Key responsibilities

• Lead the development and delivery of Macmillan's media channel strategy across national, devolved, local and community media.
• Oversee proactive and reactive media relations activity, maximising opportunities within the news agenda and managing media enquiries.
• Provide strategic communications and reputational advice to colleagues and senior stakeholders across the organisation.
• Leading and project managing major media moments as well as delivering focused briefs as relevant to the role.
• Build strong partnerships across Communications, Brand, Content and other internal stakeholder teams to deliver integrated activity.
• Use audience insight, monitoring and evaluation to measure impact and continuously improve media performance.
• Lead, coach and develop a high-performing and inclusive team, including matrix-managed colleagues.
• Manage reputational risk, issues and crisis communications while supporting organisational objectives.

About you

The skills and experience we are looking for in the role are:

• Significant experience working in a senior communications or media relations role.
• Significant experience managing and developing teams, including matrix management.
• Experience of strategic communications planning, implementation and evaluation.
• Strong experience of reputation, issues and crisis management.
• Excellent written communication skills with the ability to create high-quality communications materials.
• Outstanding relationship-building, influencing and stakeholder management skills.
• Understanding of devolution and health and social care policy, with Welsh language skills desirable but not essential.

In return, we offer a range of benefits including:

• 25 days holiday plus flexible bank holiday options, increasing by 1 day every year of service up to 30 days.
• Pension matched up to 7.5%.
• 120+ learning and development offers, with access to external professional qualifications.
• Flexible working patterns, such as compressed hours, flexibility to work earlier or later around our core working hours of 10am-4pm.
• Holiday buying and selling scheme, life insurance, free wills, retail discounts and much more.

Recruitment Process

Application deadline: 10th September 2026

Interview date: Week commencing 21st September 2026

To ensure fairness and consistency to select the best candidate for this role, all our applications are anonymised up until an interview has been confirmed.

We are an organisation that is committed to setting candidates up for success, so we can support you to be at your best during the application or selection process, please contact Macmillan TA Team at TATeam@macmillan.org.uk for advice, or a conversation on reasonable adjustments.

If you would like to discuss your application or anything further in regard to a career at Macmillan Cancer Support please email us at TATeam@macmillan.org.uk.

We welcome applications from everyone who meet the criteria and strongly encourage individuals to apply who have a disability, impairment or health condition or individuals who identify as Black, Asian or from another minority ethnic background, as these groups are currently under-represented at Macmillan. Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy here along with our internal employee representation body, 'Our Voice' and 8 Employee Network groups help us promote fairness and belonging, becoming an engaged and inclusive organisation for all our people.

If you would like to discuss your application or anything further in regards to a career at Macmillan Cancer Support please email us at TATeam@macmillan.org.uk.