Save the Children UK is offering an exciting opportunity for a purpose-driven, collaborative, and influential leader with extensive strategic experience to join us as our Executive Director of UK Impact. In this role, you will lead our UK Impact group—comprising teams across the devolved nations, as well as the north and south of England—to ensure that families have the resources, services, and power they need to end child poverty. 

This is a critical and growing area of our work, and we are committed to deepening our investment and expanding our impact across the UK. 

You will also oversee our Public Affairs, Campaigns and Organising, and Child & Youth Participation departments. Working collaboratively across Save the Children UK and with external partners to deliver lasting, systemic change for children and families. 

This is a permanent hybrid role, based out of our London Farringdon office. The nature of this role is likely to require a presence in our offices or with partners 3 days a week.

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 Executive Director of UK Impact, you will lead our ambitious strategy to end child poverty in the UK by working alongside families, communities, grassroots organisations, and national-level actors.  
 
You will ensure that Save the Children UK is a human-centric, impact-driven organisation where children and communities are empowered, and where the systems and structures needed to achieve lasting change are influenced and reshaped through collaborative, inclusive leadership. 

In this role, you will: 

• Lead and inspire a highly skilled team of leaders reduce the impact and reach of child poverty in the UK. 

• Strengthen our influencing impact through local, devolved country-level and national networks. 

• Share funds and expertise with grassroots community organisations to strengthen their capacity and collaborate on shared goals. 

• Build internal and external capacity to learn, share learning and influence lasting change. 

• Empower local communities with the resources and autonomy to drive change in their areas. 

• Champion inclusive leadership, agile working, and a human-centred, values-driven organisational culture. 
• Provide children with safe and meaningful opportunities to shape our work, influence decision-makers, and improve their lives and communities.
   

About you 

To be successful, it is important that you have: 

• Excellent strategic and systems thinking skills with a proven ability to adapt ways of working in a fast-changing context. 

• Extensive experience creating lasting change for children in the UK across multiple sectors, including government, communities, and networks. 

• Deep understanding of, and commitment to, sharing power, knowledge, and resources more equally with those who share our mission. 

• Strong track record of driving systemic change through programming, advocacy and/or policy, using relevant political theories of change. 

• Demonstrable experience leading high-performing senior teams with a focus on inclusive, autonomous, and accountable ways of working. 

• Outstanding influencing, relationship-building and communication skills with diverse internal and external stakeholders. 

• A strong personal commitment to championing equity, diversity, inclusion and building a culture of belonging. 

• 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.  

We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work. 

This role is based in Farringdon, London, with a salary of £120k approximately.

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. 

Advert closing date: 18th May 
 
First stage interviews are expected to take place week commencing 2nd June. 
Second stage interviews are expected to take place week commencing 9th June.   

Please note: Once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Ways of Working:

SCUK offers hybrid and flexible work arrangements to enable impact towards our strategic objectives and to support the wellbeing of our talented people. The nature of this role means it is likely that most weeks you will need to be in Farringdon or in meetings with partners in-person at least three days a week. 

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