Associate Director, Strategy

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About us:

For almost 200 years, King's has been a place where ideas turn into action. We have recently launched our new strategy: King's Strategy 2030, which sets out how we will take that purpose forward over the coming years, in an environment where higher education and society is changing dramatically.

We are seeking an outstanding professional to join the university's Strategic Planning team to help us take the next steps on that journey. We are a small, motivated and development-focused team, and you will have the opportunity to work on a range of projects and with a wide range of stakeholders across the university.

About the role:

The Strategic Planning team supports the university in effective strategy development, implementation and planning, including strategy development projects, institutional strategy implementation, portfolio management and the university's integrated planning process (IPP). Strategic Planning is a small team based in the Vice-Chancellor's Office, who works widely with colleagues from across the university on range of projects.

The team is focused on implementation of King's Strategy 2030, which was launched in January 2026. This role works across the range of the teams activities. This will include supporting ongoing strategy implementation, integrated planning, investment prioritisation, and programme portfolio management. The post-holder will work on a range of strategic special projects across a broad spectrum of the institution's work.

The postholder will work across a wide range of topics and strategic issues. The postholder will be expected to lead on projects with institution-wide implications, often complex, ambiguous and/or high-value, with relatively limited direction.

Specific responsibilities will include:

• Project managing and facilitating strategy development initiatives, including challenging, testing and shaping requirements with stakeholders, developing approach through co-design with stakeholders, and ensuring the assignment delivers on requirements
• Preparing strategic and business cases for relatively complex new activities, taking ownership for and challenging assumptions, and relating the proposed case to institutional strategy, business needs and requirements
• Producing high-quality strategic analysis and recommendations, drawing on a variety of perspectives and sources, and supported by robust analysis
• Synthesising and analysing a variety of quantitative data, including working closely with the university's Analytics team and others to generate actionable insight from data
• Leading on the sourcing, consolidation and presentation of relevant external insight on particular strategic questions and identifying needs
• Supporting strategy implementation processes, including investment prioritisation and strategy implementation monitoring
• Jointly designing, developing and documenting and supporting implementation of the IPP process and ensuring it delivers intended outcomes and supports implementation of institutional strategy.
• Developing engagement strategies and producing comms material on ambiguous, complex and contentious questions and adapting style, message and manner effectively to deliver effective outcomes

The role will involve working closely with members of the Vice-Chancellor's Senior Team, and building strong relationships with stakeholders across and outside the organisation as required.

This is a full time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered an indefinite contract.

About you:

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Educated to degree level or equivalent
2. Experience in developing strategic cases or full business cases, including case for change, and early-stage implementation planning
3. Outstanding analysis skills, including drawing on a variety of perspectives and own expertise to frame questions effectively, structured problem solving, breaking down issues, and communicating outcomes clearly
4. Highly numerate and analytical, can collect and synthesise a variety of complex data sources to develop new insights and perspectives. Particularly adept at working with financial data
5. Confident working in and co-ordinating multidisciplinary teams, and building strong working relationships to drive effective outcomes
6. Excellent written, PowerPoint and verbal communication skills
7. Adept at engaging with sponsors and stakeholders, including with senior colleagues and externals, adapting message, style and manner as needed

Desirable criteria

1. Experience running a business planning process in a complex organisation
2. Experience within the Higher Education sector or adjacent/similar sector

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further information:

At King's, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King's guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ' How we Recruit ' pages.