Contract: This role is being recruited as maternity cover for the substantive postholder and will be offered as a fixed-term employment contract. We currently anticipate the role lasting around 12 months; however, the duration may vary depending on the postholder’s return date.

Hours: Full-time (37.5 hours per week).

Compensation: £46,000 (including London weighting if relevant).

Comprehensive pension scheme (up to 6% employer contribution), cash plan healthcare package, and professional development budget.

Location: This is a hybrid role. Our head office is in London, and you will be expected to attend the office at least once a month. You will be required to attend in-person meetings in London, for example with members or funders, and occasionally other parts of England, as well as approximately three overnight residential retreats across England.

After passing probation, up to four weeks ‘super remote’ working per year, where you can work anywhere in the world as long as you’re online for four hours of the UK work day.

Holidays: 38 days per year, including our 3-day winter shut down and eight flexible bank holidays.

Start Date: 1 February, to allow handover with the current post-holder.

Application deadline: 9 November (9am)

About the Role

This is a leadership role for someone who loves bringing people together around problems that are too big for any one organisation to solve alone. You will work on three thematic collaborations with plenty of room to shape what comes next. These thematic collaborations consist of groups of FEA members who come together and use systems change approaches to address root causes impacting inequity for children and young people on one of three themes: literacy, early childhood and jobs for tomorrow. As Head of Thematic Collaborations, you’ll lead on thematic collaborations, working closely with the Director of Collective Action who sits on the senior leadership team.

Each thematic collaboration is at a different stage, making the role varied and interesting. The literacy thematic collaboration is up and running, the early childhood thematic collaboration is developing its theory of change, and the ‘Jobs for Tomorrow’ thematic collaboration is just getting started. Each one works to its own set of principles, because we’re deliberately trialling different approaches to systems change, and you’ll help us find out what works. As with all the FEA’s work, you will use the Waters of Systems Change framework to guide and understand the potential for change.

Alongside the member leaders who steer each group, you’ll provide the facilitation, convening and backbone support that keep coalitions moving helping members agree shared outcomes, try things out together and look honestly at how it went. You’ll build learning and evaluation into everything, so members take systems change thinking back into their own organisations. You’ll connect the groups through retreats, in-person gatherings and the work that happens between meetings, and you’ll help secure the funding that makes it all possible, working with the CEO and senior leadership team to look after our funder relationships.

If you feel strongly about tackling inequity for babies, children and young people, love seeing a room full of people finding common ground, enjoy helping a plan to take shape, and you believe organisations can achieve together what none of them could alone, this role is a chance to build something powerful. We’re looking for someone highly collaborative and committed to systems change, who cares about lasting change for children and young people, now and in the future.