Visitor Experience First Line Manager: Museum Galleries

Visitor Experience First Line Manager: Museum Galleries

Are you an experienced visitor experience, customer service or operations leader looking for your next challenge in the museum and cultural sector?

We are seeking an exceptional Visitor Experience First Line Manager to lead and develop a team of Visitor Experience Assistants within one of the world's most visited cultural attractions. This is a highly visible leadership role, responsible for ensuring outstanding standards of visitor experience, operational excellence, safety and team performance across our galleries.

You’ll lead by example on the floor, managing visitor flow, coordinating staff deployment, responding to incidents, resolving customer issues, and maintaining exceptional presentation standards throughout the galleries. You will play a key role in supporting daily delivery, major exhibitions, public programmes and special events while ensuring health, safety and security procedures are consistently maintained. At the heart of the role is your ability to motivate, coach and develop your team, creating a positive culture focused on service excellence and continuous improvement.

This is a fantastic opportunity for a confident people manager who thrives in busy visitor-facing environments and is passionate about delivering memorable experiences for diverse audiences.

About you

• Proven experience leading, motivating and developing frontline teams
• Strong people management capability, including performance management, coaching and employee relations
• Experience delivering outstanding customer or visitor service in busy public environments with a commitment to creating inclusive, welcoming experiences for all visitors
• Confidence making operational decisions and managing challenging situations while remaining calm, professional and decisive
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Strong organisational skills and a proactive approach to problem solving
• Experience within the museum, arts or heritage sector would be advantageous, but applications are welcomed from candidates with transferable leadership experience from other visitor-focused environments.

Key areas of responsibility

• People and Team Management including:
  • Engage and motivate the team
  • Lead on performance and appraisals, supporting training and personal and professional development
  • Undertake employee relations processes where required
• Operational Management including:
  • Lead proactive, informative and engaging daily briefings
  • Plan and coordinate resources
  • Ensure health, safety and security in public spaces
  • Manage operational situations such as emergencies, incidents and visitor complaints
• Visitor Experience including:
  • Maintain high standards of presentation throughout the Museum by providing information and guidance to visitors and encouraging visitors’ feedback

The British Museum is undertaking its biggest transformation since its founding nearly 300 years ago. This physical and intellectual transformation includes large scale building and gallery transformation, new ways of connecting with audiences and different ways of working. As we look towards this exciting future, we remain guided by the words of our founder Hans Sloane - who dreamed of a museum connecting all arts and sciences, which would be accessible to everyone, everywhere.

At the British Museum, we believe our people are at the heart of everything we do and have designed a benefits package that goes beyond the ordinary. Our full list of benefits can be found here, but we’ve outlined some highlights below:

• Free exhibition entry for you and guests, exclusive private views, ICOM and reciprocal museum access.
• Civil Service Pension Scheme defined benefit with 28.97% employer contribution.
• 25 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays and 2.5 privilege days (and +5 days after 10 years).
• Social and wellbeing perks including Staff parties, social clubs, CSSC sports and leisure, and support from the Civil Service Retirement Fellowship.
• Peer support and allyship with five diversity networks for community.
• Learning and development through courses, mentoring and Athena as well as support for professional qualifications.
• Employee Assistance Programme available 24/7 for counselling, wellbeing support and more.

Vacancy Type Fixed Term Contract length Until 11 July 2027 Working Pattern Full Time Is hybrid working available? No Location Bloomsbury, London Salary £34,586 per annum Application Deadline Thursday, October 8, 2026 Job Profile Job Profile document

Role Summary

About the role

Are you an experienced visitor experience, customer service or operations leader looking for your next challenge in the museum and cultural sector?

We are seeking an exceptional Visitor Experience First Line Manager to lead and develop a team of Visitor Experience Assistants within one of the world's most visited cultural attractions. This is a highly visible leadership role, responsible for ensuring outstanding standards of visitor experience, operational excellence, safety and team performance across our galleries.

You’ll lead by example on the floor, managing visitor flow, coordinating staff deployment, responding to incidents, resolving customer issues, and maintaining exceptional presentation standards throughout the galleries. You will play a key role in supporting daily delivery, major exhibitions, public programmes and special events while ensuring health, safety and security procedures are consistently maintained. At the heart of the role is your ability to motivate, coach and develop your team, creating a positive culture focused on service excellence and continuous improvement.

This is a fantastic opportunity for a confident people manager who thrives in busy visitor-facing environments and is passionate about delivering memorable experiences for diverse audiences.

About you

• Proven experience leading, motivating and developing frontline teams
• Strong people management capability, including performance management, coaching and employee relations
• Experience delivering outstanding customer or visitor service in busy public environments with a commitment to creating inclusive, welcoming experiences for all visitors
• Confidence making operational decisions and managing challenging situations while remaining calm, professional and decisive
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Strong organisational skills and a proactive approach to problem solving
• Experience within the museum, arts or heritage sector would be advantageous, but applications are welcomed from candidates with transferable leadership experience from other visitor-focused environments.

Key areas of responsibility

• People and Team Management including:
  • Engage and motivate the team
  • Lead on performance and appraisals, supporting training and personal and professional development
  • Undertake employee relations processes where required
• Operational Management including:
  • Lead proactive, informative and engaging daily briefings
  • Plan and coordinate resources
  • Ensure health, safety and security in public spaces
  • Manage operational situations such as emergencies, incidents and visitor complaints
• Visitor Experience including:
  • Maintain high standards of presentation throughout the Museum by providing information and guidance to visitors and encouraging visitors’ feedback

The Masterplan

The British Museum is undertaking its biggest transformation since its founding nearly 300 years ago. This physical and intellectual transformation includes large scale building and gallery transformation, new ways of connecting with audiences and different ways of working. As we look towards this exciting future, we remain guided by the words of our founder Hans Sloane - who dreamed of a museum connecting all arts and sciences, which would be accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Benefits

At the British Museum, we believe our people are at the heart of everything we do and have designed a benefits package that goes beyond the ordinary. Our full list of benefits can be found here, but we’ve outlined some highlights below:

• Free exhibition entry for you and guests, exclusive private views, ICOM and reciprocal museum access.
• Civil Service Pension Scheme defined benefit with 28.97% employer contribution.
• 25 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays and 2.5 privilege days (and +5 days after 10 years).
• Social and wellbeing perks including Staff parties, social clubs, CSSC sports and leisure, and support from the Civil Service Retirement Fellowship.
• Peer support and allyship with five diversity networks for community.
• Learning and development through courses, mentoring and Athena as well as support for professional qualifications.
• Employee Assistance Programme available 24/7 for counselling, wellbeing support and more.

Values

• Care Deeply
• Embrace the Unknown
• Spark Curiosity
• Value Many Voices

These are a core part of how we recruit. Throughout the application, interview and selection process, we look for examples of how candidates demonstrate these behaviours in their own work and experiences. We encourage you to familiarise yourself with our values and reflect them in your application.

Additional information

If you have any additional needs that we should be aware of to support you with your application, please provide details to bmrecruit@britishmuseum.org .

Internal Applicants: We welcome internal applicants regardless of background, department or length of service but encourage you to let your manager know before applying.

The Museum also adheres to the HMG Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) for pre-employment screening of Civil Servants.