University of Bradford
Thank you for your interest in the position of Chief Digital and Operations Officer at the University of Bradford. Having taken up the position of Interim Vice-Chancellor, and with the full support of the incoming Vice-Chancellor and of the Chair of Council, one of my first priorities has been to strengthen the University’s Executive Team, including this pivotal role.
We are seeking an exceptional senior leader with the experience and insight to lead digital transformation at an institutional scale. You will bring a strong track record of aligning technology, data and digital capability to organisational priorities, improving performance and enabling better outcomes. You will be a strategic thinker and an effective delivery leader, able to work across complex environments to ensure that digital transformation transforms the whole organisation.
The University of Bradford has an enviable reputation for inclusion, academic excellence, world-leading research and innovation, and a learning and teaching culture that provides the best social mobility in the UK and among the sector’s best highly-skilled employment outcomes.
We trace our successes to our proud history. We are England’s 40th university, founded amidst the ‘white heat of technology’, a term coined by our first Chancellor, UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson. We have a strong tradition of innovation, from establishing England’s first university business school to leading developments in areas such as artificial intelligence, health and social care, engineering and digital technologies.
But higher education is changing and Bradford is changing along with it.
Our strategy sets out a clear ambition to build a more effective, agile and future-ready institution. It is focused on delivering student success, widening access, strengthening research impact and transforming how the University works. Central to this is our commitment to creating A University that Works Better, where digital capability, data and service innovation enable us to deliver more effectively for our students, staff and partners.
As Chief Digital and Operations Officer, you will lead the University’s approach to digital and data-enabled transformation. You will shape how we use systems, platforms and emerging technologies to support institutional priorities, improve user experience and strengthen decision-making. You will work across the organisation to ensure that digital capability is embedded as a core enabler of strategy, supporting both academic and professional services.
Whether from higher education or another complex, regulated or customer-focused environment, you will bring a strong understanding of how digital transformation can enable organisational performance. You will work in close partnership with Executive colleagues to ensure that digital innovation supports the University’s strategic ambitions.
Bradford is going places and we want you to be a part of our journey. If you are excited by the opportunity to shape the digital future of a purpose-driven, ambitious and evolving institution, we would be delighted to hear from you.
Yours sincerely,
At the University of Bradford, we strive to be recognised as the exemplar for social mobility. We aim to accelerate equality, diversity and inclusion for all and create an empowering environment that enables students and staff to achieve their full potential and make a difference.
We are determined to be an anti-racist institution that celebrates our rich diversity and heritage – this is about driving change and tackling disadvantage on a structural, cultural and individual level.
Our credentials in equality, diversity and inclusion are second to none. We have been ranked first in the Higher Education Policy Institute’s Social Mobility Index in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. In 2024, we were named University of the Year at the Social Mobility Awards, and we were named Daily Mail University of the Year for Social Inclusion 2026.
As part of creating an inclusive environment for work and study, we are members of several equality charters and national schemes including the Race Equality Charter, Disability Confident and Stonewall University Champions Programme. We have achieved an institutional bronze Athena SWAN award and are determined to continuously improve our standing in this area.
The University of Bradford is a national leader in social mobility, recognised as England’s top university for transforming lives through education and we have the credentials to prove it. We have won more awards for social mobility than any other higher education institution.
This is a pivotal moment for the University as we seek to balance challenges affecting the entire HE sector with our ambition to become world-leading in the fields of applied AI, entrepreneurship, research and innovation and health and social care, while building on those areas in which we are already world renowned, such as archaeology, cancer therapeutics, polymer research, radiography, peace studies and business.
As we prepare to enter our 60th anniversary year, and to carry forward the legacy of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, of which we are a strategic partner, we are seeking to appoint a new Vice-Chancellor with the passion, vision and commitment to lead the University, to uphold our values-driven strategy, build on our strengths and seize new opportunities in an evolving HE landscape.
We already have an enviable reputation in many fields, not least being ranked number one on the Higher Education Policy Institute’s Social Mobility Index in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, and named Daily Mail University of the Year for Social Inclusion 2026.
More than half of our roughly 10,000 students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and yet according to the most recent Higher Education Statistics Agency data, 92 per cent of those students are in work or further study 15 months after graduating.
In the last few years, we have opened the Bradford-Renduchintala Centre for Space AI and are advancing plans to launch a satellite into space. We created Virtual Bradford, the UK’s first digital twin and we are home to the world’s foremost submarine archaeology unit. We also run accelerated entrepreneur programmes for staff and students and aim to become the number one destination in the UK for business start-ups and spin-outs within the next decade.
