leadership team, you will champion best practice, innovation, and continuous improvement within a complex and high‑performing radiotherapy network.

HCPC registration required.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Applications for part-time /full-time and other working patterns welcome

Shift patterns between 06:00am and 23:00pm

You will lead the operational delivery of radiotherapy services at The Christie at Withington, managing radiographic, clinical support, and administrative teams. Key responsibilities include overseeing workflow, safety, quality, and service performance, and ensuring compliance with radiotherapy legislation, Trust policies, and national standards. You will analyse complex service issues, lead pathway redesign, and implement improvement initiatives across the radiotherapy network.

The role includes maintaining clinical competence, providing specialist technical advice, and contributing to teaching, research, and clinical trials. You will manage staffing, budgets, training, and governance processes, acting as Operator, Referrer, Practitioner, and Radiation Protection Supervisor under IR(ME)R. Working across multidisciplinary teams, you will support strategic planning, lead project delivery, manage risks, and contribute to the development of new technologies and treatment pathways to ensure exceptional patient care.

The Christie is one of Europe’s leading cancer centres, treating over 60,000 patients a year. We are based in Manchester and serve a population of 3.2 million across Greater Manchester & Cheshire, but as a national specialist around 15% patients are referred to us from other parts of the country.

We provide radiotherapy through one of the largest radiotherapy departments in the world; chemotherapy on site and through 14 other hospitals; highly specialist surgery for complex and rare cancer; and a wide range of support and diagnostic services. We are also an international leader in research, with world first breakthroughs for over 100 years.

We run one of the largest early clinical trial units in Europe with over 300 trials every year. Cancer research in Manchester, most of which is undertaken on the Christie site, has been officially ranked the best in the UK.

Our Radiotherapy network has sites based at Withington, Oldham, Macclesfield and Salford; treating approximately 9,500 patients per year over 13 treatment machines

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Communication

The post holder will provide, receive and analyse highly complex, information on advanced radiotherapy in order to understand current pathways and suggest and implement improvements to resolve key issues. Collaboration, motivation, negotiation, training, empathetic and re-assurance skills will be routinely utilised. The post holder will be involved in presenting complex information to large groups of staff, at national or international conferences and to members of the public. They will collate and disseminate process pathways, negotiating with both internal and external stakeholders to insure prompt and reliable implementation.

The post holder will lecture to radiographers, dosimetrists, postgraduate scientists, doctors in training and others and assist in the organisation of the department’s teaching programmes.

They will publish results in appropriate forums so that The Christie experience is widely communicated to the wider NHS community.

The post holder will be required to:

Work collaboratively and engage with staff at all levels and in all divisions across the network to successfully deliver defined pieces of work.

· Work collaboratively as part of a team whilst managing own workload.

· Develop, maintain and promote positive and productive relationships with clinicians and others engaged in projects and programmes.

· Establish and maintain good communication through effective liaison with other Christie sites, other clinical and non-clinical departments as well as the Multi-Professional team in order to deliver optimal and seamless treatment and care.

· Communicate service related information to Senior Managers and cascade information to departmental staff as required.

· Work closely with colleagues in Executives, Operations, IT, Finance, Clinical and HR across the network to help shape and deliver effective solutions.

Knowledge Training and Experience

The post holder will have highly developed specialist knowledge of radiotherapy and/or quality improvement methodologies, underpinned by theoretical knowledge and relevant practical experience. They will have acquired this through a combination of in-depth experience and postgraduate post-registration study, such as that obtained through a master’s degree. They will have significant experience in operational management and pathway definition and will have a working knowledge of national policies applicable to radiotherapy.

The post holder will have experience in working on complex service improvement/change projects, and will demonstrate sufficient skills to lead and manage a project successfully, from development to implementation and to manage an on-going service past project stage.
They will ensure their own professional knowledge is regularly updated and keep abreast of relevant developments and other personal development is progressed to ensure effective management of service.

Analytical and Judgemental Skills

The post holder’s key role will be to undertake scoping exercises on current pathways and propose more effective and efficient replacements. As such will have to assess complex facts and situations, using analytical skill, interpretation and comparison of a range of options using a wide variety of assessment methods and where competing, contradictory or unclear inputs are expected.

