Communications Officer

Newcastle University; England; On-site; GBP 30,000 - 32,000; Full time

Job summary

An exciting opportunity at Newcastle University for a Communications Officer to join the National Innovation Centre for Data. This role supports marketing strategies, content creation, and event coordination, aimed at raising the centre's profile and addressing the UK’s data skills gap. Candidates must be creative, organised, and possess excellent communication skills, with a degree level education ideally in media or marketing.

Benefits

Generous holiday package

Great pension schemes

Health and wellbeing initiatives

Qualifications

• Experience developing and implementing communications campaigns.
• Excellent writing skills for a variety of audiences and formats.
• Ability to manage social media channels effectively.

Responsibilities

• Develop and coordinate the Centre’s communications strategy.
• Manage content projects including newsletters and social media.
• Support marketing activities for student bootcamps.

Skills

Organisational skills

Communication skills

Content creation

Education

Degree or equivalent level qualification

Degree in media production, marketing or similar

Tools

HubSpot

Adobe Creative Cloud

Canva

Job description

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Salary: £30,805 to £31,637 with progression to £34,132 per annum

Newcastle University is a great place to work, with excellent benefits . We have a generous holiday package; plus the opportunity to buy more, great pension schemes and a number of health and wellbeing initiatives to support you.

Closing Date: 23 July 2025

The Role

This is an excellent opportunity to join the UK’s National Innovation Centre for Data (NICD) at Newcastle University, to help support the communications and marketing strategy, and position the Centre's offerto a range of audiences, using a variety of media channels and platforms. The postholder will also spend a day per week working at the broader Faculty level, supporting communications across the Faculty and its five academic units.

The National Innovation Centre for Data (NICD) at Newcastle University is seeking a Communications Officer to be responsible for supporting and taking the lead role in, the planning, organisation and delivery of NICD communications and marketing, including activities, events and social media strategies that create a regular, consistent and positive professional profile for NICD. In addition, the postholder will spend a day per week working at the broader Faculty level, supporting communications across the Faculty and its five academic units.

NICD has been established to address the data skills gap in the UK that will enable organisations to innovate through data. It delivers a flexible rolling programme of collaborative projects that focus on a specific business challenge or opportunity and transfers practical data skills into the workforce. Using these new skills, organisations can make better, data driven decisions, optimising existing operations or launching new products and services. To drive the client pipeline and grow the data community, NICD run a series of events that excite and inspire people about the possibilities of data along with raising awareness of the economic and social impacts data science can have.

The Communications Officer will play a key role in helping to raise the profile of the Centre by supporting the development and creation of engaging content in the form of blogs, articles, social media copy and digital material to promote the Centre’s offer and positioning to a range of audiences over different media to support the client pipeline and grow the data community.

You will be responsible for taking a lead role in planning, organising and delivering NICD communications and marketing - including activities, events and social media strategies that create a regular, consistent, and positive professional profile for NICD. This will include the development of content for case studies, newsletters, blogs, news articles, social media copy and printed collateral. You will also support the marketing and communications activity for our student bootcamps.

We are seeking a creative and collaborative professional with a background in supporting the development of narratives for marketing, publicity, and event campaigns. This individual will support and deliver the day-to-day communications strategy and also play a key role in coordinating the development of larger more complex campaigns. This individual will be the key point of contact for communications activity for the Centre both internally and externally. Importantly, the successful applicant must be able to work independently on communications activity, as well as working as part of the NICD team, the wider Faculty team and the central services communications team. The successful applicant will be required to contribute to wider administrative tasks, that can span from transactional to strategic in nature, when required.

We are looking for a highly motivated, enthusiastic, creative, and collaborative individual. This individual must possess excellent organisational, IT and communications skills, have a keen eye for details and be able to prioritise their own workload, to ensure deadlines are met. You will be educated to degree level, preferably in a related discipline, and should have a background in developing narratives for marketing, publicity and event campaignsThis individual must have excellent communication skills, be willing to challenge themselves and contribute new ideas and insights. Enthusiasm, empathy, and a positive ‘can-do’ attitude is essential.

This post is for maternity cover and the projected end date is 15th may 2026.