We are steadily climbing national ranking league tables and strengthening our reputation as a university that delivers real-world impact, academically, socially and economically.
If you’re interested in being part of a university that is redefining its future through a values-driven approach and that is committed to making a difference, we would like to hear from you.
Rankings and Awards
Key Statistics
9,615 students in the 2025/26 academic year:
1487 staff in February 2026:
Faculty of Management, Science & Engineering, includes:
Faculty of Health and Social Care:
Institute of Health and Social Care:
Institute of Digital and Sustainable Futures:
Proud partner of
The University recently approved a new 10-year strategy designed to amplify our strengths, accelerate innovation and deepen our social impact, locally, nationally and globally.
The four main priorities are: putting students first, widening access, growing our reputation for research and innovation and making the University work better, and be a better place to work and study.
Students first
We will embed a culture of innovation, responsiveness and student-centric design across faculties and professional services, ensuring that online learners receive a consistently high-quality experience that leads to strong employment and progression outcomes. This includes modernising institutional operations such as admissions, marketing, curriculum design and student support, all aligned with the principle of ‘meeting students where they are.’ We expect to see continuing progress in Teaching Excellence Framework outcomes and to align ever greater focus on employability with our strategy to widen access.
Widen access
We plan to expand our online provision with an aspiration for 10,000 new online lifelong learners over the next ten years. This is central to the University’s goal of growth through widening access and reflects a strategic response to rapid global changes in employer demand for skills over the course of a career. Delivering this ambition requires bold and strategic leadership and our Executive Team are pivotal in translating this vision into action – shaping the University’s online offer, embedding innovation across the institution, and ensuring alignment with our other three strategic pillars.
Grow our reputation for research and innovation
We will deliver the University’s research and knowledge mobilisation agenda to improve research impact through two research institutes that will broadly centre on Health and Social Care, and Digital Innovation, Engineering and Sustainability. Strengthening industry partnerships and embedding research-informed practice into online programme design will help position Bradford as a competitive and values-led provider of learning.
A university that works better
We will modernise and streamline institutional operations, ensuring financial sustainability and long-term resilience. This includes aligning services with student needs, enhancing accountability and simplifying systems and processes to support growth and profitability. A university that works better will provide a stronger and more sustainable platform for growth and innovation – always putting students first.
We change lives – in 2024-25, our students received £2.8m in bursaries and scholarships, making higher education more accessible to a wider cohort, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. We offer a range of scholarships for many underrepresented groups, from care leavers and asylum seekers to women in science and technology and white working-class males.
We drive innovation – in the last financial year, we were awarded £12.8m in research grants and knowledge exchange bids, delivering an array of innovative projects, from using artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology to speed up organ donor transplants (with clinical trials due to start in 2026) to working with over 200 schools to increase physical activity among young people as part of the Sport England-funded Creating Active Schools initiative.
We power the local economy – last year, we spent £10.6m with over 100 local suppliers; we are a key partner of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture; we run Bradford Digitisation Hub, working with dozens of SMEs across West Yorkshire; we are the anchor institution for the groundbreaking Bradford Energy Network (an £8.4m city-wide heat network); we are the main sponsor of Bradford AFC; we compile the Bradford’s Top 100 Businesses annual guide in partnership with the Telegraph & Argus and we are supporting over 30 business start-ups through our entrepreneur ecosystem.
We’re first in class – we are best in the country at improving people’s life chances – more than half our students come from deprived backgrounds and yet 92% are in work or further study 15 months after graduating; we are first to offer all our student nurses naloxone anti-overdose drug training; we are the only university to offer a paid sandwich year for paramedics; our Distance Learning MBA is ranked first in the world for value for money by the Financial Times; we are one of the first British Universities of Sanctuary, one of the first Adobe Creative Campuses, the first to offer its students a ‘one-stop-shop’ Santander ‘app’, and first in the world to launch a programme module codesigned by people living with dementia.
We connect globally – we are founder of the World Technology University Network and this year hosted 2025 International AMRI Conference, showcasing cutting-edge research in biopharma, med-tech, and sustainable polymer science, particularly in conjunction with universities in China. In September we hosted the launch of the UN Human Development Report 2025, which discusses responsible AI, in addition to a global conference on radiography.
Leading with purpose – we are committed to putting students first, to widening access and to enhancing our research and innovation portfolio and in the next 10 years we aim to become a hot-spot for UK start-ups, thanks to our enterprise ecosystem.
