Our News team delivers high quality and trustworthy television and online coverage that regularly attracts audiences in excess of 3.5 million viewers. It's a fast moving environment with a huge variety of roles and challenges on offer. We operate in 11 main news production centres across England, Northern Ireland, Wales and the Channel Islands. We also have a Political Unit and a Weather centre based in Westminster, London. And finally, we produce a range of current affairs & factual programming out of ITV Cymru Wales, UTV and ITV Border.

The role

We are looking for a Lead Production Specialist to join our news team at ITV Meridian based in our Whiteley newsroom. The Production Specialist role is a managerial and operational role working on daily live news and programmes output.

The Lead Production Specialist will provide excellent people management to a multi-skilled team providing technical, craft, operational and administrative skills and support across all areas of the news and programmes service. Working alongside the team, the successful candidate will lead and coordinate the work of the Production Specialists and facilitate training to ensure that the team develops the necessary and appropriate new skills.

The Lead Production Specialist forms part of the News Management Team and will work alongside key editorial colleagues to assist the Operations Manager and Head of News in agreeing and communicating strategy as well as taking a lead in projects.

You will encourage, inspire and lead by example on a daily basis, managing the technical team and working closely with editorial colleagues to deliver the overall vision for news output on-air and online.

The successful candidate will have a proven track record of managing people. You will be friendly and approachable, respectful of all your ITV colleagues and you'll have the ability to maintain a positive attitude, even when under pressure, working to deadlines or in a live environment.

As a Production Lead you will be a highly motivated, positive individual who is not afraid to give honest, constructive feedback as well as being an excellent leader. You will be required to deputise for the Operations Manager, undertaking tasks across both site and production as required.

You will be committed to working as part of a successful team, sharing the responsibility for supporting programme production within the available resources, being creative to achieve the goals of the news service. Above all you will be an excellent communicator who is quick thinking and calm under pressure with strong decision-making skills, often acting on your own initiative.

The role of Lead Production Specialist will be appointed on a 40-hour management contract

Skills you'll need (minimum criteria)

Proven technical experience relevant to the role.
Proven management experience and working effectively as part of a team.
Your application provides evidence of your flexibility, reliability and positive attitude.
Your application clearly demonstrates with examples your skills and abilities as a confident communicator; decision maker and leader
Proven ability to carry out a number of tasks simultaneously and concurrently.

Other things we're looking for (key criteria)

Demonstrates drive, resourcefulness and resilience in everything you do.
The ability to demonstrate resilience; determination with a willingness to learn new skills.
Proven ability to lead, inspire, motivate and develop a team.
Proven track record of working successfully and accurately to deadlines and focusing well under pressure.
Proven track record of working in LIVE television.
Proven track record of nurturing new and existing team members.
Proactive with the adaptability and flexibility to move between different duties on a daily basis.
Highly creative with an excellent eye for detail

Please clearly outline in a covering letter how you meet both the minimum and the key role criteria.