Senior Events Manager

About us

UCL is a radically different university. Founded in 1826 in the heart of London, we were the first university in England to welcome students of any religion and the first to welcome women on equal terms with men. Today UCL has over 40,000 students and 12,500 staff and is one of the world's top 10 universities.

The Vice-President External Engagement (VPEE) team delivers communications and marketing activity for UCL, working to ensure UCL's public prominence, reputation and influence reflects the university's excellence in knowledge creation, education, and innovation. Our Events team delivers a range of events for UCL staff, students, external stakeholders and the general public, in support of UCL's strategic priorities. This includes graduation ceremonies for over 10,000 students, open days, high-profile VIP events for our influential stakeholders. public lectures, festivals, and award ceremonies.

About the role

We are recruiting a Senior Events Manager to join our Events team on a permanent basis. This Senior Events Manager will strategically advise stakeholders on event format, content and delivery to ensure it maximises not only the project objectives, but wider UCL objectives as a whole. The postholder will not only focus on the logistics of producing top-class events for UCL, but will also be involved in advising on the content and context of the events, to ensure that UCL's story is being told as widely as possible and the impact is as far-reaching as possible.

The Senior Events Manager will effectively resource projects across the team of Event Managers and Event Officers, motivating and empowering to deliver engaging activity, and will also line manage a team. They will continuously seek improvements, by devising and delivering ways to measure and analyse its success and impact, and will be responsible for managing complex budgets. They will proactively support and engage with colleagues across UCL.

VPEE teams work from our Central London office on Tuesday each week, and attend events as needed.

About you

To excel in this role you will need to have extensive experience of creating, organising and managing a variety of successful in-person and virtual events including large events (2,000 plus) as well as bespoke content-led activity, and a thorough knowledge of strategic event planning - not just the logistics - to make sure events are insight-led, meet defined objectives, tell a clear story and can be successfully measured. You'll also be comfortable liaising, negotiating with and influencing senior stakeholders, in presenting ideas and managing complex budgets, operating within a tight budgetary framework.

You are a natural leader, able to motivate, line manage and delegate tasks whilst empowering colleagues to create, innovate and deliver, and create a collaborative working culture. You are organised, have meticulous attention to detail and are a committed team player who is willing to 'muck in', but you are equally able to work independently and support others to do so when required. You are a clear and confident communicator (written and in-person) and are able to deal with difficult situations diplomatically, calmly and to make on the spot decisions when necessary, in urgent situations.

What we offer

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits including 41 Days holiday (27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days), more benefits can be seen on our website.