Any specific questions relating to the job advert, please get in touch:

• Develop, coordinate, and implement the Centre’s communications strategy
• Contribute to and support the delivery of the Faculty communications strategy
• Coordinate and deliver campaigns to support the Centre’s activities and events programmes
• Create, design, coordinate, and manage end to end content creation (social copy, case studies, blog posts, articles, video clips, email)
• Carry out client interviews to gather essential information required for case study creation
• Proofread, re-structure and edit articles or academic publications written by content writers
• Update and manage the Centre’s social media channels to ensure timely publication
• Maintain a consistent two-way communication across the Centre’s social media channels
• Update the website to ensure relevant content using HubSpot
• Creation and management of the monthly newsletter using HubSpot
• Communicate and collaborate with key marketing delivery teams across the university (Web Design, Media, Creative Assets, Press etc)
• Manage content projects with external agencies
• Support and coordinate the development of narratives for the Centre’s events campaigns
• Manage the marketing and communications activity for student bootcamps, including flyers, mailers, posters and web forms
• Act as the key point of contact to external and internal audiences for the Centre’s marketing related activity
• Monitor and measure social and web user engagement analytics
• Act as an evangelist for promoting the importance of good story telling amongst the NICD team
• Communicate with both partner and NICD team members to gather briefing information for content projects
• Use of tools including HubSpot, Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva
• Generate new ideas to aid the promotion of the Centre’s offers and activities
• Follow guidelines on copyright, privacy, and web accessibility
• Support with general administrative tasks where required – tasks can vary in nature, from transactional such as input into University systems, to strategic such as supporting senior management with strategic plans

The Person

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Experience of developing, coordinating, and implementing communications campaigns
• Experience generating quality content for digital, social, web and email
• Excellent writing skills (including a high level of accuracy) and an ability to write for a range of different audiences across a range of channels
• Experience of managing social media channels
• Experience designing and creating digital and printed content, including the use of tools such as Canva
• Experience of website management, including the use of tools such as HubSpot
• Excellent proof-reading skills in the context of updating information
• Excellent time management and organisational skills
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills and a good team player with an enthusiastic and positive outlook
• Ability to work independently on communications activities, whilst also collaborating with the wider NICD and central comms teams
• Ability to communicate ideas effectively to stakeholders to gain buy in
• Ability to manage and work within budget constraints
• Knowledge of EDI and the ability to create both inclusive and accessible content
• Experience of Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop/Illustrator/PremierPro) or equivalent packages
• Experience with monitoring and measuring social and web analytics platforms
• Creativity with skills in, and experience of, creating visual digital content (using video editing skills) or the ability to manage digital creation via agency support – training could be made available
• Ability to translate evidence-based content into engaging content and communications for digital channels. (Desirable)
• Knowledge and understanding of issues relating to marketing, publicity and promotion
• Knowledge and understanding of GDPR, data privacy and data ethics

Attributes and Behaviour

• Energy, enthusiasm, empathy, and a positive ‘can-do’
• Acts in a collaborative, inclusive, transparent and open manner, acting with integrity and able to build high levels of trust
• Understands and makes sense of complex or conflicting data and different perspectives of stakeholders and University areas/faculties/etc
• Uses clear, concise and accurate communication, tailoring the approach accordingly and encouraging a two-way communication process
• Uses systems and tools to ensure records and audit trails are clear and up to date
• Works continually towards achieving success through understanding and meeting or exceeding the expectations of the area, the University, students, colleagues, and other stakeholders
• Takes responsibility for achieving targets
• Has an eye for detail, spotting errors and ensuring accurate information
  

Qualifications

• Degree or equivalent level qualification or significant vocational experience
• Degree in media production, marketing or similar

Newcastle University is a global University where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. As a University of Sanctuary, we aim to provide a welcoming place of safety for all, offering opportunities to people fleeing violence and persecution.

We are committed to being a fully inclusive university which actively recruits, supports and retains colleagues from all sectors of society. We value diversity as well as celebrate, support and thrive on the contributions of all of our employees and the communities they represent. We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams, we believe that success is built on having teams whose backgrounds and experiences reflect the diversity of our university and student population.

At Newcastle University we hold a silverAthena Swan award in recognition of our good employment practices for the advancement of gender equality. We also hold a Race Equality Charter Bronze award in recognition of our work towards tackling race inequality in higher education REC. We are a Disability Confident employer and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role as part of the offer and interview scheme.

In addition, we are a member of the Euraxess initiative supporting researchers in Europe.