Cohort research manager jobs

Overview

Afield Environmental is a brand new charity responding to environmental injustice. We do this by working with communities to rewild disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods; and bysupporting artists to undertake ecological research. This exciting and challenging role will beright at the heart of making everything happen.

We are looking for a creative and community-minded Communications and OperationsCo-ordinator to help develop Afield over the next 12 months. This is a varied roleencompassing communications and operational support for the grants programme and thecharity more generally. You will help us develop our communications strategy, support our grantees, and develop our systems and processes as a new charity.

As we are a new charity we have created this as a fixed-term appointment - we are still working out the longer-term roles for the charity.

We are looking for someone who is organised and self-sufficient, a skilled communicator, and a connector of people and ideas. We welcome applications from those early in their career. Where a candidate needs time to grow into aspects of the role, they will be helped to do so through management support and training.

Key Responsibilities

Communications
● Help deliver Afield’s communications strategy aligned with our mission
● Make Afield’s Wilding and Arts grants visible, accessible, and compelling to key
communities and audiences
● Manage Afield's digital presence across website, blogs, and social media, creating
compelling content written, visual and including graphics
● Monitor, evaluate, and report on Afield’s communications activity, to continually
improve our reach and resonance
● Help document Afield-related events through photography and video.

Support for grants programmes
● Support grantees in documenting, editing and communicating project outputs and
outcomes, including video content, for a variety of audiences
● Support the Grants and Cohorts manager as required, including setting up cohort
meetings, helping manage selection panels and providing event support, preparing
materials etc
● Provide communications skills support as appropriate to grantees / cohorts.

Other
● Provide administrative and operational support to the founders as required
● Provide support to the organisation’s broader evaluation activities
● You might occasionally be asked to support our grantee programmes in other ways
such as helping at events or workshops

Requirements

Essential
● An excellent communicator, with experience of running workshops, presenting
information to audiences, or developing relationships with partners
● Proven experience running and creating content for social media channels or websites
● Excellent writing and editing skills for different audiences, with examples of published
content (including for example social media posts)
● Empathetic, with a positive attitude and a desire to help our grantees. You should be
able to provide evidence of supporting a group of people
● Organised and energetic with a self-sufficient attitude, and with the ability to
independently manage a busy workload, multiple deadlines and priorities
● Demonstrable commitment to ongoing development and learning
● Evidence of an interest in arts and/or the environment.

Desirable:
● Strong understanding of digital content strategy, with experience of using a CMS
platform, and social media analytics
● Experience of arts-related documentation and/or archiving
● Ability and comfort in creating structure out of ambiguity
● Ability to identify challenges and opportunities, and express proposals for change
● Experience working with or supporting artists, grantees or cohorts.
● Video editing.

For more information, please see the Job Description attached.

An exciting opportunity to help deliver a new national programme as it moves from planning into delivery. Over the next year, we will launch a new Foundation Degree for professionals working with children, designed to support a more connected, multi-disciplinary workforce across education, care, health and youth provision. This role will focus on delivering high-quality teaching to a local cohort of adult learners, supporting their transition into higher education and helping them engage successfully with the programme alongside work. As delivery develops, the role will contribute to a wider national network of lecturers, supporting consistent delivery across locations and helping to build a distinctive, practice-focused learning experience that connects theory to the realities of working with children and families. The locations we are hiring into are: Hounslow, Hillingdon, Bromley, East Leeds, Highbridge (Somerset), and Barnsley.

We are an ambitious team incubated and supported by ImpactEd Group. The role would be employed by TEP Services Limited.

Our platform has been built from the ground up by a small, skilled development team over the past three years. We are appointing a Senior Rails Engineer at a pivotal moment, joining as a senior individual contributor with strong influence on product planning and the roadmap, owning two products in the TEP ecosystem, and acting as the senior technical reference point for the wider development team.

You will work closely with our fractional CTO and the TEP Director to translate strategic priorities into well-built software, helping us actively embed AI-assisted development practices that we believe will significantly change how our team works over the next two years. Supporting our early- to mid-career developers in their work comes alongside the technical role.

 We are a small, mission-driven team and this is a high-trust, high-ownership role. The right person will care about the quality of what they build, be genuinely curious about the problems schools and trusts are trying to solve, and be excited about using AI tooling not as a shortcut but as a genuine accelerant for good work.

 What you’ll inherit

• A proven, established codebase. Three years of well-considered Ruby on Rails development serving 600+ schools across the UK, Australia and the UAE, with active users, real data, and a roadmap shaped by partner feedback.
• A small, capable, agile team alongside you. Early-mid career developers learning from your day-to-day practice, with a culture of peer review, pair programming and honest feedback already in place.
• A fractional CTO and an engaged Director. Architectural sounding board on one side, a Director who understands the platform and the partner base on the other. You will not be navigating priorities alone.
• A clear AI-first direction. AI assisted development tools are in use and central to how we expect the team to work going forward. You will help shape that practice.
• Real product ambition. A roadmap that includes deeper data pipelines, international growth, and the underlying infrastructure to support a national-scale evidence base.
• A base in Leeds. A vibrant, accessible city-centre office at Platform, New Station Street, two minutes from Leeds station, in the heart of the northern tech hub. Remote-first or office-based at your preference.

