Programme Associate
Application Deadline: 12 August 2026
Department: NPQ
Employment Type: Fixed Term - Full Time
Location: London
Reporting To: Programme Manager
Compensation: £26,228 / year
Description
We're looking for someone with a good understanding of customer service delivery and best practice to join the team as a Programme Associate on a fixed term contract basis until 23rd December 2026.
The Programme Associate will support the operational delivery (end to end programme management) of a specific cohort, programme or number of programmes. You'll work as part of a team owning the end-to-end experience of stakeholders on a range of programmes, helping them to engage with their chosen programme(s) and ensure they receive excellent customer service.
As interface between the organisation and these stakeholders, you'll liaise with other teams ensuring they have the highest quality experience.
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.
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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.
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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.
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We champion every teacher and school leader’s potential to develop, as the driving force for sustainable school improvement.
We would like you to:
Support with stakeholder engagement, answering queries and building effective relationships
> Provide high-quality handling of in-bound stakeholder queries, escalating where appropriate in line with agreed escalation policies, and seeking to build a friendly, professional and warm relationship with stakeholders
> Support the implementation of stakeholder engagement and communications plans across multiple channels, e.g. working on handbooks, updating the customer portal, sending out bulk mail-merged emails on Salesforce, evaluation surveys, etc.
Support programme delivery and attend events
> Support the effective delivery of the programme(s). This may include supporting on project planning, processing management information, raising purchase orders etc.
> Attend events when requested in order to provide a face for the organisation, to build relationships with stakeholders, and to ensure effective delivery of the programme(s).
Create and maintain excellent stakeholder journey experiences
> Collaborate closely with other teams, e.g. to ensure event invitations are sent out and event details are updated on portal, events (and other) teams are aware of individual stakeholder needs, the resourcing team has high quality information in order to allocate facilitators and coaches carefully to deliver an enhanced experience, the accreditation team are aware of likely missed deadlines, etc.
> Support candidate services/network journey team if requested, by assessing applications against agreed frameworks
Maintain and monitor accurate and up to date stakeholder records and information
> Use systems to monitor and evaluate stakeholder progress and flag where additional support may be required, escalating where appropriate in line with agreed escalation policies
> Collect and review stakeholder feedback and follow up where appropriate in line with team ways of working, and contribute to continuous improvement across the team
> Maintain excellent records of all communications and stakeholder information on shared systems accessible to others
Working in a hybrid way, you’ll be attached to either our Birmingham, London or Manchester office and will report to Programme Manager. 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
- A good understanding of customer service delivery and best practice
- Good organisation, planning and prioritisation skills
- Strong attention to detail
- Good communication skills (written and oral)
- Ability to use own initiative
- Able to respond positively and flexibly to change and/or to challenging situations with a desire to seek solutions and make improvements
- Strong team player with the ability to work independently and seek advice where required
- Able to accurately record, monitor and analyse data
- Committed to equality and diversity
Desirable
- Previous experience of using CRM systems, e.g. Salesforce
- Previous customer service work experience ideally within the education or charity 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 11:59pm on 12 August 2026. Interviews are expected to take place on 18 & 19 August 2026.
We recognise that AI function tools (such as ChatGPT or other generative AI tools) are here to stay and can be helpful for applications including 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.
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.
