Associate Director, Product Development in Manchester

Associate Director, Product Development

Application Deadline: 3 September 2025

Department: Product Development

Employment Type: Fixed Term - Full Time

Location: Manchester

Reporting To: Matt Nicol

Compensation: £49,000 / year

Description

We\'re looking for an Associate Director, Product Development to join us on a full time, 12-month fixed term basis.
In this fast-paced, high-priority area of the organisation, you will manage a portfolio of new product concepts — collaborating with colleagues, experts, and partners to design, pilot, evaluate and scale innovative programmes that address educational disadvantage. You will work flexibly and creatively, listening to the sector and turning the best ideas into real-world pilots and beyond.
As part of the Product Development team, you will also lead complex, cross-organisational projects that strengthen our ability to develop and deliver new products. Your work will be integral to responding to funding opportunities from government and other sector organisations, helping Ambition Institute deliver lasting impact. If you are passionate about improving education and thrive in a collaborative, dynamic environment, we would love to hear from you.

Who are Ambition Institute?
A great teacher changes the future every day. Especially for children who have had a tough start in life, a teacher can be the critical factor in their success.

At Ambition Institute we help schools tackling educational disadvantage to keep getting better and help their teachers and school leaders to become more expert over time.

That’s how we’ll make sure every child gets a great education and the best possible start in life.

• We train teachers and leaders at all levels to get better at the things that make the biggest difference: what you teach, how you teach it, and how you create the conditions for schools to thrive.
• We share what works. Everyone can benefit from evidence of how great teaching and leadership can improve schools and change lives, so we connect people to the latest research and best practice.
• We champion every teacher and school leader’s potential to develop, as the driving force for sustainable school improvement.

We would like you to:

Product ideation

• Lead the definition and delivery of projects, working independently to make this happen from initial scoping through to high quality outputs.
• Facilitate excellent user-centred idea generation and creative collaboration between colleagues through excellent meeting and workshop facilitation and building strong relationships across the organisation.
• Be product owner for a portfolio of concepts working closely with subject matter experts across the organisation.
• Lead the planning, development and drafting of concept proposals and insight reports , establishing robust arguments that lead from evidence to informed recommendations.
• Lead the delivery of quantitative analysis for concepts, e.g., financial and strategic modelling.
• Lead qualitative user research interviews with individuals in the sector , including creating discussion guides, running semi-structured interviews, analysing the findings and sharing the insights with different audiences.
• Lead the qualitative and quantitative analysis to generate market insights , including analysis of the educational landscape, customers, competitors, and market trends.

Pilot mobilisation, evaluation and scale

• Lead the initial mobilisation of approved pilots , retaining oversight to ensure fidelity to the core components of each concept.
• Lead evaluation activities and commercial decision making around new products through running focus groups with participants and collecting content for Mid-point reviews and scale-up recommendations.
• Lead scale-up mobilisation and long-term product decision making for concepts which are signed off for scale by our Executive Committee, working with colleagues across the matrix throughout the product’s lifecycle.

Wider Product Development activity

• Work with sector partners to explore bespoke new product opportunities meeting their specific professional development needs.
• Lead complex, cross-organisational projects exploring how we design and deliver new products more effectively, working with Directors across the organisation to build consensus and form actionable and impactful recommendations.
• Lead development of our ‘service solution’ for external funding opportunities , bringing together expertise from across the organisation to form a scalable, impactful and financially viable bid proposals.
• Champion the ‘user’ across the product development process , ensuring the concepts we develop genuinely solve their problems and ultimately have commercial potential.
• Prepare and present impactful papers and decks to a wide range of senior stakeholders, including our Executive Committee, making informed and strategic recommendations to facilitate decision-making.

Working in a hybrid way, you’ll be attached to either our Birmingham, London or Manchester office and will report to Head of Product Development . In line with our current ways of working, you’ll be expected to be in the office at least 1 day a month, in addition to team days and this may be reviewed by Ambition.

