Digital Skills Lead, The Centre for Continuing Professional Development

Business Innovation (Centre for Continuing Professional Development)

Digital Skills Lead – REQ002008

The Centre for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is seeking to recruit a Digital Skills Lead for an exciting new UKRI Strength in Places Project “Digital Dairy Chain for SW Scotland and Cumbria.” UWS is a key partner in this 5-year £21.3 million project along with our academic and industry partners.

The Digital Dairy Chain (DDC) project aims to establish South-West Scotland and Cumbria as a leader in advanced, sustainable, and high-value dairy processing to catalyse business growth and deliver an uplift in economic prosperity and resilience. The project will:

• Develop digital connectivity for a value-added milk processing supply chain
• Stimulate research & development by providing state-of-the-art infrastructure, expertise, and funding.
• Provide support for early ventures, scale-up businesses, and established companies to undertake new product development and process improvement.
• Attract talent and foster a skills pipeline so that new technologies and market opportunities can be exploited.

The post holder will lead on the Future Skills Road-Mapping work package and be responsible for launching a comprehensive audit of the anticipated digital skills needs across the next 10-25 years.  Based on this review, a ‘Workforce for the future’ roadmap will be developed with a focus on aligning the dairy industry’s needs with education and training provisions in the region.  This will inform the development of industry-relevant skills development provision via CPD.  A Skills Forum will also be set up to facilitate on-going engagement between industry and education and training providers.

The successful candidate should have the following:

• A relevant degree or equivalent qualification.
• Proven experience in industry engagement with a focus on digital skills; in building and managing stakeholder relationships and fostering a strong network; in collaborating with external partners to ensure successful project delivery; and in performing labour market research, analysing skills needs, and identifying skills solutions.
• Significant knowledge of the digital skills landscape.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to build successful relationships at all levels; the ability to work effectively as part of a multi-functional team across partner organisations; highly developed communication and project management skills; ability to understand, collate, analyse and present complex information in a clear and concise manner; highly developed influencing skills; and be proactive, highly focussed with the ability to forward plan and organise work schedules with specific deadlines.

Based at the Paisley campus, the post holder will also need to travel to other campuses, and within the SW Scotland and Cumbria region, where required.

ABOUT US

UWS was named Higher Educational Institution of the Year in The Herald Higher Education Awards 2022 and is officially ranked by Times Higher Education in the top 600 universities worldwide (2022 World University Rankings) as well as in the top 150 universities worldwide under 50 years old (2022 Young University Rankings). University of the West of Scotland is one of Scotland’s largest and most dynamic modern universities. Our reach across the country, together with our London campus, means that UWS is a significant force in global knowledge creation, innovation, and a leading provider of undergraduate, postgraduate and research degree education. Our degrees provide students with a transformational experience; equipping them with highly sought-after graduate skills that set them up for global success in world-leading sectors, industries and businesses.

With cutting-edge courses, modern pedagogy and practical knowledge, we enable our students and staff to experience the joy of learning, teaching, research and innovation, and apply their knowledge for the benefit of others. 

Our professional services teams are the backbone of UWS, providing robust and innovative solutions to support the vast range of work across learning and teaching, and research and innovation. You will join a supportive and dedicated team, playing a key role in a range of work that will help drive forward our ambition to deliver world-leading research, and graduates who will design, shape and build a new future.

We offer our staff a caring and supportive environment and competitive benefits package which includes:

• 24 days of annual leave, plus a further 12 days for public/university holidays
• 19.3% employer’s pension contribution, including death in service benefits on joining the pension scheme
• Employee discount scheme across 3,500 retailers
• Fitness facilities across our campuses
• Access to a range of health and wellbeing resources, including occupational health, physiotherapy and access to our Employee Assistance Programme
• Professional, career and research development opportunities.

Closing Date: Sunday 26^th March 2023

Interview Date: w/c 3rd April March 2023

The University reserves the right to shorten/extend the closing date of any position where a high/low volume of suitable applications are received. Therefore, if you are interested in this role, an early application would be encouraged.

UWS is committed to equality and diversity and welcomes applications from underrepresented groups.

UWS is a “Disability Confident” employer.

University of the West of Scotland is a registered Scottish charity, no. SC002520.