King's College London

About us

Our vision is to make the world a better place. King’s College London is a world-renowned university that delivers exceptional education and world-leading research. Our Research Talent department lies at the heart of our commitment to cultivating world-class research and supporting the development of future leaders, in academia, research, education and beyond.

A key element of this is King’s Doctoral College, which supports a thriving community of over 4,200 doctoral researchers. Our comprehensive and inclusive doctoral student development programme includes approximately 300 live workshops each year and an extensive range of on-demand resources. We also support best practice in doctoral supervisor development, both at King’s and nationally, through our involvement in the Next Generation Research SuperVision Project (RSVP). We are deeply committed to inclusion, diversity, and the wellbeing of our staff and students.

About the role

We are seeking an enthusiastic and conscientious individual to join King’s Doctoral College as a Doctoral Student Development Officer on a full-time, fixed-term basis to cover a secondment.

Working in the supportive and inclusive Doctoral Environment & Development team, you will have the opportunity to develop your researcher development expertise whilst contributing to the enhancement of the postgraduate research (PGR) student experience at King’s. You will play a key role in commissioning, planning, and delivering a diverse programme of development workshops, activities, and events tailored to the needs of doctoral researchers across the university. This includes supporting flagship initiatives such as the annual Three Minute Thesis competition.

You will take responsibility for supporting the Health Sciences Doctoral Training Centre (HSDTC) programme, working closely with the HSDTC Director to identify emerging training needs and help shape new initiatives to support doctoral researchers in the health sciences.

Committed to ensuring our development offer remains inclusive, engaging, and impactful, you will draw on student feedback to help shape the programme whilst building strong relationships with faculty staff, external training providers, and internal partners across King’s.

We are looking for someone with demonstrable enthusiasm for supporting doctoral students and a keen interest in researcher development. You’ll be confident in managing projects and events, communicating effectively with a range of stakeholders, and promoting opportunities to maximise student engagement. A commitment to embedding principles of equality, diversity and inclusion in all aspects of your work is essential.

This is a full time post, and you will be offered a fixed term contract until 28 September 2026.

We work on a hybrid basis, combining remote working with regular in-person contact at our Lavington Street offices.

About you

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

Essential criteria

1.      Experience of working as a researcher and/or in delivering researcher development activities.

2.      Confident verbal communicator, with experience of giving talks or presentations.

3.      Excellent written communication skills, able to draft web copy, emails, reports and documents accurately, persuasively, and succinctly.

4.      Demonstrable enthusiasm for understanding and supporting the training and development needs of doctoral students.

5.      Strong IT, numerical and analytical skills, able to adapt to new systems and draw insights from data to inform planning.

6.      Proven track record of collaboration and team-working.

7.      Commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion, and to enhancing accessibility of opportunity.

8.      Experience of event delivery for both in-person and online events (e.g. planning and scheduling, managing bookings and attendee lists, accessibility and inclusion).

Desirable criteria

1.      A PhD or other postgraduate research degree.

2.      Experience of research in the health sciences and/or understanding of the development needs of health sciences doctoral students.

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

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

As part of this commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and through this appointment process, it is our aim to develop candidate pools that include applicants from all backgrounds and communities.

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 advert. 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.

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