The Associate Partner role provides the opportunity to join our Health Systems consulting team within CF's Senior Leadership Team, focusing on public sector healthcare. You will work alongside the Managing Partner and the wider leadership team to grow our Health Systems business, shaping CF's market strategy, developing enduring client relationships, and delivering high-impact engagements that improve performance and outcomes across the NHS.

Our purpose: To have enduring positive impact on health and healthcare.
Our mission: To be invaluable to our clients, supporting them to innovate and make lasting improvements and to build an exceptional company that attracts, develops, and retains a trusted and uniquely talented team.
Our strategic intent: We are focused on building the leading consulting company dedicated to the health sector. We serve the entire sector including healthcare systems (providers, payors, regulators), life sciences (pharma, biotech, devices, and diagnostics), health investing, health tech (data, digital and apps) and the wider suppliers to the sector (infrastructure, consumables and supporting services). Our clients include public sector organisations, private sector companies and investors. We provide consultancy across a broad spectrum of services, which reflect the expertise of the CF leadership team and their ability to act as trusted advisors to chief executives, directors, and boards on the most important issues they face.

We help organisations to improve population health and the effectiveness of life sciences and healthcare through understanding their aspirations, helping them to identify the opportunities to create value, spotting and applying innovation in practice, adopting best‑in‑class management approaches and providing hands‑on support to deliver improvements. Our consulting is renowned for its use of data and the insights this creates. We have access to more UK healthcare data than any other company and are expert in its safe use for delivering healthcare, improving health, managing services, supporting uptake of innovation, undertaking research, and generating evidence. Our access to data and our engineering and data science capabilities supports our consulting, and they are also available for direct client services including in multidisciplinary teams.

Role Summary

As a core member of CF's senior leadership team, the Associate Partner will drive the growth of our Health Systems business, focusing primarily on the NHS and performance improvement. You will shape and deliver our strategy, strengthen CF's market profile, generate new business, and lead high‑quality client delivery. The role requires deep experience in business development and trusted relationships across health system leaders, providers, and commissioners. You will act as a visible thought leader, demonstrating CF's impact in driving performance, efficiency, and outcomes across health and healthcare.

The Associate Partner is responsible for delivering their own revenue target, ag­reed in the business planning cycle, and supporting the wider Partner team in achieving collective goals through contributing to business development and the bid process. They will also role‑model excellence in how proposals are shaped and delivered, ensuring a culture of celebrating wins and learning from setbacks.

Consistent with CF's approach, Associate Partners are materially involved in client delivery. This means leading and supporting projects, ensuring the highest standards in deliverables, and inspiring teams to generate innovative, evidence‑based solutions that make a lasting difference to NHS clients. Working collaboratively with other Associate Partners and Partners, the post holder will safeguard quality and commercial standards, addressing challenges quickly and constructively.

What makes this opportunity distinctive is the clear, structured trajectory to Partner, underpinned by CF's apprenticeship model. From the outset, the Associate Partner is supported by senior leadership and a dedicated Partner sponsor to develop the skills, experiences, and profile required to make that transition. Development focuses on three key dimensions: commercial leadership, client impact, and firm contribution and includes structured exposure to business development, client relationship management, and the opportunity to shape CF's service offerings and thought leadership.

Responsibilities

Business growth

• Strategic leadership and market expansion: Lead the development of CF services within Health Systems, our approach to business development for growth and expansion. By spotting emerging market trends and disruptions, you will drive the development of CF offers that address future client challenges, focusing on areas with the biggest impact and opportunities.
• Revenue generation: Deliver anchor revenue targets aligned with the business plan and role‑model expectations for yourself and provide bid support to other leadership members to help them deliver their own targets.
• Business planning: Work with CF leadership team to actively engage in the development of the health systems and wider business plans to ensure they are robust and deliverable by the team as a whole.

Client development

• Establish and develop relationships with senior clients as a trusted advisor: Continually develop and maintain relationships with senior and influential decision‑makers within client organisations, industry bodies, and collaborators. Develop the intimacy, credibility and reliability to be sought after for your advice as someone who puts their interests first.
• Cultivate and expand your network: Identify key client organisations who could benefit from CF's offerings.

Brand leadership and thought leadership

• Brand development: Maintain a compelling and distinctive personal brand in your area of expertise, establishing a reputation as a trusted advisor and thought leader. Engage in speaking and participating at key events to elevate CF's profile.
• Lead the development of distinctive insights and thought leadership that contributes to enhancing CF's reputation, creating new lines of client service, and developing our capabilities. Produce timely thought‑leadership with a global lens adopting the CF brand guidelines.
• Market presence and communication: Build CF's brand in the health systems market, using the website and other digital platforms to enhance your own and CF's visibility.
• Communicate with a range of clients using diverse materials, ensuring CF's value proposition is clearly articulated across all channels. Be active both through online media and in person at conferences and events.
• Capability building: Act as a faculty leader for health systems, creating training content that engages and inspires. Role‑model and lead teams in adopting best practice and embedding innovation in all work.
• Codifying knowledge developed in client delivery and frameworks for approaches and methods used to be leveraged by other teams in proposal development and client delivery.
• Creating reference cases through our work and capturing these to share CF stories of impact.

