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 researcher developer to join King’s Doctoral College as Doctoral Student Development Manager on a full-time, permanent basis.

Working in the supportive and inclusive Doctoral Environment & Development team, you will provide operational leadership for our central provision of PGR training and development support. As manager of the Doctoral Student Development sub-team, you will oversee the delivery of our diverse programme of development workshops, activities, and events tailored to the needs of doctoral researchers across the university.

The ideal candidate will draw on their researcher development experience, analytical skills, and understanding of the UK doctoral landscape to continuously evaluate and improve our doctoral student development support, making evidence-based strategic and operational decisions, and presenting data to stakeholders clearly and persuasively.

You will work with the Associate Director (Doctoral Environment & Development) and other senior King’s Doctoral College staff to identify strategic priorities for PGR student development, in line with King’s overall strategic goals and drawing on sector policies and developments, and devise an operational plan to deliver these.

Committed to ensuring our development offer remains inclusive, engaging, and impactful, you will develop new approaches to embedding the student voice in our programmes whilst building strong relationships with faculty staff, external training providers, and internal partners across King’s.

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.      Extensive experience of delivering impactful researcher development initiatives or of working in a research environment

2.      Confident communicator, able to influence senior stakeholders by delivering presentations and drafting reports that are accurate, succinct and persuasive.

3.      A clear motivation to enhance doctoral student experience and support a healthy and positive research culture.

4.      Understanding of the doctoral training environment, ideally across a wide range of academic fields, and the Higher Education research sector more broadly

5.      Experience of working effectively and collaboratively on projects involving multiple stakeholders, priorities, and deadlines.

6.      Demonstrable commitment to equality and diversity, and enhancing accessibility of opportunity.

7.      Ability to analyse and evaluate quantitative and qualitative data (e.g. surveys, workshop attendance data, focus group responses) and make constructive recommendations.

Desirable criteria

1.      A PhD or other postgraduate research degree.

2.      Experience of line management and/or project leadership.

3.      Budget management experience

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.