We’re looking for a Principal Officer – Engagement to lead the development and delivery of SYMCA’s Engagement Strategy, embedding a culture of creative, inclusive, high-quality engagement across the organisation. You’ll coordinate engagement activities, manage engagement leads, and ensure that all engagement work aligns with the Mayor’s priorities and SYMCA’s strategic objectives. This is a senior role with significant influence—helping to build trust, strengthen relationships, and improve outcomes for South Yorkshire.
Applications must be accompanied by a cover letter to detail how you meet the essential criteria for the role (please see role profile attached). Please note, all applications should be made directly via our careers portal.
Please note South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority does not hold a sponsorship licence and cannot provide Skilled Worker sponsorship for any roles advertised.
About the role
In this role, you’ll champion best practice in engagement, ensuring that SYMCA’s approach is ethical, accessible, and impactful. You’ll design and deliver engagement activities and training, provide internal consultancy, and work with partners to maximise collective impact. Your work will help shape policy, improve organisational capability, and foster a culture of engagement excellence.
Key responsibilities include:
- Design and deliver a corporate engagement training programme to build internal capability and confidence.
- Design and deliver some engagement activities directly but chiefly provide consultancy and advice to the organisation on ethical and accessible engagement, ensuring compliance with best practice and legal standards.
- Collaborate with Bloomberg I-Team and Insights team to co-design innovative engagement and social research projects.
- Coordinate outreach and partnership working with key stakeholders including local authorities, MCAs, Government, VCSE, and universities.
- Convene and manage internal and external engagement networks to build organisational capacity and foster peer learning.
- Identify emerging trends and best practices in engagement, translating insights into strategic recommendations.
About you
We’re looking for an enthusiastic strategic leader with proven experience in designing and delivering engagement programmes. You’ll need excellent communication and project management skills, the ability to work across complex structures, and a passion for championing inclusive engagement. If you thrive on driving culture change and building strong relationships, this role is for you.
Essential:
- Experience delivering engagement projects in partnership with external organisations.
- Experience designing toolkits and delivering training to build engagement capability.
- Excellent communication and project management skills.
- Experience managing high-level stakeholder relationships.
- Experience in ethical and inclusive engagement approaches and using digital tools to manage relationships.
- Experience presenting, organising events, and managing meetings.
- Interest in devolution and its potential to empower communities and restore trust.
- Demonstrable interest in behavioural insights, social research, and participatory engagement methods.
Benefits
All colleagues have access to a Local Government Pension Scheme and the chance to be part of an organisation where you can really make a difference. Located in Sheffield City Centre, we are well-placed for transport links and encourage employees to take advantage of the active travel facilities. Work/life balance is extremely important to us here at SYMCA with our recognised family/friendly policies, genuine work flexibility, recognition, and shared success.
In addition to the above, some of benefits include -
Holiday Entitlement – From 28 to 36 days annual leave entitlement (depending on length of service) plus bank holidays. Pro-rata for part time colleagues.
Annual Leave Purchase Scheme – The ability to purchase up to a further 15 days per year in additional to your normal annual leave
Hybrid working – Our offices are a space where we come together and collaborate. Most of our roles are offered on a hybrid basis with the exception of some support roles being onsite full time. Please note, unless specified within the job advert, we cannot accommodate remote working contracts.
Flexible Hours Scheme – Most roles within SYMCA work under the Flexi-Scheme which allows office-based employees’ flexibility and discretion over their working hours. Under the scheme employees can accrue a defined amount of credit or debit of working hours, and to take time-off in the form of Flexi-Leave or banked Annual Leave.
Rewarding You - Reducing everyday expenses through discounts, benefits, financial advice, wellbeing solutions and more with Reward Gateway and Cycle-to-Work schemes.
Training on the job - Support with upskilling skills through on-the-job training and qualifications
Professional Membership Fees – Where membership to Professional bodies is applicable to your role, SYMCA will reimburse your membership fees where applicable and following approval by Line Management.
