Standalone hr manager jobs

Martingale Postgraduate Foundation (Martingale) exists to fund and support the next generation of talented researchers. We believe that family income should not be a barrier to the pursuit of excellence, and our mission is to enable and nurture talented individuals from low-socioeconomic backgrounds to thrive within world-leading postgraduate research.

Martingale’s flagship programme is the Martingale Postgraduate Scholarship, which supports students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds to pursue and excel in postgraduate degrees, by providing:

• A fully-funded Living Wage Scholarship to pursue a one-year Masters degree or a four-year PhD.
• All tuition fees and research expenses, including a tax-free stipend for living costs.
• Tailored support to apply for Martingale courses at our partner universities.
• Access to Martingale programmes, including leadership training and connections with top academic and industry professionals.
• Membership of a pioneering community of talented researchers.

In the three years since Martingale launched, we have supported over 100 Scholars to undertake postgraduate degrees across our ten partner universities and have committed over £7.7m in Scholarships. We are continuing to expand our offer, bringing on new partners each year.

As Operations Manager, you would ensure the smooth running of day-to-day operations and to lead special projects that tackle big organisational questions. Working closely with the Director of Operations, you will support the development and improvement of Martingale’s systems and processes. You will also have the opportunity to lead standalone projects that require structured problem-solving and strong judgement including preparing Martingale for spin out. You will bring clarity and traction across multiple workstreams, working closely with senior colleagues and external partners.

We are looking for a strategic thinker with a proactive approach to their work, who can identify and help resolve issues, and recognise opportunities. You will bring excellent organisational skills, strong attention to detail, a proactive mindset, and a strong alignment with Martingale’s mission. We welcome applicants from a range of career paths who are excited to be part of a growing, fast-paced charity delivering meaningful impact.

Martingale Foundation is incubated by Purposeful Ventures who provide operational and strategic support. The Operations Manager will be employed by Purposeful Ventures.

About Purposeful Ventures

Purposeful Ventures partners with social entrepreneurs and philanthropists to improve the education and well-being of young people from their earliest years.

We define and diagnose the issues affecting children and young people, analyse evidence and explore the most promising solutions. We then select, accelerate and, where we find a gap, incubate organisations which tackle those issues. We offer more than just funding to our charitable organisations. Our expertise, operational experience and networks enable us to deliver tailored, hands-on support with a relentless commitment to system change.

We are working with a wide range of organisations across the following portfolio areas to build and strengthen outstanding organisations that deliver systemic impact.

Key Responsibilities:

Special Projects

A significant and distinctive part of this role involves leading standalone analytical and operational projects that tackle substantive, open-ended questions. These will vary over time and will require intellectual curiosity, the ability to work with ambiguity, and the capacity to produce clear, high-quality outputs such as reports or proposals. Current and anticipated examples include: 

• Designing a model for calculating discounts or adjusted contribution rates for funders committing significant multi-year funding, balancing financial sustainability with funder relationship management.
• Preparing for spin-out: contributing to Martingale’s readiness for independence from Purposeful Ventures by scoping and delivering specific workstreams across governance, operations, finance, legal, and data.
• Leading other ad-hoc analytical or operational projects as they arise, including research into sector practice, policy analysis, or internal process design.

Operational infrastructure and continuous improvement

Liaise with colleagues across the organisation to understand business needs and issues, and develop and implement appropriate solutions to drive efficiency and impact, including: 

• Strengthening systems and processes: leading a structured review of Martingale’s operational infrastructure – including CRM, finance systems, HR processes, and information management – and implementing improvements that will support a larger, more complex organisation.
• Identify and codify operational processes and ways of working and proactively propose improvements where relevant, including ensuring that individual roles and responsibilities are clear.
• Manage cross-functional initiatives that require coordination across our departments.
• Identify and implement tools, technologies, and processes that can improve our ways of working.
• Lead exploratory projects, such as assessing how AI can be integrated into our work to enhance impact and efficiency.
• Provide project management support across different teams to drive key organisational goals.
• Manage the rollout of new processes and tools, supporting colleagues to adopt changes effectively.

Generalist Support and Cross-Functional Contribution

The Operations Manager will be a flexible and collaborative colleague, capable of contributing across different parts of the organisation’s work where needed:

• Provide high-quality analytical and operational support to the Director of Operations and CEO on a range of organisational questions.
• Contribute to the preparation of materials for the Advisory Board, governance bodies, and key external stakeholders, including papers, briefings, and data summaries.
• Support the Programme and External Relations departments on operational aspects of delivery, including events logistics, supplier management, and cross-team coordination.
• Represent the organisation professionally in communications with external stakeholders, including partner universities, suppliers, and service providers.
• Support Director of Operations with financial processes including preparing management accounts, building and refining financial forecasts and for growth, and onwards grants.
• With Director of Operations, liaise with outsourced providers including Purposeful Ventures to ensure effective working relationships and back-office support.

