Head of Planning and Governance

Your role at St John of God Health Care  

St John of God Health Care is seeking a strategic and commercially astute Head of Planning and Governance to lead the evolution of our Digital and Technology function from reactive delivery to proactive, disciplined enablement.

This pivotal leadership role is responsible for establishing and strengthening technology planning, governance, and assurance across the portfolio. Leading a small specialist team spanning enterprise architecture, vendor and licensing management, and test and environment governance, you will set the foundations for effective prioritisation, financial stewardship, risk management, and strategic delivery enablement.

Working closely with the General Manager Digital and Technology and senior stakeholders across Finance, Procurement, Legal and the wider business, you will translate organisational strategy into clear technology roadmaps, investment plans, and governance frameworks. The role plays a critical assurance function, ensuring architectural standards, vendor decisions, testing strategies, and environment controls support delivery velocity, resilience, compliance, and value for money.

This role suits an experienced technology leader who brings strong people leadership, sound commercial judgement, and the ability to introduce structure, transparency, and discipline into complex environments—while remaining aligned to the Mission and Values of St John of God Health Care and its commitment to service excellence.

The Position

• Working with the other Heads of Function, lead the IT planning cadence from a strategic perspective: translate business strategy into prioritised technology deliverables, roadmaps, and multi‑year investment plans.

• Chair/coordinate governance forums (e.g. architecture review board, risk review committee) and ensure decisions map to business strategy, roadmaps, risk appetite and funding.

• Maintain and evolve prioritisation frameworks, governance templates and benefits realisation tracking.

• Line manage Enterprise Architect, Vendor and Licensing Manager, and Test and Environments Manager; set objectives, review outcomes and ensure cross‑functional alignment.

• Build capability across planning, vendor governance and environment management to reduce executive escalation and operational noise.

• Working with Finance and Procurement, oversee technical commercial governance for all technology vendors and licensing posture; ensure contracts, renewals and licensing strategy align with architecture and cost objectives.

• Set policy for environment provisioning, environment lifecycle, data masking and environment cost controls; ensure environment strategy supports velocity, compliance and resilience.

• Provide capacity and insights to the GM on budgeting, forecasting, and investment governance for the technology portfolio; own recurring reporting on spend vs. plan and forecasts.

• Ensure the Enterprise Architect embeds strategic architectural decisions into procurement, vendor choices and solution designs; enforce compliance to critical architectural guardrails.

• Act as a force multiplier for the function, by having the broader overview on how to action high‑impact (risk and/or value) initiatives requiring attention.

You will possess a relevant tertiary qualification with a minimum of eight (8) years’ experience working within, or closely alongside, a technology function in a similar role in a large, complex organisation. You bring proven experience partnering with senior leaders and executive stakeholders to support prioritisation, investment, and strategic decision‑making. A strong understanding of enterprise architecture principles, vendor and licensing models, and test and environment lifecycle management is essential, enabling you to provide informed leadership across planning, governance, and delivery assurance

To succeed, you will bring strong financial acumen with demonstrated experience in technology budgeting, forecasting, and investment appraisal, supporting informed decision‑making at portfolio and enterprise level. You are familiar with recognised governance and assurance frameworks such as COBIT, ITIL, TOGAF (or equivalent), along with audit and compliance requirements, and can apply these pragmatically to strengthen control, transparency, and value realisation.

You will be an excellent executive communicator and facilitator, able to distil complex technical, financial, and architectural trade‑offs into clear, decision‑ready options for senior leaders. A strategic and decisive thinker, you are skilled at fostering cross‑functional consensus, influencing outcomes, and driving alignment across diverse stakeholder groups to enable effective and sustainable delivery.

Above all, people will be at the core of everything you do committing to and supporting our Mission and Values.

All applicants are asked to submit a covering letter (of no more than two (2) pages) demonstrating how you meet the above position requirements.

We can offer you.

• Highly competitive renumeration package

• Permanent full-time opportunity

• Working from home arrangements (40%) - a minimum of 3 days per week in the office is required

• Based from our Perth CBD office or Melbourne CBD Office

• Central CBD location, close to bus and train stations

• Salary packaging up to $18,550 on a range of benefits such as mortgage, rent, meal entertainment, holiday accommodation or other everyday living expenses as well as options to salary package benefits above the FBT cap on items such as:

  • Novated leasing 

  • work related expenses.

  • self-education and

  • additional superannuation

• A healthy work-life balance through flexible work options, additional purchased leave, and well-being programs

• Employee discount on St John of God Hospital & Medical Services and Private Health Insurance

• Employee support through our dedicated free Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

For general enquiries regarding the recruitment process (including access to the position description), please contact Mel Schook, Team Leader Recruitment, on (08) 6116 0534.

Unsolicited contact and applications via agencies will not be accepted

At St John of God Health Care, we celebrate diversity and warmly welcome applications from people of all backgrounds.

Our commitment is to create a safe and nurturing environment for all children and vulnerable individuals in our care and proactively take steps to protect them from abuse, ensuring their safety and well-being.

Our inclusive culture fosters an environment that is respectful and secure, welcoming and accessible, and unified through our diverse community.