Quality Improvement Manager

Grade A - £55,172 (National) or £61,028 (London – for London office based or homebased workers within the boundary of the M25) – There is also an additional homeworking allowance of £600 per annum for those working from home.

Contracted Hours: Full-time 37 hours per week, flexible working will be considered

Contract Type: Secondment until 28 February 2027

Location: Homebased with travel as required

Closing date: Wednesday 8 July 2026 at 11.59pm

All applicants must obtain written confirmation from their line manager, granting permission to be released from their current role, before applying for this opportunity.

Make a difference Every role at CQC play an important role in helping us achieve our organisation’s purpose. If you’re looking for an improvement role in a creative and passionate team, who lead with curiosity and exploration, then this is the role of you.

As a Quality Improvement Manager , you’ll work collaboratively with colleagues from across CQC, including Senior Leaders to enable colleagues to make changes and sustainable improvements to CQC’s processes and ways of working. This is a fantastic opportunity for someone who is passionate about improvement, has a strong understanding of quality and/or continuous improvement and who would like to further develop their experience and expertise of improvement at CQC.

Picture this You’re working collaboratively with colleagues at all levels across CQC, providing expert advice and guidance in how they apply a quality improvement approach to solving problems and testing ideas. You focus on understanding the root causes to the problems and helping those closest to the work lead the improvement and changes themselves.

In the last year as a Quality Improvement Manager , you might have:

• Worked closely with your inspectorate colleagues to understand the challenges they have in relation to improving productivity and quality and helped teams test a number of solutions. You have facilitated cross sector learning and scale up/spread of impactful changes, removing duplication and siloed working.
• Enabled and empowered colleagues to apply a variety of different tools and techniques to test and embed sustainable changes through the use of guidance, coaching, and workshop facilitation.

The role The Quality Improvement Manager role sits within CQC’s central Quality Improvement team, providing expert guidance and support on improvement to the whole organisation. In this role, you’ll:

• Directly engage with senior leaders in CQC to champion, prioritise and embed a culture of quality improvement.
• Be the lead QI contact for allocated directorate, providing leadership and expert improvement guidance and support to directors and colleagues, enabling local improvements to be achieved and leaders to have systematic oversight of local and strategic improvement activity.
• Design, facilitate and lead on improvement workshops.
• Provide learning and expert guidance (through coaching) on QI tools and techniques.

Show us We will be looking for specific skills, knowledge and experience in your application form:

• Knowledge of quality and/or continuous improvement methods, tools and techniques, including examples of improvement work you have led on and/or been involved in.
• Experience of leading change or improvement work in complex environments, using data or insight to guide decisions and achieve clear improvements.
• Experience of working collaboratively with senior leaders and influencing our organisations culture.
• Knowledge of the conditions required to develop, mature and sustain a culture of continuous improvement.
• Experience of delivering learning and applying a facilitative and coaching style to supporting others with improvement work.

Compliance Note for internal candidates: This is a secondment opportunity. Please read the recruitment and selection policy section on secondments. You must discuss your application with your line manager before applying.

Next steps If you apply, you’ll need to create a profile and complete an online application form. Your application will be completely anonymous. Please see our information for applicants for more details on the process. We contact every applicant to let them know the outcome of their application, so you will hear from us whether or not you are shortlisted.

You can read the full details of the role in the Job Description

If you’d like an informal chat about the role contact – Emma Donaldson, Deputy Director of Quality Improvement on Emma.Donaldson@cqc.org.uk . For general enquiries, please email recruitment@cqc.org.uk .

The Benefits We offer a wide range of benefits , including

• Annual leave starting at 27 days per year, rising to 32.5 days with service, plus bank holidays (usually 8 days per year).
• Training and development opportunities.
• Wellbeing initiatives, such as gym discounts and meditation.
• NHS pension scheme, with around 14% employer contribution.
• Discount schemes (including eligibility for a Blue Light card, at a cost of £4.99 and valid for 2 years), reward vouchers, car leasing and more!

Please see our benefits page for the full list.

Equity for all We know job descriptions can feel intimidating. Research shows they can cause some people to doubt whether they’re a good fit. This happens more often to people from underrepresented groups (e.g. ethnic minority backgrounds). If this role interests you, we encourage you to apply. Your unique perspective, skills, and experience could be exactly what we need.

We want every candidate to feel supported and able to do their best. If you need adjustments to our process, we’ll work with you to remove any barriers . Visit our accessibility page for more on this. If you’d like to chat, please contact recruitment@cqc.org.uk . Please note, if you have previously informed us of adjustments you need for interview or within your role these are not carried over and must be discussed for each individual application you make.

We promote a workplace where fairness, respect and inclusion are a priority . Diverse teams make our work better, help us deliver our mission and make our culture stronger. See our ED&I page for more about this.

We welcome applications from everyone, and colleagues can find support and community among our many employee networks. This includes people of any:

• Age
• Sex
• Gender identity or expression
• Sexual orientation
• Religion or belief
• Ethnicity
• Disability

Values and vision We are guided by our core values, which shape our work and our culture. Excellence – being a high-performing organisation. Caring – treating everyone with dignity and respect. Integrity – doing the right thing. Teamwork – learning from each other to be the best we can. We are a disability confident employer and a carer confident employer.

A Note on AI AI tools can be great for research and refining ideas, but we want to learn about you. If you use AI or Chatbots to help you with your application, keep these points in mind:

• AI can support research, structuring and refining your writing, but your application must reflect your real skills and experience .
• Spell-checking and condensing word counts are great ways to use AI effectively.
• Do not copy and paste AI generated answers. These will not help you stand out; remember we want to hear about your skills and experience.
• Providing false and insincere examples goes against our core values of honesty and integrity and may lead to your application being withdrawn or termination of your employment.