POSITION DETAILS

External Relations
Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK
Full time starting salary is normally in the range £46,735 to £55,755 with potential progression once in post to £62,728
Grade: 8
Full Time, Permanent
Closing date: 13th July 2025

REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, QUALIFICATIONS, EXPERIENCE

• Educated to Degree level (or equivalent qualifications) plus relevant practical experience - where no equivalent qualification is held significant practical relevant experience and expertise in a series of progressively more demanding roles will be required.
• Extensive experience of taking business requirements and translating this into tangible and operationally supportable deployment plans and outputs which have a positive impact on business objectives.
• Experience of managing large projects including planning and delivering new experiences on the web.
• Good understanding of UX principles, use of navigation, and developing effective and appropriate information architecture including an understanding of how it might impact on search engine optimisation.
• Experience of developing relevant strategies, standards, guidelines, and tools to improve website performance and user experience.
• Excellent customer service skills, including the ability to demonstrate concepts and technologies to a non-technical audience.
• Extensive experience of developing and editing website content and using web content management systems, ideally including Contensis (Modern and Classic), to a high level of expertise and planning major changes.
• Experience of using analytical platforms such as Google Analytics and HotJar to derive actionable insights and inform decision-making around web development.
• Experience of undertaking User Experience research to inform strategic and tactical approaches to content delivery. You will have a significant knowledge and understanding of user expectations and in developing effective customer journeys for different audiences.
• Extensive experience of digital accessibility and developing content that is impactful and consumable by everyone.
• Previous experience working with product teams would be preferable, including working with project management tools, like Jira.
• Direct and/or indirect line management.
• Good understanding of working with, and contributing to, brand and tone of voice guidelines.
• Strong understanding and experience of identifying and implementing key performance indicators relevant to key web initiatives to measure success.
• Confident in challenging norms to drive excellence and have a significant impact in this area.
• Strong administrative, presentation, negotiation, and communication skills.
• The ability to prioritise, exercise good time management and organisational skills to meet deadlines.
• Experience of working in a busy team and on own initiative.
• Evidence of literacy and numeracy, with the ability to write clearly, and to produce and analyse information and data.
• Knowledge of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010, and how to actively ensure in day-to-day activity in own area that those with protected characteristics are treated equally and fairly.

ROLE SUMMARY

This role will be a part of the central Digital Channel Management team and will provide leadership of operational support for the University’s public-facing website, which serves around 40,000 users per day. The successful candidate will join at an exciting time during which our external website is undergoing significant transformative change – alongside the embedding our new brand we are also moving to a new platform that uses more modern technology and provides much greater flexibility in the development and publishing of content.
The role will be responsible for leading the operational delivery of the website, informing best practice, and ensuring compliance with relevant polices and legislation. The role will evaluate site performance, develop implementation plans, and oversee and support the rollout of new features and content. They will work with product teams and local web/digital teams across the university to realise and evaluate the benefits of new features and functionality.
The post holder will be expected to build and manage relationships with a wide cross-section of staff across External Relations, IT Services, and the wider University. These staff with whom you build relationships will have varying degrees of responsibility in delivering the institutional website, and so the ability to translate complex information into suitable terms for your audience is a must.
We are looking for someone who relishes the challenge of providing a consistently high standard of operational support whilst striving for continuous improvement in response to user feedback and data analytics.
The ideal candidate will combine technical and editorial know-how with an understanding of the business requirements and be able to map these to potential solutions. They will be collaborative, customer-focused, and solutions-driven, and have extensive experience of working with Content Management Systems in a competitive market environment.

MAIN DUTIES

• Deliver high quality and responsive operational support for the university website.
• Provide leadership and direction to web teams across the university to facilitate the effective deployment of resources, encourage knowledge sharing, and support the adoption and evaluation of new features and functionality.
• Create deployment strategies for new website feature releases and CMS platform updates, providing the bridge between the product team, web editors and end users, and ensure that operational considerations are factored in including the impact on Search Engine Optimisation.
• Lead the delivery of major website updates and changes, ensuring adherence to any relevant standards and guidelines.
• Support the quality and assurance testing of new features and updates prior to deployment.
• Lead the planning and delivery of communications around website changes, feature releases and CMS upgrades.
• Oversee the monitoring of key website analytics including the development and maintenance of dashboards to help identify usage trends and help evaluate return on investment.
• Develop key operational relationships with the community of content owners, providing support, identifying gaps and working with stakeholders to ensure full content ownership across the institution.
• Create and deliver training, produce guidance documentation and support to colleagues to improve abilities and quality of our website, including supporting the delivery of regular Community of Practice events.
• Develop standards and policies to improve the quality and consistency of the external website.
• Identify issues, remove blockers, and flag any challenges you see that are likely to impact on the operational support of the website.
• Act as a primary point of escalation for any unexpected service disruptions ensuring correct parties are proactively engaged in identifying a solution and ensure root-cause analysis is performed to mitigate risk going forward.
• Be the main point of contact between IT Services Management and Web Operations, ensuring an efficient and effective service between divisions, including supporting procurement activity and supplier management (e.g. quarterly supplier reviews).
• Work with other colleagues in Digital Channel Management and end users to inform the development roadmap, using various analytics and insights to support the business case.
• Maintain up to date knowledge of industry developments and integrate insights to support future web strategies.
• Ensuring colleagues are kept informed on projects and progress - producing relevant reports to support.
• Promotes equality and values diversity, acting as a role model and fostering an inclusive working culture.
• Supports the University’s sustainability agenda through resource efficient working.
• Any other duties commensurate with the grade.