Project Lead – Operations, Australian

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) is the leading advocate for surgical standards, professionalism and surgical education in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. The College is a not-for-profit organisation that represents more than 8600 surgeons and 1300 surgical trainees and Specialist International Medical Graduates. RACS also supports healthcare and surgical education in the Asia-Pacific region and is a substantial funder of surgical research.

We are seeking a Project Lead – Operations on a maximum term contract (18 months) to oversee the end-to-end operational administration of the Australian & New Zealand Emergency Laparotomy Audit – Quality Improvement (ANZELA-QI) registry. This role plays a pivotal part in ensuring the effective collection, analysis, and reporting of clinical data to support quality improvement, benchmarking, and research.

The Clinical Quality Registry Operations Lead plays a central role in the end-to-end operational management of the ANZELA-QI clinical registry, ensuring high-quality data collection, analysis and reporting to drive improved patient outcomes. This position oversees daily registry operations, hospital onboarding, governance and compliance, and continuous improvement activities, contributing to national benchmarking, research and health system performance.

Key responsibilities include:

• Leading strategic planning and operational execution of registry activities
• Managing hospital onboarding, ethics submissions, and stakeholder engagement
• Ensuring compliance with governance, privacy, and data protection standards
• Supporting registry outputs including reports, publications, and presentations
• Collaborating with research and analytics teams to align operations with insights
• Mentoring registry staff and fostering a high-performance culture

You will be an experienced health data and registry professional with tertiary qualifications in health or a related discipline. With a strong foundation in clinical governance, ethics and data privacy, you bring hands-on experience delivering health registries, audits, or large-scale data projects. You are confident navigating ethics submissions and excel at building trusted relationships across a diverse stakeholder group. Highly organised and proactive, you thrive in complex environments and take initiative to ensure projects run smoothly, meet deadlines and deliver meaningful outcomes.

Essential:

• Tertiary qualifications in health sciences, public health, epidemiology, or related field
• Experience managing health-related registries, audits, or large-scale data projects
• Strong understanding of clinical governance, ethics, and data privacy
• Experience with ethics submissions and hospital onboarding
• Excellent organisational, project management, and stakeholder engagement skills

Desirable:

• Masters or PhD in a health or medical-related field
• Experience with clinical quality registries or hospital/clinical settings
• Familiarity with REDCap, registry platforms, and data analysis tools (e.g., SAS, R, SQL)
• Knowledge of national health data standards and reporting frameworks

At our organisation, we are proud to have a positive impact on improving health outcomes in the community. Our people are especially important to us, we treat everyone fairly and are mindful of our colleagues and their wellbeing. Working at RACS, you will thrive in our environment where we recognise that we are all one team. Our employees are at their best when they have balance in their lives, so by joining our team you will have:

• flexibility to combine working from home with time spent in the office
• access to a wellbeing app
• annual wellbeing reimbursement
• additional, gifted leave at the end of the year
• access to online learning portal THRIVE with a catalogue of 89,000+ courses
• access to an Employee Assistance Program which includes counselling for personal and work-related issues, support for family members, legal support, career development and planning, nutrition & lifestyle advice as well as financial counselling

We genuinely care about our employees' health and wellbeing and encourage our people to bring their whole selves to work.

How to apply?

To apply for this role please submit your application by clicking on the "Apply Now' button to submit a cover letter and resume. Please note we will be reviewing applications as they come in.

If you would like a copy of the position description or have any questions about the role, our team will be happy to assist and can be directed to Please note that applications emailed to this address will not be accepted.

RACS is committed to supporting diversity and inclusion in our workforce.

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people as the traditional landowners of Australia and Māori as the tangatawhenua (people of the land) of Aotearoa New Zealand. We are committed to creating employment opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and Māori and building an environment that is inclusive, culturally safe and appropriate.