Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a thoughtful, analytical and values-driven individual with strong experience in public policy and research to join us as our Policy and Research Manager (Regions), where you will work with local communities, metro mayors, policy partners, and Save the Children colleagues to develop evidence-based, inclusive policy solutions aimed at ending child poverty across England.

This is a new and exciting position that comes out of our ambitious strategy for England and Westminster.

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.

In the UK, our mission is focused on ending child poverty. We work alongside families, partners and communities to build long-term, place-based and national change, rooted in lived experience and driven by data and evidence.  

About the role

As Policy and Research Manager (Regions), you will play a central role in developing policy and research that supports ambitious, place-based strategies to tackle child poverty in England. You'll work closely with colleagues in place-based partnerships as well as metro mayors, local partners and policy communities—to ensure our advocacy is grounded in lived experience, responsive to regional dynamics, and informed by strong evidence. You'll produce high-impact insights, briefings, and policy proposalsthat advance long-term, practical change particularly through levers at local and regional levels,

If you're passionate about social justice, policy change, and ensuring that every child has a fair start in life—we'd love to hear from you.

In this role, you will: 

• Develop and maintain in-depth knowledge on the drivers of child poverty, with a focus on marginalised children and families and how poverty is experienced differently across England.
• Co-design and deliver regional policy and research proposals in partnership with children, young people, families, and place-based organisations.
• Provide timely political and policy analysis of metro mayors and regional powers to support regional influencing and advocacy strategies.
• Produce high-quality reports, briefings, and literature reviews for diverse audiences including policymakers, sector partners and civil society.
• Lead or contribute to innovative research projects (including primary research) that amplify voices from communities and support policy change.
• Build strong relationships within the national and regional policy community and play a key role in internal and external collaboration across teams and stakeholders.

About you

To be successful, it is important that you have:

• Proven experience in developing policy or research related to social justice, poverty or public services, ideally in a regional or local context.
• Strong research skills with experience designing and delivering evidence-based projects, and an ability to produce impactful written outputs for external use.
• A good understanding of the political and policy environment in England, including devolution and metro mayoral structures.
• A commitment to co-producing policy and research with people who have lived experience of poverty, with a strong understanding of inclusive practice.
• Excellent communication and relationship-building skills with the ability to engage external stakeholders and influence decision-makers.
• 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.

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