Save the Children UK is seeking a strategic and partnership-oriented leader to join us as the Humanitarian Mobilisation and Partnerships Senior Lead within our Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA). This new role is central to how we connect people, organisations and expertise across the humanitarian sector—overseeing our global consultancy roster, strengthening equitable partnerships, and ensuring that local and national actors can access the leadership and learning support they need before, during, and after crises.

Working across teams, regions and functions, you will lead efforts to embed collective leadership, locally led action, and sustainable delivery models into the HLA's work. You'll play a key role in shaping how humanitarian expertise is mobilised—through networks, surge mechanisms and partnerships—and how that work aligns with shifting donor priorities and long-term capacity needs. As we deliver on our 2025–2027 strategy, this is a unique opportunity to influence real change in how humanitarian leadership is developed, supported and resourced across the sector.

 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 Team:

The Humanitarian Leadership Academy's (HLA's) mission is to inspire a movement for locally led humanitarian action.  Our purpose is to work with local actors and organisations to provide tailored resilience and crisis response support that addresses their specific needs, focusing on nurturing and empowering local leaders, driving collective action through our networks, thought leadership & research and amplifying local expertise, creating opportunities for change and collaboration.   

About the role

The Humanitarian Mobilisation and Partnerships Senior Lead plays a key role in strengthening collaboration, mobilising expertise, and driving systemic change in line with the HLA Strategy 2025-2027. This role ensures that the HLA's initiatives are rooted in equitable partnerships, locally led action, and collective leadership efforts rather than isolated interventions.

The role will provide strategic oversight, coordination, and innovation to ensure that the HLA's work in leadership, learning and partnerships is aligned with global and regional humanitarian priorities. It will also focus on expanding access to leadership and learning opportunities, ensuring local actors and organisations are at the centre of crisis preparedness, response, and recovery.

With increasing funding pressures and shifting donor priorities, the way humanitarian expertise is mobilised needs to evolve. This role will help shape how leadership, learning and partnerships connect, ensuring that humanitarian action is driven by those closest to the crisis and that resources are used effectively to strengthen long-term capacity.

In this role, you will:  

• Provide strategic oversight for the HLA's consultancy roster, ensuring it remains a dynamic and responsive mechanism for supporting humanitarian leadership and crisis response.
• Strengthen engagement with local, regional, and international partners, ensuring that collaboration extends beyond funding relationships and actively contributes to collective leadership efforts.
• Ensure that expertise is effectively mobilised, working with networks, rosters and partner organisations to improve accessibility to humanitarian learning and leadership opportunities.
• Support the development of equitable partnerships, ensuring that the HLA's approach to working with local actors reinforces their agency and decision-making power, rather than perpetuating extractive models of engagement.
• Contribute to funding sustainability, identifying opportunities to strengthen cost-recovery models, diversify revenue streams, and align the HLA's work with emerging donor priorities.
• Advocate for a shift in how leadership expertise is mobilised in humanitarian settings, working with partners and sector leaders to influence policy, funding models, and capacity development approaches.

About you  

We are looking for someone with the following experience, competencies and skills 

• Direct experience of contributing to the mobilisation of humanitarian expertise, such as managing or delivering through rosters, surge mechanisms, or regional leadership networks, ideally in ways that connected people to timely leadership, learning, or crisis response support.
• A strong track record of developing and maintaining partnerships with national and local actors, where collaboration is structured, accountable, and grounded in shared goals, not just relationship management but delivering through partnerships in practice.
• Ability to think strategically and systemically, including identifying where partnerships, mobilisation efforts, or resourcing models can shift leadership closer to crisis-affected contexts.
• Demonstrated experience aligning partnership or mobilisation work with organisational strategies and funding opportunities, including contributing to proposals, working within donor frameworks, and supporting sustainable delivery models.
• Confidence working across diverse geographies and cultures, with experience building respectful relationships that centre the knowledge, agency and priorities of local actors.
• Experience working across multiple teams or departments, contributing to cross-functional delivery and helping build joined-up ways of working across strategy, programmes, operations, and business development functions.
• Good working knowledge of leadership and capacity strengthening in humanitarian settings, with specific insight into what's needed to support locally led leadership in crisis contexts.
• A visible commitment to equity and inclusion, including examples of how you have advocated for underrepresented groups.
• Strong communication and influencing skills, including experience preparing external materials (e.g. for partners, donors, or networks), contributing to strategic conversations, and sharing learning.
• Experience of contributing to financial management, including helping shape project budgets, aligning delivery to cost recovery models, and ensuring work is delivered responsibly within resource constraints.

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.

Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but there are likely to be times when you will be required to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter).  This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team and is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building. 

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