Senior Partnerships and Policy Manager (PPM)

Advocacy: Develop and deliver advocacy campaigns to shape policy and strategy in support of businesses in the sector and beyond, particularly to help missions to work with external senior stakeholders to lower barriers to business growth across the UK, for example implementation of the Defence Investment Plan opening defence contracts for space HPBs, UK policy on autonomous drone testing and use of earth observation data in nature financial disclosures policy. This will include convening senior stakeholders with purpose such as targeted 121 meeting programmes, roundtables and events, being an active participant of appropriate external advocacy fora, and coordinating responses to consultations with the Strategic Communications team.

Partnership Development: Provide ecosystem intelligence and connect stakeholders to forge opportunities and develop partnerships for collaborative research and development or commercial space enabled projects including working with SAC’s Business Development team on proposals.

Teamwork and leadership: Work in a multidisciplinary team and collaborate with cross-functional matrix teams to take ownership, lead and coordinate activities and projects. Step up to deputise for the Head of P3 to lead the team when appropriate and within the bounds of the Delegation of Authority. Support departmental planning and organisational development activities.

Performance Tracking: Report progress against goals, milestones, key performance indicators and metrics to maintain momentum and ensure accountability. Evaluate campaigns effectiveness and apply lessons learnt for continual improvement.

Continual improvement: Proactively identify opportunities to improve ways of working, processes and tools, contributing to a culture of continuous improvement that enhances efficiency, quality and stakeholder experience.

Essential Experience & Knowledge

An excellent understanding of the relationship between government policy and regulation, innovation and economic growth in the UK space ecosystem including satellite communications (satcoms), earth observation, position, navigation and timing (PNT) and assured access to space/launch domains. Other relevant adjacent industries can be considered: defence, nuclear, aerospace, etc.

Solid experience in building and managing relationships, working with, and influencing a variety of key industrial, academic and government organisations and stakeholders including local authorities, devolved governments, universities, research institutions, industry bodies, clusters, innovation agencies and technical experts and senior officials.

Solid experience of monitoring the relevant policy/ecosystem landscape and able to undertake qualitative and quantitative research and analysis of capabilities intelligence, policy and regulation to provide coherent summaries, recommendations or briefings to shape and deliver advocacy and public affairs campaigns.

Solid experience in the identification, development and delivery of collaborations and projects with internal and external stakeholders to meet organisational objectives.

Competencies And Skills

Communication: Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, comfortable developing content, representing organisational messaging to external parties and chairing multistakeholder meetings keeping them on track to meet pre-determined objectives.

Problem Solving: Analytical mindset, able to synthesise ecosystem intelligence, policy insights and stakeholder to identify root cause of problems, anticipate risks and input into clear recommendations and actions to help shape and deliver solutions.

Collaboration: Embeds collaboration into strategic planning and decision-making processes. Cultivates networks within the space sector and related disciplines. Builds relationships with individuals and organisations and navigates complex collaborations for partnerships, revenue generating collaborative and commercial opportunities. Understands and addresses political, cultural, and organisational barriers. Creates environments where experimentation, knowledge-sharing and innovation can flourish across organisational boundaries.

Strategic Thinking: Creates plans for the future by thinking holistically about the operating environment and works across the business to integrate multiple perspectives and stakeholder inputs to create a comprehensive view of the ecosystem to shape strategic decision making and delivery aligned with organisational priorities.

Execution: Expertise in developing comprehensive plans includes resources, stakeholders, success metrics and timeframes. Anticipates risks, obstacles and critical path with contingency plans built into stakeholder and advocacy campaigns to pivot plans when needed. Consistently delivers results that contribute to the SAC's strategic goals and objectives.

Excellent planning, coordination and organisation skills including the ability to scope, support, coordinate and deliver activities in collaboration with internal and external partners. Skilled at tracking and reporting particularly via Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

Personal Effectiveness: A high level of individual drive and can-do attitude to deliver against goals whilst modelling proactive adaptability to shifts in SAC priorities and goals. Demonstrates confidence in own abilities and decisions. Tests new approaches and takes calculated risks to improve outcomes when appropriate. Directs self and sets personal and professional goals. The ability to scope, support, coordinate and deliver action plans and activities in collaboration with internal and external partners and monitors progress towards delivering plans and activities.

Leading People: Connects and aligns campaign plans and goals to SAC strategy and models accountability. Works in matrix managed teams to clearly define expectations, allocate tasks and responsibilities based on capabilities and strengths for relevant stakeholders and advocacy campaigns they lead. Shows concern for wellbeing of team members and tailors specific and timely input to individual needs, particularly when deputising for Head of P3.

About us & how we work:

We strive to create a high trust, high performance and inclusive environment that enables team members to bring their whole selves to work. This helps to create the foundations of an innovation culture. Our shared values are critical to this:

• We care - for our people, our partners, and our planet
• We connect - and engage with people and ideas
• We learn - and grow, as people and as an industry

Underpinning this is our belief in great teams. Our combined efforts will always deliver outcomes beyond that of any individual, providing we are honest through debate, experiment and reflect, and create shared resolutions in support of our purpose. Live these values, work to our principles, take ownership to deliver, and we are certain you will thrive with us.

This job description set outs the skills and experience we think are needed to be able to perform in this job. If you believe you can deliver in this role then we want to hear from you.

We offer a hybrid policy which is designed around collaboration, one 'anchor' day per week working with your direct team and another flexible day per week to be spent collaborating or working with other colleagues.

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