NHS Telephony Senior Technical Lead 3 month Contract

Pay: £500 - £1,500/month
Contract: Self-employed independent contractor, fixed-term (IR35 to be assessed)
Term: 3 months initially, with possible extension
Location: Remote (UK), occasional Manchester attendance
Working pattern: Self-directed hours, daily stand-up at 12:00 GMT/BST
Tools: Jira, GitLab, Confluence

What is Ladybird?
A Manchester healthtech startup. Small team. Moving fast. Building inCall — an AI receptionist for NHS GP practices. Project-based engagement with option to extend.

What is this role?
Technical leadership and oversight. Not hands-on engineering.

You will own the architecture, review two specialist contractors (AWS Cloud Engineer + AI Engineer), manage Jira delivery, and act as the primary technical escalation point for Ladybird.

Hard requirement , read this first

You must have direct, hands-on experience operating a live NHS or emergency telephony system in production.

This means one or more of:

• NHS 999 or 111
• GP surgery telephony
• NHS triage or crisis contact centres
• Emergency services communications

Strong knowledge is required in:

• SIP, RTP, NAT traversal, codecs, PBX resilience
• FreeSWITCH, Asterisk, or similar
• AWS architecture, security, monitoring, CI/CD, Terraform
• Healthcare/NHS data handling
• AI/LLM oversight, including production-readiness, latency, fallback, and risk review

If you do not have this, this role is not for you.

What you will oversee
3CX · FreeSWITCH on AWS · NHS PDS FHIR API · LLaMA on SageMaker · AWS Transcribe · ElevenLabs · CloudWatch audit logging

What you will do
✔ Own overall POC architecture
✔ Review and challenge telephony, cloud, and AI decisions
✔ Manage Jira delivery and acceptance criteria across contractors
✔ Sign off monthly deliverables
✔ Communicate technical risk to non-technical stakeholders

3-month delivery plan

• Month 1: Architecture locked. Telephony validated. Jira set up. Acceptance criteria agreed.
• Month 2: Oversee delivery. Review data handling and audit logging. Assess AI model progress.
• Month 3: Lead POC demo. Review CTI and mock EMIS workflows. Production roadmap. Final sign-off.

You must have

• NHS or emergency telephony production experience (non-negotiable)
• SIP · RTP · NAT traversal · PBX resilience · FreeSWITCH or Asterisk
• AWS knowledge sufficient to challenge a cloud engineer's work
• Experience leading multiple specialist contractors simultaneously
• Jira delivery management
• 5+ years production engineering experience

Useful but not essential

• Surgery Connect
• Avaya
• Genesys
• NHS clinical safety
• SC Clearance
• Telecoms carrier background
• NHS IG familiarity

The deal

• £500/month inclusive of VAT
• £1,500 total for initial term
• Weekly worksheet submitted Friday, reviewed Monday, invoice paid within 7 days of acceptance
• Remote UK
• Self-directed hours
• Daily standup 12:00 GMT/BST Mon–Fri

The opportunity
This is Stage 1 of a four-stage NHS AI telephony platform. Stages 2–4 add AI triage, clinical routing, and fully autonomous call handling. The Senior Technical Lead who delivers this POC is strongly positioned to lead those stages.

How to apply 3 stages

You must complete the application form to be considered. CVs sent directly will not be reviewed.

① Form: Complete the application at the bottom of job description - 15 minutes
② Video: 60–120 second intro video, 3 questions - full brief provided
③ Group interview: 90 minutes via Google Meet

You will hear back within 48 hours at every stage either way.

Apply here: https://ladybirdltd.jp.larksuite.com/share/base/form/shrjpoAIWRWokjOrao9nhaSoRYe

Application question(s):

• This is a fixed-term independent contractor engagement lasting three calendar months from the start date, with the possibility of extension by mutual written agreement only. Are you aware of and comfortable with this?
• The fee for this engagement is £500 per calendar month inclusive of VAT, totalling £1,500 for the full initial term. Are you aware of and comfortable with this rate?
• This role requires your full commitment and availability throughout the engagement. You will be expected to attend a daily standup at 12:00 GMT/BST Monday to Friday, submit a weekly worksheet every Friday, respond to communications promptly, and deliver agreed monthly outputs on time. Can you commit to this engagement as your primary focus for the full three-month term?

Work Location: Remote