Careers & Talent Manager - Maternity Cover

King's College London; Greater London; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent higher education institution in London is seeking a talent management specialist for a full-time, fixed-term role aimed at enhancing their talent strategy. This position involves developing career pathways and establishing talent management practices within a vibrant university setting. Candidates should have evidence of implementing talent-related activities and a degree or equivalent experience. The role offers an opportunity to make a significant impact on the university's future success.

Qualifications

• Evidence of designing and implementing career and talent management activities.
• Experience in large organizations with career pathways.
• Knowledge of process improvement and leveraging technology.

Responsibilities

• Developing a talent management strategy for university objectives.
• Working alongside HR and Organizational Development teams.
• Creating innovative career pathways and a high-performance culture.

Skills

Designing career and talent management activities

Embedding career pathways

Process improvement knowledge

Roll out new initiatives

Written and verbal communication

Strategic thinking

Analytical and problem-solving skills

Flexibility to adapt

Education

Educated to degree level or equivalent

Job description

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About us:

King's College London is a world‑leading university based in the heart of London with 40,000 students from over 150 countries studying in person and online, and over 12,000 employees. This is an exciting time to join King's College London as we establish a new Talent team embedded within HR. The creation of the team reflects the renewed focus and strategic priority to enhance our talent management capabilities across both our academic and professional services workforce.

About the role:

One of the key pillars of King's 2030 strategy is "Enabling our People to Excel", and the talent, commitment, and creativity of our people are at the heart of King's success. The Talent team is responsible for developing a new strategy and setting up active talent management, including assessing and identifying high potential, retaining and developing talent, enabling and embedding a high‑performance culture, and the creation of new career pathways.

We are looking for someone to join us for c.10 months to help the strategic development of a Talent function to support university ambitions, working alongside HR colleagues, including the Organisational Development Team. There is an opportunity to make a real impact by bringing best practice and innovation into King's.

For further information, or for an informal conversation please contact the Director of Talent [e-mail]. To apply please submit a CV and supporting statement (1 page) setting out your relevant experience through the King's job pages.

This is a full time role (35 hours per week) and you will be offered a fixed‑term contract until 01‑Jan‑2027 or until the return of the substantive post holder.

About you:

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Evidence of designing and implementing career and talent management activities such as succession plans and developing methodologies to assess high potential.
2. Experience in designing and embedding career pathways across all layers of a large organisation.
3. Knowledge of best practice process improvement and the capability to leverage available technology, data and reporting to improve new and existing processes.
4. Experience of how to successfully roll out new initiatives in a large and complex organisation.
5. Excellent written, listening and communication skills.
6. Strategic thinker with operational delivery expertise.
7. Proven analytical and problem‑solving capability, and the ability to work independently.
8. Comfortable with ambiguity, and able to flex to provide effective solutions to meet our stakeholders' evolving needs.

Desirable criteria

1. Experience of working in higher education, government or the public sector.
2. Educated to degree level, or equivalent.
3. Experience of working in a large and complex organisation.
4. Experience of leading centralised performance management initiatives, including the delivery and reporting of annual performance reviews.

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further information:

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

As part of this commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and through this appointment process, it is our aim to develop candidate pools that include applicants from all backgrounds and communities.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our "How we Recruit" pages.

Interviews are due to be held on 15th January 2026.