Other

• As duties and responsibilities change, the job description will be reviewed and amended in consultation with the post holder.
• The post holder will carry out any other duties as are within the scope, spirit and purpose of the role as requested by the line manager

Key Requirements:

Essential Criteria

• Right to work in the UK

Experience and skills

Essential

• Strong operations and project delivery experience in a fast-paced environment (e.g., charity, start-up, university, public sector, or professional services).
• Demonstrable experience leading projects end-to-end, including creating plans, managing stakeholders, and delivering outcomes.
• Experience leading or making a significant contribution to complex, standalone projects or pieces of analysis, including analysing ambiguous problems and turning them into clear outputs (e.g. reports, presentations) and actionable recommendations.
• Experience improving systems/processes (e.g., designing workflows, implementing tools, documenting processes, driving adoption).
• Experience of contracting, invoicing, and other operational finance processes, as well as procurement and supplier management.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to produce clear documentation for internal and external audiences (experience drafting papers, briefings, or analytical reports is desirable).
• Experience working with CRM systems, project management tools, or other operational platforms, and a track record of improving or implementing systems and processes

Desirable

• Experience working with universities (partnerships, funding arrangements, research administration, or related).
• Experience supporting governance processes (papers, decision logs, approvals) or preparing materials for senior stakeholders.
• Experience working in a start-up, scale-up, or fast-growing charity. 

Personal Characteristics

• Highly organised, proactive, and able to prioritise effectively in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent interpersonal skills: able to build rapport and trusting relationships, able to work co-operatively in a multidisciplinary setting.
• Strong judgement, discretion and professionalism, including ability to handle confidential information appropriately.
• A commitment to Martingale’s mission to support postgraduate students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Comfortable working in a rapidly growing and changing organisation with a degree of ambiguity – confident to create processes and ways forward where they might not yet exist.
• Intellectually curious and analytical – someone who enjoys getting into the detail of a complex question and working out a clear, defensible answer.
• Proactive and self-starting: able to identify what needs doing and take ownership without needing to be directed at every step.
• Resourceful, able to act on initiative, hardworking, detail-oriented, and systematic.

We’re looking for a People and Culture Manager to shape and lead Amala's first dedicated people function, ensuring our global team is supported by rigorous and human-centred people practices. You will work closely with the Head of Finance and our international leadership team to manage the end-to-end team member lifecycle and continuously foster a deep sense of belonging across our remote workforce.

Who we are

Amala’s mission is to use the power of education to transform the lives of young refugees, their communities and the world. We are a non-profit organisation with big ambitions to create a deep and lasting impact for young people who are displaced. We have developed the first accredited secondary level programme and qualification for out of school refugee and crisis affected youth, and we also offer Changemaker Courses in areas such as Peace-building, Ethical Leadership, and Social Entrepreneurship. Our approach to education is conveyed through our  human-centred, context-inclusive curricula and learning programmes that are relevant to the lives that our students lead today and will lead in the future. 

Key responsibilities

• Recruitment & Onboarding: Lead end-to-end hiring and design onboarding programmes that strictly adhere to Safer Recruitment requirements.

• Performance & Development: Manage the annual review cycle and coach managers to have meaningful, development-focused conversations.

• Policy & Culture: Act as a custodian of Amala’s culture while maintaining compliant HR and policies and the Single Central Record.

• Compensation: Maintain our job grading framework and lead salary benchmarking against the NGO sector.

You will be successful if you have

• CIPD Level 5 qualification and proven HR management experience within an NGO or mission-driven organisation.

• The ability to navigate the nuances of supporting globally distributed teams across different cultures and time zones.

• A human-centred mindset that balances rigorous HR compliance with empathy and a commitment to team wellbeing.

All roles at Amala are open to applications from all sections of society. We believe in the potential of everyone regardless of race, religion or belief, ethnic origin, disability, sexual orientation, family structure, economic background, age, nationality or citizenship, gender identity, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Safeguarding children, young people and vulnerable persons is a priority for Amala. All team members are expected to share that commitment and adhere to Amala’s Safeguarding and Welfare Policy and Team Code of Conduct. Any offer of appointment by Amala is conditional on satisfactory pre-appointment checks.

How to apply
Read the job description for more details on the role and for information on how to apply. 

Deadline: Monday 18 May 2026, 12:00 BST