Client delivery

• Act as Delivery Partner on multiple client engagements simultaneously, ensuring excellent client relationships are developed in each and balancing time appropriately.
• Lead the orchestration and delivery of complex and multi‑workstream projects to agreed scope, quality, timeframe and resources, actively providing direction to the content of the work.
• Lead the project team on the ground, monitoring and evaluating team performance, and actively developing team members by providing regular feedback and mentorship. Build teams that get the right mix of people and capabilities to best serve the client and strengthen the relationships.
• Address risks and issues that may arise during the course of client project delivery, communicating these and mitigating any negative impact on the desired project outcomes.
• Work in collaboration with the Accountable Partner for delivery, ensuring they are kept up to date on progress, able to perform the QA role in a timely manner and leveraged appropriately to support client engagement and team problem‑solving.

People leadership & mentorship

• Create effective team working internal to CF and in partnership with clients.
• Mentor client delivery teams to enable the growth and development of team members.
• Mentor bid managers to ensure excellent high‑quality and distinctive proposals.
• Act as a Development Sponsor to support the ongoing personal and professional development of the CF team, for up to five team members.
• Act as faculty in training modules which relate to your strengths.
• Provide stable and situational leadership under pressure and across competing priorities.
• Role model and create the context for all staff to live the CF values and adhere to the CF code of conduct.
• Socialise with colleagues and clients to create a meaningful and trusted relationship, fostering psychological safety for all.

Requirements

Mandatory

• Ideally 10+ years' experience in management consulting, or a combination of consulting and senior healthcare leadership, with a strong focus on health systems, primarily NHS performance improvement.
• Extensive experience leading complex, high‑impact projects in NHS systems or healthcare delivery.
• Proven project leadership and client management skills, including oversight of multi‑disciplinary teams.
• Exceptional team management and people development skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication, able to influence senior stakeholders and convey complex concepts clearly.
• Strong ability to delegate effectively while maintaining accountability for outcomes.
• A well‑established network in the healthcare sector and/or demonstrable track record in business development and revenue generation.
• Deep industry knowledge with an eye on emerging trends and innovations across NHS and global healthcare systems.
• Relevant degree or professional qualification in a related field.

Preferred

• Experience in consulting on service redesign or operational transformation in healthcare.
• Experience in data‑driven performance improvement or workforce improvement.
• Experience in digital health initiatives that enable improved organisational performance.

Benefits

• Holiday entitlement: 25 days/year for staff and 30 days/year for leadership (Manager role included), increasing by 1 day for every year of service up to a maximum of 35 days of holiday per year.
• We contribute 7% of your salary into your pension, while you contribute 3% (or more if you like).
• Access to a flexible benefits programme giving you the chance to increase pension contributions, gain access to a cash plan or benefit from a ClassPass subscription.
• Annual leave purchase: employees with less than 35 days annual leave entitlement are able to purchase additional annual leave days.
• Income protection: in the event of long‑term incapacity and a qualifying claim, 75% of salary will be paid.
• Enhanced sick pay benefit beyond Statutory Sick Pay for up to a total 12 weeks in any 12‑month period.
• Life insurance covering four times your basic salary in a tax‑free lump sum payable to your beneficiaries in the event of your death whilst in service.
• Enhanced family leave policies: additional pay for parents who have a baby or adopt.
• Access to an interest‑free loan of up to £10,000.
• Access to an interest‑free season ticket loan, repayable by 12 monthly instalments.
• Workplace nursery scheme: access to a scheme to help working parents save tax and NI on the cost of the nursery care.
• An employee assistance and wellness Programme: including access to telephone counselling, life coaching, interactive tools online and digital content downloadable from Lifeworks.
• Seasonal flu jabs: provided by Boots annually.
• Eye care tests: vouchers and discounts at Vision Express.
• Ride to work scheme, saving up to 42% on bikes and cycling accessories at Evans Cycles.

CF is a leading consultancy dedicated to making an enduring impact on health and healthcare. We work with leaders and frontline teams to improve health, transform healthcare, embed life science innovation and boost growth through investment. Our consultancy serves the entire healthcare sector, from payors and providers of care, to life science companies, health tech and sector suppliers. CF's multi‑disciplinary team provides end‑to‑end services, spanning strategy, finance, performance, organisational improvement, data and digital. We also create optimal policy conditions for healthcare advancements through evidence‑based thought leadership, taking a proactive stance on key issues. As an inclusive and values‑driven organisation, we are committed to excellence and are honoured to have received multiple industry awards. With unmatched access to UK healthcare data and specialist data science expertise, our consultants are a driving force for delivering positive and meaningful change.