Professor Shackley is currently the Director and Medical Lead of the Greater Manchester Cancer Alliance, appointed as the first officer of the alliance in 2013 helping to set it up and develop it into one of the leading cancer systems in the UK. 

He also remains a urology consultant surgeon at Salford Royal appointed in 2005 and his main clinical interests over this time have been renal cancer and stones, medical education and healthcare management. He works at Salford Royal Hospital and the Northern Care Alliance (NCA) group.  He is a Group Associate Medical Director for the NCA.

Previously, in 2015 to 2018 he was also the co-lead (clinically) for the National Cancer Vanguard which brought Greater Manchester and London together as a 10 million catchment population to develop and test new cancer approaches before a broader roll out across NHS England. Prime amongst these programmes was the development of national best practice timed pathways in common cancers, now fully established and commissioned across England, alongside many other projects such as stratified follow up and the Gateway-C primary care platform.
    
He also has an academic role within the University of Manchester as the Clinical Lead at MAHSC (Manchester Academic Health Science Centre) for cancer working with colleagues to bring research and clinical care closer together, assisting with grant applications alongside helping the supervision of postgraduate students undertaking specialised research. In 2018, he was awarded a Chair position (professorship).  
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Other previous key roles include being a member of the HAELO board (Salford’s Health and Improvement Centre), member of the National Urological Training Committee (SAC) 2010 to 2015, and was the Chair of the Surgical Division/ Associate Medical Director at Salford Royal (2010-2013).  He has been the Chair of the Regional Urological Training Committee, Programme Director and Career Lead for North West Urology (2007-10), and between 2006 and 2010 he was the Assistant National Director of Education for BAUS (British Association of Urological Surgeons). He qualified from The University of Manchester in 1992.