Role responsibilities

This is an individual contributor role, owning two products in the TEP ecosystem with strong influence on product planning and the roadmap, working closely with the TEP Director and our fractional CTO. You will write production code day to day, own architectural decisions across your scope alongside the fractional CTO, and act as the senior technical reference point for the development team.

Platform development

You will:

• Write well-tested, high-quality code using Ruby on Rails and front-end technologies, delivering features, fixing bugs and addressing technical debt.
• Work within our Trello and GitHub workflow and agile ways of working, reviewing code, maintaining pull request quality and upholding a strong peer review culture.
• Take ownership of architectural decisions on the platform, working with the fractional CTO to ensure they are sound, well-reasoned and documented.
• Balance delivery pace with code quality. We want to move fast without accumulating debt.
• Contribute to the ongoing improvement of our development processes, tooling and ways of working as the team and platform grow.
• Lead on security and platform performance workstreams.
• Use AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code and similar) as a genuine part of your daily working practice, not as an occasional aid.

Product planning

You will

• Collaborate with the Director and fractional CTO on roadmap prioritisation, balancing new features, fixes, security and technical debt with a clear view of capacity and complexity.

• Translate product priorities into well-scoped, well-estimated technical work, developing cards, running planning sessions and ensuring the team has clarity on what they are building and why.

• Engage in sprint planning and retrospectives, contributing to how we continuously improve our delivery cadence.

• Bring your own perspective on where AI tooling adds value and where it introduces risk. We want someone who uses these tools critically and thoughtfully.

• Contribute to how we think about AI in product development more broadly. This is an area we are actively investing in and your input will shape our approach.

• Provide the Director with clear, honest technical input on decisions that have a product or strategic dimension.

Problem solving

You will:

• Respond to bug reports, both automated exceptions and human reports, working with the team to diagnose and resolve issues quickly.

• Maintain and improve platform reliability, security, monitoring and incident response processes.

Team development and mentoring

You will:

• Provide day-to-day technical support for the development team, the senior technical reference point for our developers.

• Contribute to strategy and working culture as part of a small, growing organisation. We value people who engage beyond their immediate technical brief.

• Mentor and support the team’s growth through pair programming, code review, structured knowledge sharing and honest feedback.

• Help model and embed AI-first working practices across the team, supporting the developers in building real fluency.

• Work with the TEP Director and fractional CTO on team development and ways of working.

About you

We are open to a range of backgrounds. The right person will bring strong technical depth, creative problem solving and real enthusiasm for the way emergent technologies and AI are changing how development work gets done. You do not need to have worked in education or edtech before, but you should care about the mission.

What you’ll need

• We imagine that most strong applicants will have 7+ years of relevant commercial Ruby experience, with strong Rails experience in production environments. We are more interested in your skills than where they came from.
• A strong instinct for code quality. You care about maintainability, test coverage and what the codebase looks like in two years, not just whether it ships today.
• Genuine, practical experience with AI-assisted development tools. You use these comfortably and can speak with real authority about when and how they work.
• Comfort working in an evolving, established codebase. You are at ease with inherited code and incremental improvement.
• Familiarity with data pipelines, analytics infrastructure or big data.
• Translating product priorities into well-scoped technical work. You are comfortable bridging product and engineering.
• Strong communication skills. You can explain complex technical decisions clearly to a non-technical Director and work effectively with a fractional CTO.

What will set you apart

• Experience working in Python.
• Experience significantly contributing to a small development team, not just individual delivery, but helping others do their best work.
• An interest in education, social enterprise or the tech for good context.

This is a unique opportunity to join a dynamic and ambitious new charity as we make a step-change to grow our work significantly over the next 3-5 years. We are not just looking for a typical Fundraiser. At such a crucial moment in our charity’s growth, every staff member has such a significant impact on our work and the potential to make a fundamental difference to our future. We are looking for a highly innovative, adaptable and dynamic individual who is excited by the idea of joining a small, dedicated team all focused on building a new and emerging charity to the next stage.

We are looking for the right core skills, but alongside that, we’re looking for an enthusiast, a driver, a creative, someone who can think outside the box. We welcome applicants at all levels of experience but most importantly, we’re looking for a storyteller, a natural relationship builder, someone who is able to captivate new potential supporters. From carefully crafting grant applications to building long-term, bespoke funding relationships sustained through connection, the role requires attention to detail, foresight, and a natural ability to take initiative. Working for a small charity requires tenacity, resourcefulness and grit, so whether you’re an experienced fundraiser looking for a new challenge or have never worked in Fundraising before but believe you can bring these skills, we’d love to hear from you.

