Financial accounting and systems manager jobs in kensington and chelsea, greater london

Closing Date: 5 January 2026

Ref 7225

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a dynamic and influential individual with a strong background in business development and fundraising to join us as our Business Development Lead within our Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA) on a one-year maternity cover contract. In this role, you will work across the HLA, Save the Children UK, and external partner networks to diversify and grow income streams that strengthen locally led humanitarian action.

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 Business Development Lead, you will drive the growth and diversification of the Human Leadership Academy's charitable income. You'll lead the business development strategy, identify and cultivate new funding opportunities, and build strong partnerships that enhance HLA's financial sustainability and long-term impact. Working closely with colleagues across the HLA and wider organisation, you will be instrumental in positioning the HLA as a leading force for locally led humanitarian leadership development.

In this role, you will:

• Oversee and shape the HLA's business development pipeline, ensuring a balanced mix of funding that supports strategic and programmatic objectives.
• Identify and pursue new funding opportunities across institutional, philanthropic, and corporate markets.
• Build, manage and cultivate relationships with donors, funders and strategic partners across the humanitarian and development ecosystem.
• Coordinate the end-to-end business development process—from opportunity identification to proposal development and smooth handover into delivery.
• Work collaboratively with teams across SCUK and the international movement, ensuring strong internal alignment and representation of HLA in external forums.
• Ensure compliance with internal fundraising processes, maintaining accurate, donor-compliant and audit-ready information throughout the project cycle.

To be successful, it is important that you have:

• Significant experience in institutional and/or philanthropic fundraising, with a proven track record of generating substantial income.
• Strong ability to build partnerships and develop compelling, fundable proposals with clear budgets and value propositions.
• Excellent account management skills with partners and donors across diverse sectors, including governments, institutions, private foundations and corporates such as the Clinton Foundation, Google, AWS, and ECHO, with particular experience in working with FCDO and other institutional donors.
• A solid understanding of the humanitarian system, including funding landscapes, trends, and opportunities.
• Experience managing complex bids and partnerships ideally in excess of £1 million or more.
• Resilience in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, with the ability to adapt and maintain performance under pressure.
• The ability to work proactively, flexibly, and collaboratively in an emergent, people-centred, and agile environment.
• Excellent communication and representational skills, able to articulate strategic vision and influence senior stakeholders.
• A 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.

Closing date: 5th January 2026

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.

Location & Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but at times you will be required to come to your contracted office (usually between 2–4 days per month, depending on the needs of your role, team, or service). For many roles, this is likely to be the minimum required to deliver impact.

This will be discussed and agreed with your manager / team and we encourage candidates to discuss our ways of working in more detail at interview stage.

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. 

Make a Real Difference to Local Families

Home-Start Barnet, Brent and Harrow is a dynamic local charity supporting families with young children through challenging times. Our volunteers and staff offer emotional and practical support to help parents build confidence, strengthen relationships and give their children the best start in life.

We’re looking for a Family Engagement Coordinator to join our School Readiness project in Grahame Park, Barnet. You’ll be part of a friendly team at Home-Start Barnet, working closely with colleagues and partners at Barnet Mencap to support families who are just starting their journey with the education system.

In this role, you’ll help us reach families who may be facing extra challenges or need more personalised support. You’ll spend time building strong, trusting relationships with local primary schools and become a familiar, welcoming presence within their school communities. Your work will help ensure that parents feel informed, supported and ready to help their children thrive as they start school.

The common thread throughout the project is the engagement of families and the parent volunteers, who widen the supportive “community” around the families, and connect the school to the home, and the partners to each other. Approximately 70% of this role will be based in local schools in Grahame Park.

As our Family Engagement Coordinator, you will:

• Build strong relationships with primary schools in Grahame Park, in Barnet.
• Promote Home-Start’s services through school and community events.
• Support communication between schools, families and partner agencies.
• Share updates through newsletters, WhatsApp, email and community channels.
• Signpost families to local services and activities that support wellbeing.
• Receive referrals and assess family needs.
• Deliver school-readiness workshops and parenting groups.
• Liaise with schools, health and community services

About You

We’re looking for someone compassionate, proactive and highly organised, with a genuine passion for supporting families.

