Associate Director, Strategy

New Yesterday

Associate Director, Strategy

Application Deadline: 23 July 2025

Department: Strategy

Employment Type: Fixed Term - Part Time

Location: Manchester

Reporting To: Head of Strategy

Compensation: £49,000 / year

Description

We're looking for an experienced strategy professional with a demonstrable track record of managing strategy and public affairs projects to join the team on a fixed term basis.

12-month fixed term contract, 0.9 FTE .

This is an exciting time to join the team at Ambition Institute. For almost 15 years, we and our predecessor charities have been delivering high quality professional development programmes to educators serving disadvantaged communities. We are now working with more teachers and school leaders than ever before, annually delivering programmes to over 50,000 educators nationwide. As part of our long-term strategy we are exploring new ways to help schools and trusts tackle their biggest challenges, from recruiting and retaining teachers, to giving the best education to children with special educational needs and disabilities.

As Associate Director, Strategy, you will be responsible for leading and implementing complex strategic projects across the organisation, playing a vital role in organisational decision making. Projects will involve, influencing sector policy and practice including through strategic communications, and developing and implementing internal strategies. You will be a confident writer, able to produce content for multiple audiences and channels. From proposals for senior leaders, to briefings for partners or compelling articles for leaders in the sector.

Who are Ambition Institute?

A great teacher changes the future every day. Especially for children who have had a tough start in life, a teacher can be the critical factor in their success.

At Ambition Institute we help schools tackling educational disadvantage to keep getting better and help their teachers and school leaders to become more expert over time.

That’s how we’ll make sure every child gets a great education and the best possible start in life.

We train teachers and leaders at all levels to get better at the things that make the biggest difference: what you teach, how you teach it, and how you create the conditions for schools to thrive.
We share what works. Everyone can benefit from evidence of how great teaching and leadership can improve schools and change lives, so we connect people to the latest research and best practice.
We champion every teacher and school leader’s potential to develop, as the driving force for sustainable school improvement.

Key Responsibilities:

Lead the defining of new strategy projects to deliver our long-term strategy
Lead the delivery of complex strategy projects
Lead the planning, development and drafting of complex reports
Carry out quantitative and qualitative analysis using a range of sources to support strategic projects
Facilitate highly effective meetings and workshops
Establish and oversee the implementation of robust approaches, processes, tools, and methodologies
Provide thought partnership to senior colleagues across the organisation
Support the professional development of the wider strategy team

Working in a hybrid way, you’ll be attached to either our Birmingham, London or Manchester office and will report to Head of Strategy. In line with our current ways of working, you’ll be expected to be in the office at least 1 day a month, in addition to team days and this may be reviewed by Ambition.

Skills, Knowledge and Experience

Essential
Our successful candidate will, of course, demonstrate their commitment to the mission
to improve the education and outcomes of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
They will also be able to demonstrate the following qualifications, skills and experience:

Structured problem solver: track record of independently approaching complex problems in a structured way, leveraging evidence, business and financial acumen, and logical reasoning to support strong recommendations.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills: demonstrates strong verbal and written communication across a diverse set of stakeholders, and the ability to take people with them. Track record of producing papers with impact independently for Executive Committee and Board of Trustees stakeholders.
Proactive relationship builder and stakeholder manager: experience of developing positive relationships across diverse stakeholders and different teams; skilled in effectively managing upwards to agree expectations with Directors and Executive Committee stakeholders. Capable of influencing appropriately, including with senior stakeholders
Experience of initiating and delivering projects: able to design a rigorous and realistic path to implement a project (e.g., by constructing a workplan with sensible sequencing, milestones, and KPIs) and to lead the end-to-end project with outstanding attention to detail to ensure work is completed to a high standard and to the deadline. Confidence to escalate appropriately.
Strong quantitative thinker: a ‘numbers’ person who has extensive experience with carrying out data modelling and data analysis to support strategic decision-making and enjoys the challenging of manipulating large data sets to produce meaningful information.
Experience of managing multiple projects at a time: comfortable responding to uncertainty or change to achieve positive outcomes. Able to juggle potentially conflicting priorities with skill and confidence.
Managing up: the credibility and confidence to advise, challenge and hold to account senior stakeholders.
Advanced proficiency in MS PowerPoint and MS Excel.

