Overview
Head of Ventures – Maternity cover – Strand, London, WC2R 2LS
About the role:
The Head of Ventures at the Entrepreneurship Institute is a senior professional services leader at King’s, accountable for the delivery and development of high-quality and professional support services for venturing, acceleration and investor relations that will create a seamless pipeline and increase commercial innovation across our university. This role leads a small team to deliver one-year accelerator programmes, one for start-ups (King’s students and alumni) and one for spinouts (King’s research staff), along with an extensive network of investors, the King’s Investor Network. Accelerators are delivered through a group of experts-in-residence who are managed by the Head of Ventures. Each venture participating in our accelerators is expected to progress through strategy, pitching, launching, funding and scaling with the expert support and leadership provided by the Head of Ventures.
This is a full-time role for a fixed term contract relating to maternity cover.
The key responsibilities can be found in the job description.
About you:
To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:
Essential criteria
- The applicant must have experience of working with start-ups and spinouts including 1:1 support.
- The applicant must have experience of running accelerator programmes successfully.
- The applicant must have experience of liaising with investors.
- The applicant must have strategic thinking, strong project management and delivery skills.
- The applicant must have exceptional interpersonal skills.
- The applicant must have experience of managing people and budgets along with leadership skills.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of university innovation and entrepreneurship programmes and support.
- Experience of managing donors
Downloading a copy of our Job Description
Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.
At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.
The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.
We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.
When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.
We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.
We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.
We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.
To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.
Interviews are due to be held on 17 or 18 August 2026. A short presentation will be required.
IMPORTANT: Before applying for this role, please make sure you have the right to work in the country where the role is based. Unless it clearly stipulates within in the job advert above that the hiring company is looking to or able to sponsor applicants it is deemed that the hiring employer will only consider applications from those able to comply with and work in the country where the role is based.