Bradford is surrounded by some of the most striking and storied landscapes in the UK – from the rugged beauty of Brontë Country and the rolling hills of the Yorkshire Dales to the industrial heritage of Saltaire and the creative energy of its varied towns and cities. The University of Bradford is proud to be part of a region known for its resilience, diversity and ambition. Our location offers not just a backdrop but a context for learning and living.
Bradford itself is experiencing a renaissance, thanks to a £50m revamp of its city centre, creating new pedestrianised areas, a new market, city centre parks and transport routes, a £50m renovation of the iconic Bradford Live venue (formerly the Odeon cinema), and Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, which has attracted over a million visitors to hundreds of events across the district and of which we are a key partner, charged with preserving its legacy.
Bradford has a youthful city: 28.2% of the district’s population is aged 17 or younger – the highest percentage in West Yorkshire and the sixth highest in England – and is the fifth largest local authority by population (after Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester) but is also the 13th most deprived in England. This is reflected in our student population, 65% of whom hail from the most socio-economically deprived backgrounds, with around 79% of our home undergraduates coming from the region.
Bradford is a hive of enterprise: we are a key partner in West Yorkshire Investment Zone (through our Bradford Digitisation Hub), backed by West Yorkshire Combined Authority; we are one of the main sponsors of Bradford Manufacturing Weeks (organised by North & West Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce), which connects students to businesses; we also run the Bradford-Renduchintala Enterprise Ecosystem, offering funding and mentoring to take business ideas from concept to market.
The district is known for its international cuisine, art galleries and museums, including the recently renovated National Science and Media Museum and the Saltaire-based Peace Museum – and we are part of this rich tapestry, not least because of our on-campus Theatre in the Mill, which is currently running a national tour of its Bussing Out exhibition.
The University of Bradford is part of the fabric of the city and the district, with around 10,000 students and 1,500 staff and a campus that boasts some amazing facilities, from a fully equipped sports centre, opticians, cutting-edge research and innovation laboratories and engineering labs, a recently revamped Student Central and library, together with our open amphitheatre and wildlife gardens – we even make our own honey, thanks to our on-campus bee hives.
In short, we’re proud of our city, our region and our university and most importantly because of the difference we know we make – and can make – in people’s lives.
JOB DESCRIPTION
Job Purpose
The Chief Digital and Operations Officer (CDOO) is a pivotal member of the University Executive Team, reporting directly to the Vice-Chancellor.
This role will lead the University’s digital, operational and service transformation agenda and, while contributing across all strategic priorities, will have primary responsibility for delivering Strategic Priority 4: A University that Works Better — creating a more effective, efficient and future-ready institution through digital enablement, operational improvement, service redesign and modern ways of working.
The postholder will play a central role in modernising how the University works, ensuring that digital capability, core operations, systems, data and service design are aligned to institutional priorities and enable the successful delivery of Strategy 2035.
The role will be critical to improving organisational performance, student and staff experience, and institutional agility, while ensuring that the University has the digital infrastructure, operational capability and delivery discipline required to thrive in a complex and fast-changing environment.
The CDOO will also help shape a more joined-up and high-performing operating model across the institution, ensuring that services are modern, responsive, insight-led and designed around institutional need.
Leadership Accountability
The postholder will be part of a University Executive Team that:
Core Executive Accountabilities
Within that wider corporate leadership context, the postholder will have direct executive accountability for the following core areas of strategic delivery and institutional performance.
Key Responsibilities
Portfolio Scope
The Chief Digital and Operations Officer will lead an enabling portfolio while also operating across a complex matrixed environment.
Direct reports are expected to include senior leaders across areas such as:
Success in the role will depend on the ability to align colleagues across faculties and professional services, building shared ownership of digital and operational improvement.
The postholder will work closely with all Executive colleagues to ensure that digital capability, operational effectiveness and service transformation underpin the successful delivery of Strategy 2035.
PERSON SPECIFICATION
Qualifications
Essential
Desirable
Experience and Knowledge
Essential
Desirable
Leadership Style and Personal Attributes
Essential
Desirable
Position
Leave & Pension
Flexible & Family-Friendly Working
Wellbeing & Campus Facilities
Travel & Commuting
Learning & Community
Further details of the full staff benefits package can be found on our University of Bradford website.
Anderson Quigley is acting as an advisor to the University, an executive search process is being carried out by Anderson Quigley in addition to the public advertisement.
The closing date for applications is noon on Thursday 14th May 2026.
Applications should consist of:
Should you wish to discuss the role in strict confidence, please contact:
www.bradford.ac.uk/about 