Desirable

Experience in influencing senior stakeholders at Executive Committee level.
Experience in coaching junior colleagues to develop their strategic skillset.
Experience in the education sector.

What’s in it for you….?

Competitive annual salary
Professional development for all staff
25 days’ annual leave, plus bank holidays and 'winter shut down’ at the end of December/beginning of January
Employer pension contribution of 11%
Agile, hybrid working culture, so you can manage when and where you work
Staff affinity networks that help keep equality, diversity and inclusion at the heart of our work
Blind recruitment process to ensure equality and fairness in our hiring
Enhanced maternity pay after a year’s service
Shared parental leave package
Access to free, confidential 24/7 wellbeing and support line
Comfortable and collaborative workspaces in the city centres of Manchester, Birmingham and London
Work-from-home technology package to support hybrid working
Interest free season ticket / bike loans

We don’t expect the person we hire to have all of the following, but this should give you a sense of what would enable you to thrive in this role and in our organisation:

You care deeply about educational disadvantage and being part of an organisation that challenges inequality
You have a good work ethic and strive to make a difference in the job you do
You always give maximum effort to understand and meet the needs of our partners and participants
You always have a great attitude so we “can do” for all our colleagues, partners and participants
You are open to feedback and learning because we want to keep getting better
You work with your initiative to bring new ideas and a fresh perspective
You are well organised and can prioritise work that will have the greatest impact

You want a career with a person-centred organisation with a cause at its heart.
You have a collaborative work ethos, bring warmth and good humour to work and constructive outlook to every situation
You enjoy working in a fast-moving workplace, with a great support structure around you
You would like to grow with an ambitious organisation as it progresses over time
Want flexibility in how you work – splitting your time between one of our offices and remote working and managing your own working patterns to get the job done.

Applications will be accepted for all office locations.

All applications must be received by the closing date 23:59 on 23 July 2025. Interview are expected to take place on 4 August 2025 and 5 August 2025

We recognise that AI function tools (i.e. ChatGPT or other generative AI tools) are here to stay and can be helpful for applications e.g. to assist in researching for application responses and to shorten your first draft. However, we are observing a growing trend in the use of AI, and we would caution applicants against relying too heavily on such tools when drafting responses.

The pitfall of such tools is that they produce generic responses that don’t showcase individuality, specific experiences or real-life examples. This usually results in applications being unsuccessful. We want to evaluate your response, and we will be looking for answers that use examples and experiences that are clearly specific to you. You are more likely to successfully demonstrate your soft skills like communication and teamwork when preparing answers to application questions yourself and this helps mitigate the unintended consequences of AI-generated responses.

If we suspect you have used AI inappropriately, the panel reviewing your application may adjust how your response is rated. For more details of what we consider to be acceptable use of AI function tools in our application process, please review our FAQs on our careers page.

We are committed to the safeguarding of children and the most vulnerable in our society and, as such, we are unable to employ individuals with relevant convictions, including the following: a conviction for an offence involving violence or dishonesty, of a sexual nature or against minors, or for any other offence that is relevant to the nature of the services provided by our organisation.

For any questions or queries please review our FAQs | Ambition Institute Careers (pinpointhq.com) in the first instance. If we've not addressed your question in this section, please email us at jobs@ambition.org.uk

As an employer, we have a responsibility to prevent illegal working in the UK by ensuring that our employees have the right to work in the UK. Therefore, as part of the recruitment process to verify your eligibility you will be required to produce relevant documentation.

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Location:: Manchester, England, United Kingdom
Salary:: £125,000 - £150,000
Job Type:: PartTime
Category:: Management & Operations

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Associate Director, Strategy

Associate Director, Strategy

Description

Key Responsibilities:

Skills, Knowledge and Experience

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