Diversity at South Yorkshire Combined Mayoral Authority
Our workforce is made up of a diverse community, where we all belong and feel part of something bigger. We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief.
All employees are eligible to request Flexible Working arrangements from day one of employment as such all requests will be considered subject to operation requirements.
Where candidates share disabilities within the application process, if they demonstrate that they meet all essential criteria from the Role Profile within their application, they will automatically be invited to interview.
Non Charity Employer 
Thank you!
Engagement Officer - South (accessible to Essex)
Responsible to: Engagement Team Manager
Team: Engagement
Hours of work: 35 hours week
Place of work: Home-based – South (accessible to Essex)
Benefits:
- Salary – £27,000 per annum
- 35 hours per week, Monday to Friday
- Home-based (with occasional UK travel)
- Working from home allowance at the standard HMRC rate as detailed on the government website.
- 26 days annual leave plus all Bank Holidays
- bhsf cash plan, 3% pension contribution, death in service insurance
- Learning and development opportunities, Employee Assistance Programme
Job summary
Reporting to the head of growth and sitting within the engagement team you will:
- recruit volunteers by promoting Re-engage’s services,
- develop effective relationships with new and existing referrers such as social prescribers and community link workers
- identify and cultivate new, innovative referral pathways to connect with a broader demographic of seniors experiencing social isolation and loneliness
- support the wider Re-engage team in the delivery of our grant funded projects
Engagement officer tasks and requirements
- Growing and developing our network of referral partners, including social prescribers and link workers, ensuring that Re-engage's work is promoted to people aged 75+ who are experiencing social isolation and loneliness.
- Partnering with communities to create regular, volunteer led, social gatherings for people aged 75+
- Utilise Re-engage's CRM (OPUS) to inform evidence-based, data-driven decision-making to develop effective engagement plans.
- Working closely with the service delivery team ensuring that the right people are recruited and engaged into the right roles, in the right place, and at the right times.
- Collaborating with the communications team ensuring the widest possible publicity for the region’s needs through media and social media opportunities, local press, radio, TV, and online forums.
- Liaising closely with the fundraising team delivering against recruitment targets linked to grants.
- Working with the fundraising team on proposals and grant applications using regional knowledge, identifying local need, and collecting case studies.
- Identifying speaking and presenting opportunities ensuring that Re-engage's work is promoted to referrers.
- Working effectively as part of a regional team, maintaining, and growing all Re-engage services.
- Joint accountability, with colleagues in the region, for the engagement of older people and recruitment of volunteers into Re-engage's portfolio of services
- Carrying out any other reasonable tasks assigned to you by your line manager.
You’ll be a proactive, solution-focused person with passion and skill for networking and building relationships. You’ll be experienced at building and maintaining effective relationships with referrers and social prescribers and will be a flexible, hands-on team player, who will deliver Re-engage's strategic objectives, values, behaviours, and working practices.
Knowledge, skills, and attributes
Essential
- Excellent people skills with a proven ability to network and collaborate with professionals, partners, older people, volunteers, and colleagues.
- Digital first approach with strong ability in all areas of working digitally.
- Experience of working across different sectors and developing links with other organisations.
- Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills
- Organised and methodical approach to work with strong administrative skills
- Enthusiastic about using technology to its full advantage to engage and recruit older people and volunteers and make data informed decisions.
- Self-motivated, able to work remotely with minimal supervision.
- Experience of working to deadlines and meeting KPIs and targets
- A positive ambassador for Re-engage - committed to an organisation that challenges ageism, empowers volunteers and recognises and values diversity.
- Able to work your own initiative as well as collaboratively as part of a team
- A clear understanding of safeguarding systems and processes and of confidentiality and the implications of GDPR when working with volunteers and older people.
Desirable
- Experience of community engagement or sales, including online engagement.
- Experience working in a target-driven work environment
- Skilled at building and maintaining effective relationships with a wide range of stakeholders from the statutory, commercial, and voluntary sectors to deliver results.
- Interested in learning about loneliness, social isolation, and factors that impact the ageing population.
- Understanding of volunteer journey, including recruitment and engagement.
