key holder jobs

Employer Partnerships & Student Futures is a service which brings together our Student and Graduate employability offer, with our consultancy services for Academic colleagues and Employers, whilst also responding to and leading our approach to the emerging regional and national skills agenda. Our department incorporates two distinct strands - Beckett Careers & Degree Apprenticeships. This role is a senior leadership role within our Beckett Careers structure, to deliver positive impact on the educational (progression) outcomes of Leeds Beckett University students and graduates.

This is an exciting time to join Leeds Beckett University and the Employer Partnerships & Student Futures Service (previously Business Engagement). In 2026 we embark upon our new institutional 5-year strategy where employability remains a critical focus for our University. At the same time, we will be entering a new phase in our service development, which will see an evolved approach towards responding to the employability needs of our students through partnership and collaboration across the institution. With stretching ambitions to ensure every student succeeds, the Employer Partnerships & Student Futures Service will play a critical role in our institutional strategic ambitions for our graduates’ outcomes, and our role as a leading and influential anchor institution to our region.

About the role and team:

Our newly created Employability Infrastructure and Partnerships Manager will lead and bring together a new function across Beckett Careers. The team will perform a critical strategic enabling role to allow for the growth and impact of our employability services across all of our key stakeholders – students, graduates, employers and academics. Working across all aspects of our department to understand objectives and priorities, the role will support the evaluation, impact, growth, and engagement of our broad employability interventions and priorities. The Infrastructure & Partnerships Manager will oversee a team comprising of employer operations, evaluation and impact, digital content & data, and engagement (communications) to ensure our broader department (and university), have the tools, policies, processes, insights and procedures to deliver against our service wide strategic objectives.

Working as a core component of our departmental leadership team, the post holder will be expected to develop a strong sense of institutional and service wide strategic priorities to help inform and drive the infrastructure work of the department, whilst enabling the growth of strong partnerships with external stakeholders and employers. Due to the nature of this role an ability to influence others beyond direct line reports will be critical – to ensure service wide and institution wide adoption of the output from the Infrastructure and Partnerships team.

About you:

This is an excellent opportunity for someone to join our department and establish a new impactful function which supports our service and institutional ambitions. We are keen to hear from individuals with a substantial knowledge/ experience of higher education careers, placements, employer engagement, graduate recruitment (or similar), with an ability to work to stretching and diverse strategic drivers including regulatory/ compliance requirements. With an ability to interpret strategic direction into impactful operational output, the successful candidate will be comfortable balancing and prioritising competing demands with service wide and institutional responsibilities.

To arrange an informal discussion about this post, please contact Mark Stow (Director of Employer Partnerships & Student Futures) at m.d.stow@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.

Closing date: Friday 30th January 2026 (23:59)

Interview date: week commencing 23rd February 2026 (this may be subject to change)

Working here means you’ll also have access to a wide range of benefits including our generous pension schemes, excellent holiday entitlements, flexible working, reduced study fees, subsidised fitness facilities and a lot more.

We welcome applications from all individuals and particularly from black and minority ethnic candidates as members of these groups are currently under-represented at this level of post. All appointments will be based on merit.