Senior Marketing Manager

We’re looking to recruit a Senior Marketing Manager to join the Marketing and Digital Team at Ambition Institute. This is a permanent role and the salary is £39,500 plus London weighting if applicable. Ambition has flexible working times, with teams working remotely, and offices in Birmingham, Manchester or London.

As a Senior Marketing Manager you will have a crucial role to play in helping Ambition build our brand and increase our impact. You will plan, implement and evaluate campaigns to recruit participants for our training programmes and be given autonomy to decide channel choices and how your budget should be best deployed.

At Ambition Institute (https://www.ambition.org.uk/), we support educators serving children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, helping them keep getting better. We’re currently expanding into different areas: early years, special educational needs and inclusion, further education, and international work. These are exciting opportunities, and we want to set ourselves up for continued success.
Who are Ambition Institute?

A great teacher changes the future every day. Especially for children who have had a tough start in life, a teacher can be the critical factor in their success.

At Ambition Institute we help schools tackling educational disadvantage to keep getting better and help their teachers and school leaders to become more expert over time.

That’s how we’ll make sure every child gets a great education and the best possible start in life.

- We train teachers and leaders at all levels to get better at the things that make the biggest difference: what you teach, how you teach it, and how you create the conditions for schools to thrive.
- We share what works. Everyone can benefit from evidence of how great teaching and leadership can improve schools and change lives, so we connect people to the latest research and best practice.
- We champion every teacher and school leader’s potential to develop, as the driving force for sustainable school improvement.

We would like you to:

- Lead marketing strategy for assigned programmes and commissions, planning, delivering and refining campaigns using real-time data, monitoring and evaluation.
- Use insight into educators’ and leaders’ needs, motivations and behaviours to shape effective campaigns, website messaging and direct marketing activity.
- Work closely with internal teams, partners and external suppliers to support recruitment, sales, alumni communications, lead generation, retention and high-quality campaign delivery.
- Support strong marketing operations by using automation and reporting tools, managing budgets, and upholding Ambition Institute’s brand across all communications.

Working in a hybrid way, you’ll be attached to either our Birmingham, London or Manchester office and will report to Associate Director of Marketing and Digital. In line with our current ways of working, you’ll be expected to be in the office at least 1 day a month, in addition to team days and this may be reviewed by Ambition.

Skills, Knowledge and Experience

Essential
The ideal candidate will possess the following qualities:
- Mission: a strong commitment to education, the non-profit sector and raising the aspirations, achievements and life chances of all children
- Experience of successfully developing and delivering marketing strategies using multiple channels and tactics that generate high-quality leads.
- Experience of using AI or automated engagement studios to foster the interest, conversion or retention of candidates aligned with experience of using email tools and databases.
- Experience of commissioning media buying agencies and freelance designers.
- Project management skills, and the ability to brief well and deliver through others.
- Excellent copy writing skills, with the ability to adapt and adhere to the Ambition tone of voice and style guide and successfully develop marketing collateral and content.
- Experience of monitoring, evaluation and analysis, using it to constantly adapt and refine your approach.
- Relationship management – ability to work with colleagues at all levels and unite others around a plan with confidence and credibility.
- Entrepreneurial, flexible and creative.
- Diplomacy, influencing skills and the ability to work effectively in a matrixed team.  Initiative and resilience to work independently.
- Computer/IT skills and knowledge of Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Desirable
- Experience of using Salesforce or Pardot to manage automated marketing campaigns.
- Experience of using tracking software to analyse detailed behavioural data to inform strategy and approach.
- Experience of designing materials using Adobe or Indesign.

What’s in it for you….?

- Competitive annual salary
- Professional development for all staff
- 25 days’ annual leave, plus bank holidays and 'winter shut down’ at the end of December/beginning of January
- Employer pension contribution of 11%
- Agile, hybrid working culture, so you can manage when and where you work
- Staff affinity networks that help keep equality, diversity and inclusion at the heart of our work
- Blind recruitment process to ensure equality and fairness in our hiring
- Enhanced maternity pay after a year’s service
- Shared parental leave package
- Access to free, confidential 24/7 wellbeing and support line
- Comfortable and collaborative workspaces in the city centres of Manchester, Birmingham and London
- Work-from-home technology package to support hybrid working
- Interest free season ticket / bike loans

We don’t expect the person we hire to have all of the following, but this should give you a sense of what would enable you to thrive in this role and in our organisation:

You should apply for this role if:

- You care deeply about educational disadvantage and being part of an organisation that challenges inequality
- You have a good work ethic and strive to make a difference in the job you do
- You always give maximum effort to understand and meet the needs of our partners and participants
- You always have a great attitude so we “can do” for all our colleagues, partners and participants
- You are open to feedback and learning because we want to keep getting better
- You work with your initiative to bring new ideas and a fresh perspective
- You are well organised and can prioritise work that will have the greatest impact

You'll love working at Ambition if…

- You want a career with a person-centred organisation with a cause at its heart.
- You have a collaborative work ethos, bring warmth and good humour to work and constructive outlook to every situation
- You enjoy working in a fast-moving workplace, with a great support structure around you
- You would like to grow with an ambitious organisation as it progresses over time
- Want flexibility in how you work – splitting your time between one of our offices and remote working and managing your own working patterns to get the job done.

How to apply…

Applications will be accepted for all office locations.

All applications must be received by the closing date 11:59pm on 23 November 2026. First stage interviews are expected to take place on 2 and 3 December. Final stage interviews are expected to take place on 7 December.

We recognise that AI function tools (such as ChatGPT or other generative AI tools) are here to stay and can be helpful for applications including to assist in researching for application responses and to shorten your first draft. However, we are observing a growing trend in the use of AI, and we would caution applicants against relying too heavily on such tools when drafting responses.

The pitfall of such tools is that they produce generic responses that don’t showcase individuality, specific experiences or real-life examples. This usually results in applications being unsuccessful. We want to evaluate your response, and we will be looking for answers that use examples and experiences that are clearly specific to you. You are more likely to successfully demonstrate your soft skills like communication and teamwork when preparing answers to application questions yourself and this helps mitigate the unintended consequences of AI-generated responses.

If we suspect you have used AI inappropriately, the panel reviewing your application may adjust how your response is rated. For more details of what we consider to be acceptable use of AI function tools in our application process, please review our FAQs (https://ambition.pinpointhq.com/faq)on our careers page.

Ambition Institute is proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. We welcome applications from disabled people and, as part of our commitment, offer an interview to applicants who meet the minimum essential criteria for the role (although where we receive a particularly high number of applications through the scheme, we may not be able to interview everyone who meets the criteria). We are committed to making reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process and encourage you to let us know if there are any adjustments that would help you participate fully.

We are committed to the safeguarding of children and the most vulnerable in our society and, as such, we are unable to employ individuals with relevant convictions, including the following: a conviction for an offence involving violence or dishonesty, of a sexual nature or against minors, or for any other offence that is relevant to the nature of the services provided by our organisation.

For any questions or queries please review our FAQs | Ambition Institute Careers (pinpointhq.com) (https://ambition.pinpointhq.com/faq) in the first instance. If we've not addressed your question in this section, please email us at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
As an employer, we have a responsibility to prevent illegal working in the UK by ensuring that our employees have the right to work in the UK. Therefore, as part of the recruitment process to verify your eligibility you will be required to produce relevant documentation.