- Full driving license and own car preferred as this post will require regional travel as and when required and the occasional overnight stay.
- Understanding of, and empathy with, the issues affecting older people who are isolated, and lonely.
About Re-engage
Re-engage is a charity that is positive about older age and committed to reducing loneliness so that people can have social lives and friendship groups however old they are. We inspire and enable meaningful connections and shared experiences within communities across the UK for people over 75 facing loneliness and social isolation.
Our volunteers work together to create better communities and help to enrich the lives of our members. Older people who may have felt very alone now feel valued as individuals, continue to form friendships, and have groups that give support. We make sure that people know they are important well into their old age.
We are proud of our values - positive, innovative, transparent, evidence-based, and accountable - and of our ethos of bringing generations together.
Our vision is a world where no one is ever too old to make friends and enjoy social interaction.
Our mission is to work within communities to end social isolation and loneliness in older people.
Re-engage is committed to growing a staff team that enjoys coming to work every day and gets satisfaction out of being part of delivering significant impact to the lives of older people. We all work remotely, and we don’t let that stop us from getting to know each other and enjoying down time together. Our wellbeing programme includes multiple interest groups: music, books, hobbies etc as well as coffee and catch ups, quizzes, mindfulness, and other group activities. Everyone is encouraged to get involved in working groups and staff networks, all of which contribute to us getting to know each other. We have strong values and promote behaviours that underpin all we do.
How we recruit
Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Re-engage we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we’d encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
Re-engage uses the Hireful platform which helps remove unconscious bias for a forward-thinking, fair, and objective alternative to traditional hiring. Instead of using your CV alone, we'll be asking you to answer questions to test essential skills needed for the role. The responses are then anonymised and reviewed in a random order by members of our team. This enables us to make data-driven assessments focused on someone's ability, rather than their background.
The Hireful platform also asks some demographic questions before you start your application. We never see these responses with your application. We only see summary statistics to help us check if our candidate pool is balanced and if everyone has an equal chance to get hired irrespective of their background. If you prefer, you can easily opt out of answering these questions.
The closing date is midnight on 15 February 2026, and interviews will be 26th and 27th February and 5th and 6th March 2026
REF-226 247
51 - 100
Thank you!
Engagement Officer - Scotland
Responsible to: Engagement Team Manager
Team: Engagement
Hours of work: 35 hours week
Place of work: Home-based – Scotland
Benefits
- Salary – £27,000 per annum
- 35 hours per week, Monday to Friday
- Home-based (with occasional UK travel)
- Working from home allowance at the standard HMRC rate as detailed on the government website.
- 26 days annual leave plus all Bank Holidays
- bhsf cash plan, 3% pension contribution, death in service insurance
- Learning and development opportunities, Employee Assistance Programme
Job summary
Reporting to the head of growth and sitting within the engagement team you will:
- recruit volunteers by promoting Re-engage’s services,
- develop effective relationships with new and existing referrers such as social prescribers and community link workers
- identify and cultivate new, innovative referral pathways to connect with a broader demographic of seniors experiencing social isolation and loneliness
- support the wider Re-engage team in the delivery of our grant funded projects
Engagement officer tasks and requirements
- Growing and developing our network of referral partners, including social prescribers and link workers, ensuring that Re-engage's work is promoted to people aged 75+ who are experiencing social isolation and loneliness.
- Partnering with communities to create regular, volunteer led, social gatherings for people aged 75+
- Utilise Re-engage's CRM (OPUS) to inform evidence-based, data-driven decision-making to develop effective engagement plans.
- Working closely with the service delivery team ensuring that the right people are recruited and engaged into the right roles, in the right place, and at the right times.
- Collaborating with the communications team ensuring the widest possible publicity for the region’s needs through media and social media opportunities, local press, radio, TV, and online forums.
- Liaising closely with the fundraising team delivering against recruitment targets linked to grants.
- Working with the fundraising team on proposals and grant applications using regional knowledge, identifying local need, and collecting case studies.
