Assistant Director, Innovation Trials & Adoption Lead (2-year contract)

[What the role is]

The Innovation Office helps the Health Promotion Board identify, explore and shape innovation opportunities that can transform and strengthen how we engage citizens and improve population health.

Reporting to the Deputy Director, Innovation Office, the Innovation Trials & Adoption Lead drives the experimentation and validation aspects of IO's mandate. The role translates promising opportunities into a curated portfolio of proofs of concept, pilots and trials at different stages of maturity, generating evidence to support decision-making and future adoption.

The role provides strategic stewardship for early-stage opportunities where ownership, value or use may still be emerging. It helps HPB clarify whether an opportunity should proceed, stop, pivot, transition to a business unit, scale further, or be translated into useful insights for wider organisational learning.

[What you will be working on]

• Design and lead practical experiments that test an opportunity's value, feasibility and readiness for adoption, working with stakeholders to define clear success criteria, learning objectives and decision points.

• Manage a portfolio of trials across different stages - prioritising, sequencing and advancing them in line with strategic value and organisational readiness - while coordinating internal teams, vendors and external partners to keep trials progressing in a timely and compliant manner.

• Shape and steward early-stage innovation opportunities to clarify their strategic value, identify future business ownership and translate learnings into insights that other teams can build on.

• Evaluate trials against objectives, risks, feasibility and potential impact, and develop clear recommendations on whether opportunities should proceed, stop, pivot, transition to a business unit or scale. Surface evidence-based findings and recommendations to senior management, and ensure that learnings from all trials - including those that do not proceed - are captured and shared to inform future innovation efforts.

• Identify suitable long-term owners for concluded trials and work with them to transfer ownership and insights effectively.

• Develop a practical and replicable handover process and transition plan that can be applied consistently across all concluding trials, and support business units in adopting or adapting these insights for future opportunities.

• Build stakeholder understanding, interest and support for innovation opportunities, bringing together relevant parties to shape, test and refine ideas through experimentation.

• Document key lessons, observations and evidence from each trial in a format suited for decision-making, handover or future reference, and package trial outputs so they can be adopted, adapted or referenced by business units and future innovation teams.

• Present findings and recommendations clearly to senior management, and work closely with other IO leads to advance opportunities through the innovation pipeline.

[What we are looking for]

• At least 8–10 years of relevant experience in innovation, transformation, strategy, product development, pilot delivery or related fields.

• Strong ability to work effectively in ambiguous and evolving environments.

• Experience shaping, leading or supporting pilots, proofs of concept and innovation programmes.

• Experience managing a portfolio of work, leads or opportunities, with the ability to track progress, prioritise effort and keep multiple moving parts organised.

• Experience coordinating vendors or external partners to support delivery of pilots, trials or related workstreams.

• Familiarity with public-sector procurement processes, with the ability to engage vendors in a timely and compliant way.

• Strong analytical, stakeholder engagement, sensemaking and decision-support skills.

• Familiarity with digital technologies, AI, health technology or public-sector innovation would be an advantage.

Successful candidates will be offered a 2-year contract in the first instance