What's the Opportunity?

We're recruiting on behalf of Southern Stay Disability Services for a newly created leadership role. The NDIS landscape is shifting fast: funding models, participant expectations, and sector pressures are all changing, and Southern Stay needs someone who can translate that shift into better services on the ground. This isn't a role to maintain what exists; it's a role to redesign it. Reporting directly to the CEO, this is the role that influences what Southern Stay’s service delivery looks like into the future.

This position is offered as a 2-year fixed-term contract. We welcome applications from candidates seeking either full-time or part-time arrangements, and are happy to discuss flexible working options to suit the successful candidate's circumstances.

Who are Southern Stay?

Since 1982, Southern Stay has supported over 700 people with disabilities across Southwest Victoria to live the life they choose. With around 300 staff and a genuine person-centred ethos, Southern Stay is an organisation that's stable enough to take a long view, and ambitious enough to want to redesign rather than just react.

About You (The Successful Applicant)

We're looking for someone with a proven track record of leading service redesign or transformation - not someone who's attended a workshop on it. You think in systems: you can take complex data, operational feedback, and sector signals and turn them into a clear, actionable case for change. You've led complex initiatives across teams that don't report to you, and you know how to bring people along rather than just issue directives. You're equally comfortable in a co-design session with participants and presenting to a CEO or Board.

A typical week might involve: analysing NDIS pricing changes over coffee on Monday, running a co-design workshop with participants and frontline staff on Tuesday, working through implementation barriers with Operations and HR on Wednesday, presenting redesign progress to Executive on Thursday, and checking on Friday whether last month’s changes actually made things better for participants and staff. No two weeks look the same, and that's the point.

What Southern Stay Has to Offer

• A permanent, full-time leadership role with a respected, values-driven not-for-profit making a genuine difference across southwest Victoria
• SCHADS Award Level 7 classification, with salary packaging benefits available as a registered NFP (reducing your taxable income)
• Direct access to the CEO and Executive - a role where your ideas shape strategy, not just sit in a report
• Real variety: no two weeks look the same, with your time split between strategic analysis, co-design, implementation, and stakeholder engagement
• The opportunity to lead meaningful, large-scale change that directly improves outcomes for people with disabilities
• Flexibility to base yourself in Warrnambool or Hamilton, with occasional work-from-home where the role allows

About the Location

Some people chase a tree change. Others end up building something that outlasts them. Southwest Victoria is the kind of place where a community actually notices the difference good services make. Where the work you redesign today is still shaping people's lives a decade from now. Between Warrnambool's coastline and Hamilton's rural heartland, you get space, a slower pace outside of work, and a genuine sense that your contribution is visible and valued, not lost in a large metro system. If you want a role where your legacy is something you can point to in the community you live in, this is it.

How to Apply and Further Information

Written applications, including a current resume and cover letter detailing your responses to the Key Selection Criteria, should be submitted via the Job Seekers Application Portal - www.cooperhardiman.com.au/jobseekers

Full key selection criteria can be found in the Info Pack available at www.cooperhardiman.com.au/jobseekers

For more information and confidential enquiries, please contact Jonathan Buckle via email on [email protected] using the subject line: Service Design & Transformation Lead - Southern Stay Disability Services - Warrnambool / Hamilton enquiry via EthicalJobs.

We expect to interview potential candidates in the fortnight following this date - either in person or via Teams.