Senior Technical Lead – Entrepreneurship

£70,000 – £79,950 pa
Full time (flexible working options available)
Permanent
Farringdon – with international travel

Closing Date: 5 May 2024
Ref 6622

In this Senior Technical Lead – Entrepreneurship role, you will use your deep expertise in innovative finance and enterprise development to lead and support the delivery of enterprise development programmes, both existing and upcoming, across various countries.

You will help shape SCUK’s commercial strategies by providing strategic and commercial insights, guide existing initiatives, and sharing through best practice.

You will be instrumental to achieve the Innovation Hive’s system change goals for entrepreneurship as a means to delivering impact, influencing not just the Save the Children movement, but also the broader NGO sector and beyond.

The Innovation Hive are a team focussed on achieving transformative, systemic, change for children, for our organisation, for our sector and beyond. To do this we run a corporate venturing function at SCUK backing innovation projects that will help us maximise the impact potential of existing and new resources, and increase funding directed towards Save the Children’s mission. Our purpose is clear: to transform, build and champion new growth opportunities and business models, moving at pace and collaborating inside and outside of or organisation to do this.

Key Accountabilities include:
Technical

• Use deep technical expertise and proven experience on innovative finance and delivering enterprise development programmes to lead on the delivery and/or support of existing (eg. 3 Ukraine, Kumwe Hub) and upcoming (eg Turkey, Nigeria, Ethiopia) Enterprise Development programmes to exit point.
• Use proven commercial experience to support the development and delivery of the strategy to explore SCUK’s commercial opportunities such as shared value partnerships.
• Provide guidance and advice on existing SCUK commercial initiatives.
  Work on the development of a “best-practice” advisory service for SCUK to support Enterprise
• Development programmes for local contexts.
• Working collaboratively across SCUK, Save the Children International, LIFT Lab, Save the Children Global Ventures, Kumwe Hub and Country Offices and others to design and support the implementation of those projects.
• Lead all aspects of an end-to-end opportunity, including origination, due diligence, design, committee approval, go-to-market strategy and oversight of delivery.
• Contribute commercial acumen to project design, delivery and evaluation.
• Provide strategic and analytical insight through the generation of accurate and compelling reports and presentations, including for internal and external stakeholders.

Thought Leadership

• Achieve the Innovation Hive’s system change goals for entrepreneurship, influencing not just the Save the Children movement, but also the broader NGO sector and beyond.
• Influence and engage senior leaders with gravitas to build high-level buy-in for and understanding of your work.
• Be an active leader in relevant community of practices (or creating those that not yet exist) that bring together stakeholders, including donors, investors, and beneficiaries, to drive the adoption of enterprise development and innovative finance mechanisms.
• Lead and build essential partnerships with organisations and industry experts to ensure the delivery of strategic projects. Including specifically in the impact finance and social enterprise space, confidently representing Save the Children at key external events and building our presence.

Learning and Organisational Development

• Responsible for bringing best practice into Save the Children – and embedding your technical knowledge and learning across the organisation, specifically regarding innovative finance and enterprise development, to build organisational capacity.
• Draft and preparation of proposals, pitch decks, and associated materials to engage diverse client groups (e.g. the Innovation Hive’s Investment Committee and relevant board steering committees) to ensure the Hive’s activities are communicated highly effectively and strategically.

About You
To be successful, it is important that you have the following skills and experience:

• Knowledge and proven multi-year experience on the strategic implementation and operationalization of Enterprise Development programmes.
• In-depth knowledge of current best practices in enterprise development and innovative finance, combined with established connections with industry experts and relevant networks, enabling the leveraging of these relationships for strategic advantage and collaborative opportunities.
• Demonstrated commercial expertise with a strong ability to guide and enhance commercial initiatives, leveraging a comprehensive understanding of market trends and business strategies to maximize impact and sustainability.
• Experience in senior leadership roles within a development, management consulting environment or equivalent.
• Significant experience with impact measurement, and management frameworks.
• An excellent stakeholder manager with demonstrated networking and influencing skills at all levels.
• Ability to adapt financial mechanisms to humanitarian and/or development contexts.
• Proven track record of project delivery.
• Creative and strategic in problem-solving, effectively involving multiple stakeholders with empathy and open-mindedness.
• Capable of handling complexity and uncertainty with a clear and organized thought process.
• Organized self-starter with an entrepreneurial mindset, eager to challenge the status quo.
• Quick at understanding new markets/products and passionate about impact, technology, and entrepreneurship, with a strong drive for personal and organizational growth.
• Focused on achieving targets aligned with organizational strategies and appreciative of the complexities in a global international organization.

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.

Ways of Working:
The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but there are likely to be times when you will be required to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter). This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team and is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building.

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.