We are a unique charity who are proud to do things differently. Whilst we are highly professional and ambitious, we are also very relational in everything we do, whether that be the way we talk to funders, our culture within the office or the way we look after each other. Life moves fast at Basecamp, and as we are looking to both sustain our current Trusts and Foundations operation and develop a new Corporate income stream, it is likely your skills will to an extent steer the specifics of the role. This is a rare opportunity to get in at the ground level of an ambitious new charity with the potential for significant role development as the charity evolves.

What is Basecamp?

At Basecamp Adventure Trust, we empower vulnerable young people from West Yorkshire to thrive through unique, long-term programmes which harness outdoor adventure as a powerful vehicle for personal transformation. Through a combination of skills workshops, exhilarating adventure trips and a deeply relational approach, we challenge, celebrate and inspire young people to discover a newfound sense of confidence, resilience and self-belief, and to explore new possibilities for themselves. Our programmes are intensive, sustained and individualised to make a lasting positive difference on the young people we work with so they can lead happy, healthy and fulfilling lives.

The Role

Trusts and Foundations

Prospect Research and Future Planning

• Proactively carry out detailed and organised research to identify fundraising opportunities across Trust and Foundations.
• Maintain and build a forward-looking pipeline of prospective funding opportunities, ensuring applications are prioritised appropriately based on size, alignment and/or application deadline.
• Support us to develop our Trusts and Foundations Strategy including target income, relationship management and best practice.

Writing Proposals

• Crafting well-written, well-presented and compelling funding applications, taking the time to understand each funder and individually tailor our approach to their criteria.
• Match new and existing applications with specific elements of our work to increase chances of success.
• Help to develop a compelling Case for Support, ensuring we are accurately conveying the impact of our work and maintaining consistency across our applications whilst allowing for nuance.

Building Relationships

• An innate understanding that winning a grant is just the first step of the relationship.
• Ensure all funding relationships are acknowledged and appreciated with priority and genuine care.
• Nurture funding relationships with a person-centred approach rooted in connection, which uses a variety of communication tools (emails, reports, visits) tailored to the funder.
• An understanding of the nuances between different funders and how this informs how we manage and deepen the relationship with the aim to secure future funding.
• Producing monitoring and reporting documents, both bespoke to individual funders and universal for the fundraising operation as a whole.

Database Management

• Maintain our existing management tools for tracking, reporting and stewarding income.
• Helping us implement a bespoke CRM system as our fundraising streams grow in both scale and complexity.

Other

• Our adventure residentials are the core of what we do, and we believe it’s hard to understand the unique power of our work with young people and convey this to others until you experience it yourself. You’ll join us for two residentials (at least!) per year, working alongside our cohorts of young people to immerse yourself in the work which sits at the heart of the organisation. You do not need any special skills as full training will be provided but you do need to be “up for the challenge”. We do lots of adventurous activities in all weathers so being something of an outdoorsy person would be a definite advantage!

Corporate Fundraising

We are looking to develop a Corporate income stream, led by our Senior Leadership team, by building bespoke and unique relationships with companies based in Yorkshire. If you have skills and experience in this area, you may support us to develop this new strand of our work. This new and exciting venture is currently in the preliminary development stages, however roles and responsibilities may look something like:

• Continually undertaking prospect research to identify corporate partners who we can build long-lasting, meaningful relationships with.
• Contacting prospective corporate partners and coordinating meetings with new and existing corporate partners.
• Supporting us to develop our pitch and offering to prospective corporate partners, creating bespoke partnerships which demonstrate our ethos, culture and impact.  
• Support us to develop new ways corporate partners can be involved in our work for mutual benefit.
• Support the development of our stewardship and account management process, including new and innovative ways to develop relationships and monitor impact.
• Work with operational colleagues to plan, coordinate and deliver corporate events.
• Attend networking events to build new relationships with a view of securing new partnerships.

Skills and Experience

• Prior fundraising experience (Trusts and Foundations and/or Corporate partnerships)
• Highly skilled storyteller able to craft emotive, persuasive and compelling narratives that connect with organisations so they feel inspired to support our vision and mission.
• A natural relationship builder, able to build personal and bespoke relationships with funding organisations using a person-centred approach.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills which conveys ideas and impact to a range of audiences in a clear and confident way.
• Attention-to-detail with sharp focus on small details with understanding as to how they inform the bigger picture.
• A self-starter, able to be self-sufficient, manage time and priorities effectively and take initiative when opportunities arise.
• Foresight into how actions today can shape our fundraising income into 1, 3 and 5 years time.
• Enthusiasm and passion about working for a small charity with drive to help us develop and grow.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office and Canva.
• Willingness to work variable hours when required (including residential trips away with overnight stays), able to travel and work from home. 

Above all, you will be driven by a real passion for helping young people to thrive. You will be motivated by a core belief that all young people are far more capable than they think and that they all deserve a chance to be hopeful for the future.