The post holder will analyse key problems and issues within network areas in order to identify areas for improvement and deliver appropriate solutions which are efficient and effective. This includes the ability to undertake audits, process mapping, root cause analysis to gather, assimilate and interpret data (quantitative and qualitative).
The post holder will proactively identify and manage risks and issues, escalating as required through standard Trust and network processes

Planning and Organisational

The post holder will plan and organise complex activities. Plans will be formulated and adjusted to respond with developments and changes in circumstances. This will involve developing, structuring and scheduling activities, including the allocation of tasks to colleagues, both within the Radiotherapy Department or from partner organisations (other Trust Departments and regional and national stakeholders). They will have responsibility to lead on implementation in the clinical setting of novel pathways.

The post holder will prioritise a challenging workload, exercising sound judgement in an extremely complex environment.
They will create and manage the required project plans and documentation to deliver the project, and to report through the necessary Trust Boards, including reports to Executive level boards, and the ability to escalate risks and issues as necessary.

Physical Skills

As a therapeutic radiographer, the post holder will be expected to maintain the core clinical competencies and as such will maintain the physical skills required to undertake treatment preparation and treatment delivery. These highly-developed physical skills require millimetre accuracy in the utilisation of complex machinery in a clinical setting where there is a very narrow margin for error and precision is vital for patient care. As such, the post requires highly developed physical skills, where a high degree of precision and high levels of hand, eye and sensory co-ordination are essential.

Responsibility for Patient/Client Care

As one of the Principal Operations Radiographers for the Withington Radiotherapy service, the post holder will provides highly specialist clinical and technical services. They will provide highly specialised advice to the Radiotherapy Multi-Professional Team which contributes to the design, implementation and monitoring of their radiotherapy elements of patient pathways for cancers and non-malignant conditions in the local and cross-site settings.

As a radiographer the post-holder will undertake clinical services (in order both to maintain skills and provide clinical cover in a rota with the clinical Band 7 radiographers in the team) and will provide senior-level advice on these services to students and other learners and to more junior qualified colleagues. They may opt-in to on-call service provision where they will be required to act as the lead radiographer and will supervise all clinical services being offered in this setting during that session; the out-of-hours on-call service will be provided from Withington.

Pursuant to the Ionising Radiations (Medical Exposures) Regulations, 2017 (IR(ME)R), the post holder will act in the role of Operator for imaging and treatment exposures and as a Referrer and Practitioner for treatment verification exposures. Will act as a Radiation Protection Supervisor on site and will formulate radiation reports in accordance with Trust policy. In collaboration with PHE, manage on site radiation staff monitoring.

The post holder will agree and meet realistic workload targets through the interpretation of organisational policies and planning of the service. Monitor the waiting lists and balance them with the activity performance to ensure the best use of resources in order to achieve the relevant cancer targets and the promotion of improved services to patients.

Responsibility for Policy/Service Development

The post holder will have their specialism in service management and as such will propose changes to policy and service across the radiotherapy patient pathway. They will have an impact beyond their own area and will ensure that they collaborate with clinical oncologists, diagnostic and therapeutic radiographers, clinical scientists, clinical dosimitrists and administrators within and outside of the Trust, such that they implement service improvements across all sites.

· The post holder will also work with other staff groups across the Trust in order to communicate and ensure the successful delivery of projects, including (but not limited to): Clinical and Technical service improvement, Staff Management and Support, Finance, Procurement and Estates.

· They will collaborate with the other Christie sites in order to lead or assist with the development, introduction and implementation of new pre-treatment, treatment, verification and administrative systems and their integration into the wider Radiotherapy Service to ensure that the service to patients is delivered to the highest professional standards in line with emerging best clinical practice.

Responsibility for Financial and Physical Resources

The post-holder will be an authorised signatory for financial payments. They may sign off overtime and travel expenses, order specialist equipment and monitor budgets as a budget holder.

· The post holder will be responsible for effectively managing project and programme budgets where given, and working with Finance to ensure project remains within agreed financial limits.

· They will ensure that all stocks and supplies are properly managed and that the procurement process delivers items fit for purpose.



* See attached for full job description *


This advert closes on Wednesday 18 Mar 2026

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