You will have:

• Experience working or volunteering in schools, nurseries, family support or similar settings.
• Parenting experience or experience caring for young children.
• Understanding of early years development and primary school systems.
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills.
• Knowledge of safeguarding responsibilities.
• The ability to engage with families facing complex challenges.
• Experience of delivering workshops or groups.
• Understanding of neurodiversity and SEND support.
• Knowledge of legislation relating to children and families.

What We Offer

• A supportive and collaborative team environment
• Opportunities for training and professional development
• A role where you can directly improve the lives of children and families
• Term-time only working arrangements can be considered

Note: This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 due to the nature of our work.

Purpose of the job

This role is responsible for the design of UK Youth’s support to young people, youth organisations and youth workers. This could include structured youth work programmes, funding and grants+ programmes, professional development programmes, and campaigns.

You will lead and oversee end-to-end design processes, ensuring that UK Youth develops fully packaged offers that respond to the evidence base and people’s needs, drive forward our strategy and achieve incredible impact. You will work across UK Youth teams, with external design partners, and meaningfully involving young people and the professionals who support them in the design process.

You will be experienced in developing high quality funding propositions (proactively and in response to new business opportunities). You will be confident in taking a human-centred design approach to tackle some of the youth sector’s knottiest problems.  You will design solutions to important problems, ensuring that they are feasible, equitable, impactful and scalable.

In 2026, our priority topics for youth work programmes and network development are: mental health and wellbeing, employability, social cohesion and community safety.

 As a leader, you will work closely with research, evaluation, policy, service delivery, network development, and fundraising teams. You will help to improve the skills and confidence of colleagues across UK Youth to apply design methods in their own work and collaborate effectively with the Design team.

Why work at UK Youth?

UK Youth wants all young people to be equipped to thrive and empowered to contribute at every stage of their lives. Youth work can be life changing (and even life saving.) In 2026, we will be launching our new strategy, positioning UK Youth to unlock youth work so that every young person in the UK can benefit. We work with others to ensure that the youth sector is strengthened and that provision is youth-led, evidence-informed, and delivers high-quality outcomes.

 UK Youth plays a unique role in addressing the lack of investment in the youth sector, the lack of cross-sector understanding in how youth work makes a difference, and the limited opportunities to embed effective solutions. These factors lead to mass inequality of access to youth services for young people. Come and be part of this change in a driven and supportive team that puts evidence at the heart of our work.

Role Responsibilities

• Designing Solutions

• Developing new business and funding propositions

• Embedding Human Centred Design

• Building a strong external network to support the Design team’s work

• Operations

Experience we're after

• Significant experience of leading and overseeing the development of new business propositions and proposals to time-limited funding opportunities

• Significant experience of designing interventions (digital and/or physical) for young people and/or those who support them 

• Experience using human-centred-design methods and mindsets; managing projects across the end-to-end design process

• Proven track record of inspiring and motivating diverse teams and improving collaborative ways of working across teams and departments

• Experience of developing high quality programme content and curricula for young people, youth workers and/or outdoor learning instructors (desirable)

• Experience of commissioning and managing external design freelancers and consultants (desirable)

• Experience of designing and/or delivering professional development programmes (desirable)

What we can offer you

We offer a competitive range of benefits, good work/life balance, excellent learning and development opportunities and vibrant organisational culture:

• Flexible/Agile Working

• 27 days annual leave plus bank holidays (pro rata for part time employees)

• Funded training provided in; Safeguarding, GDPR, Information and Cyber Security & Equality & Diversity

• Other training available in support of your personal and professional development

• Pension scheme (currently UK Youth match employee contributions up to 5%)

• Membership of our life insurance scheme which would pay-out up to 4 times your salary

• Employee Assistance Programme to support employees both professionally and personally

• 20% discount off bookings at Avon Tyrrell, our New Forest Outdoor Centre, including camping, lodges and outdoor activities.

• IT equipment provided for the duration of contract

• CycleScheme and TechScheme

How to apply

If you would like to be considered for this fantastic opportunity, please complete an application via our completely anonymised recruitment system provided by Applied which looks to create a fair and unbiased application process for all. Scroll to the top of the page and start your application.

Closing date: Sunday 4th January 2026 at 23:59pm

Provisional Interview Dates: 12th and 13th January 2026

As this role involves working in a regulated environment with young people, any offer will be conditional to satisfactory background checks, which include criminal record check and employment reference.