Principal Director (Partnerships & Business Development)

For full information on this role, including the key responsibilities and person specification, please view the job pack here. Expected earnings of £75,056-£92,720 (base salary: £63,023-£70,400) with opportunities for performance related pay and annual profit share, dependent on company performance. Applications close at 23:59 on Sunday 7th June 2026.

The Organisation ImpactEd Group supports education and purpose-driven organisations to maximise and realise their potential. We do this by helping our partners to be consistently impactful and operationally sustainable. Drawing on our domain expertise and technical skills in these areas, ImpactEd Group aims to be the first port of call for leaders across the education ecosystem.

This role exists as a senior leader in our Group and leads the business development and commercial growth of our Consulting Practice. ImpactEd Consulting (IEC) supports school groups, education organisations and government agencies in the following specialist areas:

• Strategy, governance and strategic projects
• Data and AI advisory
• People and culture
• Fundraising and philanthropy

Partners include the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), the Department for Education, Oasis Community Learning, Careers and Enterprise Company, Outwood Grange Academies Trust, The Economist Educational Foundation, Star Academies, Get Further, Reach Foundation and more.

The Opportunity

We are excited to be recruiting for a Principal Director to lead business development and commercial growth within our Consulting practice. This is a new role within the practice. Reporting to our Group Directors, the Director will work as part of a practice leadership team that will oversee all aspects of the Consulting team's work, with a focus on partnership development, retention and growth. You will provide strategic leadership, represent the organisation both internally and externally, and be responsible for driving the commercial performance of the practice, ensuring that ImpactEd Consulting is positioned well as first port of call for schools and social purpose organisations who want to achieve greater impact and sustainability.

You will lead a number of sales and marketing campaigns, develop key propositions for our partners, provide high level guidance and advice, scan and respond to relevant tenders and work closely with a team of consultants to ensure we are able to continue to bring accessible expertise to our work and partners. The role would be ideal for a proven leader with deep understanding and networks across the education sector, a track record in consulting and business development, and the ambition to shape the direction of a growing social enterprise.

About you

As a team focused on research and evaluation, we would also expect roles at this level to demonstrate:

• Values and people: Alignment with our values and ability to demonstrate them in your work. You will facilitate conversations about professional development for your direct reports and act as a coach and role model for other members of the team.
• Partnership management: Modelling of excellence in partnership management, particularly on proactive driving of partnerships forward, scope management and stakeholder engagement.
• Sales and scope design: Leadership of business development for consultancy engagements to support high-complexity partnerships and support our partners to deliver against their knottiest challenges.
• Proposition development: Understanding of our sector and ability to combine that with our offers as a practice to create propositions that can drive partnership and business development opportunities.
• Reporting and improvement: Ability to listen to and synthesise partner needs to tailor advice and guidance, quality assure others' outputs, and help partners take action off the back of our work.

Our Head Office is in London, and we have satellite offices in Leeds and Lincolnshire, but our team work from across the country; we are happy to support remote, hybrid or office-based working. For this role we anticipate there to be weekly attendance in London, ad-hoc attendance at sector events and three in-person offsites per year.

Why Us?

As well as a commitment to the organisations we work with, we have a commitment to our people and developing the next generation of leaders within the social enterprise, education and evaluation sectors. Our employee experience is organised around four themes:

• Trust: we support hybrid working, provide flexible hours, and provide responsive management.
• Shared ownership: we are an employee owned organisation and look to increasingly share ownership with our employees, including in terms of governance and culture, and realise this in a number of ways such as ownership awards, and transparent governance including an Employee Voice board.
• Connection: we pay for your travel, provide termly company offsites, support informal clubs and societies, and provide opportunities for in-person and digital connection between colleagues.
• Health and fulfilment: we have an extensive professional development programme, provide an annual books and development budget allowance and offer 3 days of CPD leave per year in addition to annual leave. We offer all employees access to a MediCash plan and wellbeing advice, including free therapist support.