Skills, Knowledge and Experience

Essential:

• A ‘user-centred’ mindset: considering the problems faced by teachers, leaders and other key sector stakeholders.
• Skilled problem solver: enjoys tackling open-ended, ambiguous problems and delving into new topics, domains, and techniques; applies rigour and creativity to solving problems; can process large quantities of qualitative and quantitative data quickly and distil into recommendations and next steps.
• Experience of initiating and delivering projects: able to design a rigorous and realistic path to implement a project
• Strategic thinker: able to envision long-term goals and analyse trends to make informed, future-oriented decisions, connecting the dots between ideas, opportunities and systems.
• Strong quantitative thinker: a ‘numbers’ person who has experience with scoping and overseeing data modelling and data analysis to support complex strategic decision-making.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills: demonstrate strong verbal and written communication across a diverse set of stakeholders, including executive level.
• Strong and proactive relationship builder and stakeholder manager: able to effectively influence and manage expectations with senior management and cross-functional teams; a strong listener who works collaborates with colleagues and builds trust easily; can ‘manage up’ as needed to hold senior stakeholders to account.
• Managing up: the credibility and confidence to advise, challenge and hold to account senior stakeholders.
• Experience of leading multiple projects at a time: comfortable working through uncertainty or change to achieve positive outcomes.
• Advanced Proficiency in MS PowerPoint and MS Excel.
• Thrives in a fast-paced , ‘start-up’ style team; resilient, adaptable and learns quickly on the job.
• Action-oriented with the initiative and drive to solve problems and overcome obstacles

Desirable:

• Previous experience in managing early-stage pilot or idea generation
• Experience of working with and through matrix teams
• Experience in the education or not-for-profit sector This post is subject to receipt of two satisfactory references covering at least the previous 3 years and right to work in the UK.

What’s in it for you….?

• Competitive annual salary
• Professional development for all staff
• 25 days’ annual leave, plus bank holidays and \'winter shut down’ at the end of December/beginning of January
• Employer pension contribution of 11%
• Agile, hybrid working culture, so you can manage when and where you work
• Staff affinity networks that help keep equality, diversity and inclusion at the heart of our work
• Blind recruitment process to ensure equality and fairness in our hiring
• Enhanced maternity pay after a year’s service
• Shared parental leave package
• Access to free, confidential 24/7 wellbeing and support line
• Comfortable and collaborative workspaces in the city centres of Manchester, Birmingham and London
• Work-from-home technology package to support hybrid working
• Interest free season ticket / bike loans

We don’t expect the person we hire to have all of the following, but this should give you a sense of what would enable you to thrive in this role and in our organisation:

• You care deeply about educational disadvantage and being part of an organisation that challenges inequality
• You have a good work ethic and strive to make a difference in the job you do
• You always give maximum effort to understand and meet the needs of our partners and participants
• You always have a great attitude so we “can do” for all our colleagues, partners and participants
• You are open to feedback and learning because we want to keep getting better
• You work with your initiative to bring new ideas and a fresh perspective
• You are well organised and can prioritise work that will have the greatest impact

• You want a career with a person-centred organisation with a cause at its heart.
• You have a collaborative work ethos, bring warmth and good humour to work and constructive outlook to every situation
• You enjoy working in a fast-moving workplace, with a great support structure around you
• You would like to grow with an ambitious organisation as it progresses over time
• Want flexibility in how you work – splitting your time between one of our offices and remote working and managing your own working patterns to get the job done.

Applications will be accepted for all office locations.
All applications must be received by the closing date 23:59 on 3 September 2025. Interviews are expected to take place on 11 and 12 September.

We recognise that AI function tools (i.e. ChatGPT or other generative AI tools) are here to stay and can be helpful for applications e.g. to assist in researching for application responses and to shorten your first draft. However, we are observing a growing trend in the use of AI, and we would caution applicants against relying too heavily on such tools when drafting responses.

The pitfall of such tools is that they produce generic responses that don’t showcase individuality, specific experiences or real-life examples. This usually results in applications being unsuccessful. We want to evaluate your response, and we will be looking for answers that use examples and experiences that are clearly specific to you. You are more likely to successfully demonstrate your soft skills like communication and teamwork when preparing answers to application questions yourself and this helps mitigate the unintended consequences of AI-generated responses.

If we suspect you have used AI inappropriately, the panel reviewing your application may adjust how your response is rated. For more details of what we consider to be acceptable use of AI function tools in our application process, please review our FAQs on our careers page.

We are committed to the safeguarding of children and the most vulnerable in our society and, as such, we are unable to employ individuals with relevant convictions, including the following: a conviction for an offence involving violence or dishonesty, of a sexual nature or against minors, or for any other offence that is relevant to the nature of the services provided by our organisation.

For any questions or queries please review our FAQs | Ambition Institute Careers (pinpointhq.com) in the first instance. If we\'ve not addressed your question in this section, please email us at

As an employer, we have a responsibility to prevent illegal working in the UK by ensuring that our employees have the right to work in the UK. Therefore, as part of the recruitment process to verify your eligibility you will be required to produce relevant documentation.