- Identifying speaking and presenting opportunities ensuring that Re-engage's work is promoted to referrers.
- Working effectively as part of a regional team, maintaining, and growing all Re-engage services.
- Joint accountability, with colleagues in the region, for the engagement of older people and recruitment of volunteers into Re-engage's portfolio of services
- Carrying out any other reasonable tasks assigned to you by your line manager.
You’ll be a proactive, solution-focused person with passion and skill for networking and building relationships. You’ll be experienced at building and maintaining effective relationships with referrers and social prescribers and will be a flexible, hands-on team player, who will deliver Re-engage's strategic objectives, values, behaviours, and working practices.
Knowledge, skills, and attributes
Essential
- Excellent people skills with a proven ability to network and collaborate with professionals, partners, older people, volunteers, and colleagues.
- Digital first approach with strong ability in all areas of working digitally.
- Experience of working across different sectors and developing links with other organisations.
- Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills
- Organised and methodical approach to work with strong administrative skills
- Enthusiastic about using technology to its full advantage to engage and recruit older people and volunteers and make data informed decisions.
- Self-motivated, able to work remotely with minimal supervision.
- Experience of working to deadlines and meeting KPIs and targets
- A positive ambassador for Re-engage - committed to an organisation that challenges ageism, empowers volunteers and recognises and values diversity.
- Able to work your own initiative as well as collaboratively as part of a team
- A clear understanding of safeguarding systems and processes and of confidentiality and the implications of GDPR when working with volunteers and older people.
Desirable
- Experience of community engagement or sales, including online engagement.
- Experience working in a target-driven work environment
- Skilled at building and maintaining effective relationships with a wide range of stakeholders from the statutory, commercial, and voluntary sectors to deliver results.
- Interested in learning about loneliness, social isolation, and factors that impact the ageing population.
- Understanding of volunteer journey, including recruitment and engagement.
- Full driving license and own car preferred as this post will require regional travel as and when required and the occasional overnight stay.
- Understanding of, and empathy with, the issues affecting older people who are isolated, and lonely.
About Re-engage
Re-engage is a charity that is positive about older age and committed to reducing loneliness so that people can have social lives and friendship groups however old they are. We inspire and enable meaningful connections and shared experiences within communities across the UK for people over 75 facing loneliness and social isolation.
Our volunteers work together to create better communities and help to enrich the lives of our members. Older people who may have felt very alone now feel valued as individuals, continue to form friendships, and have groups that give support. We make sure that people know they are important well into their old age.
We are proud of our values - positive, innovative, transparent, evidence-based, and accountable - and of our ethos of bringing generations together.
Our vision is a world where no one is ever too old to make friends and enjoy social interaction.
Our mission is to work within communities to end social isolation and loneliness in older people.
Re-engage is committed to growing a staff team that enjoys coming to work every day and gets satisfaction out of being part of delivering significant impact to the lives of older people. We all work remotely, and we don’t let that stop us from getting to know each other and enjoying down time together. Our wellbeing programme includes multiple interest groups: music, books, hobbies etc as well as coffee and catch ups, quizzes, mindfulness, and other group activities. Everyone is encouraged to get involved in working groups and staff networks, all of which contribute to us getting to know each other. We have strong values and promote behaviours that underpin all we do.
How we recruit
Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Re-engage we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we’d encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
Re-engage uses the Hireful platform which helps remove unconscious bias for a forward-thinking, fair, and objective alternative to traditional hiring. Instead of using your CV alone, we'll be asking you to answer questions to test essential skills needed for the role. The responses are then anonymised and reviewed in a random order by members of our team. This enables us to make data-driven assessments focused on someone's ability, rather than their background.
The Hireful platform also asks some demographic questions before you start your application. We never see these responses with your application. We only see summary statistics to help us check if our candidate pool is balanced and if everyone has an equal chance to get hired irrespective of their background. If you prefer, you can easily opt out of answering these questions.
The closing date is midnight on 15 February 2026, and interviews will be 26th and 27th February and 5th and 6th March 2026
REF-226 246