Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a collaborative and results-driven leader with extensive multi-site retail management experience to join us as our Retail Operations Manager on a 9 month fixed term contract.

In this role, you will lead a team of Area Managers and oversee the operational performance of our UK-wide network of charity shops, driving income growth, championing volunteer engagement, and delivering best-in-class retail experiences that help transform children's lives.

About Us

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm.  When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave.  We ensure children's unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach.

About the role

As Retail Operations Manager, you will play a key leadership role within our Public Impact Directorate, directly managing six Area Managers to deliver our network of high-performing, community-focused retail shops. You will drive year-on-year growth, deliver against ambitious KPIs, and embed a strong culture of empowerment, creativity and collaboration.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the development and delivery of annual budgets and KPIs across all Area Manager-led shops.
• Provide strategic and operational leadership to ensure strong commercial performance and volunteer engagement.
• Support Area Managers and Shop Managers with HR, volunteering, and operational challenges, working closely with People and Volunteering teams.
• Collaborate with the Retail Development team to lead shop closure processes where required, ensuring best practice and community stewardship.
• Champion innovation and continuous improvement by embedding retail best practice and gathering field-based insights.
• Represent the field operations voice in strategic planning and prioritisation discussions.

About you

To be successful, it is important that you have:

• Significant experience in multi-site retail management, ideally including both high street and charity retail.
• Proven ability to lead and motivate large, geographically dispersed teams to meet and exceed commercial targets.
• Strong understanding of volunteer-led models and experience of working with volunteer teams.
• Demonstrable commercial acumen and financial literacy, including budget setting and performance management.
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and people management skills.
• A full UK driving licence and willingness to travel extensively, including some overnight stays.
• Commitment to Save the Children's vision, mission and values.

What we offer you:

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance.

• We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work.
• We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day. You can read more about our benefits here.

To learn more about the position, please review the Job Description in the attached Documents.

Closing date: 17^th October 2025

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Location & Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but at times you will be required to come to your contracted office (usually between 2–4 days per month, depending on the needs of your role, team, or service). For many roles, this is likely to be the minimum required to deliver impact.

This will be discussed and agreed with your manager / team and we encourage candidates to discuss our ways of working in more detail at interview stage.

Please note: travel costs to your contracted office will be at your own expense. 

Flexible Working - We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: 

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be "Free to Be Me". We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. 

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences - of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability - help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here. 

To see our full statement please visit this link: https://jobs.savethechildren.org.uk/our-policies/diversity/

Salary Structure: 

Save the Children is committed to paying staff in a fair and equitable way and will benchmark all salary offers in line with the pay of existing staff. To see our full offer please visit this link: Save the Children | Careers

Interview Expenses: 

Candidates should note that unfortunately it is not our policy to reimburse expenses accrued when attending interviews at Save the Children UK unless you are requested to attend an interview in an alternative location to where the role is based.

Pre-employment Checks:

Any Employment with Save the Children UK will be subject to the following checks prior to your start date:

• a satisfactory police record check to include a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check and/or an International Criminal Record Check (If applicable)
• receipt of satisfactory references
• proof of eligibility to work in the national location for this role

If you have any questions, we have an FAQ section here.

For anything else you can email us on: careers@savethechildren.org.uk