Content Operations Director

Job Title: Content Operations Director

Salary: £85,700 - £117,800

Location: Cambridge, hybrid

Contract: Fixed term contract, 18 months

Hours: 35 hours, full time

Are you an operational leader, who defends quality and author experience while driving efficiencies?

We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a world-leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge.

We are looking for an energetic, empowered and committed Content Operations Director to lead our teams and develop ways of working for our strategy. The Content Operations teams manage all of our Academic books, elements and journals content from author delivery through to publication.

About the role

Academic publishing is undergoing a period of significant change. Evolving customer needs, digital transformation and the rise of AI is reshaping how we and our authors and communities work and want to read our content. We need to deliver our core publishing to meet our key BAU targets while supporting new approaches and product development. As an operations team, we need to support the new while finding efficiencies, standardisation and improvements to our current ways of working.

This role supports a global team, with the majority of colleagues in the UK but also in the US and India, and involves extensive collaboration with other colleagues internally as well as external suppliers. These suppliers are treated as partners in our pre-press work and we are developing and streamlining our ways of working with their new technologies. Internally this cover role will work closely with the Head of Supply Chain Operations, Academic, to ensure team cohesion across the end-to-end publishing lifecycle, including onward digital and physical distribution. Building relationships with our editorial teams is also vital in enabling us to protect Cambridge standards as we deliver efficiency projects. Strong stakeholder engagement, empathy and diplomacy are needed to manage expectations and significant change programmes.

We have high standards for our content and seek to continuously improve author and reader experiences. This requires the role to keep up to date with industry news and competitor positioning to inform our strategy. We are committed to accessibility and a digital first mindset in our content workflows, helping to support our environmental sustainability goals to reduce emissions. How we prepare our content and role model these key priorities in our department will have a significant impact on delivering our goals.

Data-based planning and decision making is also critical to measure our success, proving our performance continues to deliver a better customer and author experience. Exploring how we can gain from automation and AI projects and experimentation will also be important.

This position has been classified as a hybrid role, requiring the selected candidate to typically spend 40-60% of their time collaborating and connecting face-to-face at their dedicated location. Aside from our hybrid principles, other flexible working requests will be considered from the first day of employment, including other work arrangements should you require adjustments due to a disability or long-term health condition.

About You

You will:

• Have experience of leading a large team or department in a publishing operations setting, ideally content operations. Experience of leading teams in Academic publishing organisations is desirable
• Be a positive and decisive person, who is motivated by working on multiple priorities and inspiring others. You will be able to judge when to be hands on and delve into details and actions yourself but also when to step back and take a broader view.
• Thrive working with multiple teams, offering excellent communication lines and clear and honest direction to maximise performance and improvements.
• Have significant experience in supplier management, working collaboratively with them to drive continuous improvement and maintain service levels.
• Be an experienced line manager, developing and coaching colleagues to pursue their potential. You will be able to empathise with your team when difficulties arise, connecting them back to our responsibilities and purpose.
• Have a proven track record delivering efficiencies to ways of working with demonstrable cost or time saving benefits.
• Use data to inform decisions, manage the team to deliver against Key Performance Indicators and decide our strategic priorities.
• Have experience working in content publishing and understand the complexity of the Academic publishing landscape.

If you meet the above minimum requirements, we encourage you to apply. Your application will be even stronger if you can also demonstrate the following desirable criteria:

• Your experience in supplier management would ideally be in a pre-press/production publishing environment.
• Experience working with content accessibility and digital-first content approaches.
• Evidence that you are up to date on the latest industry news on Open Research.
  

For a detailed job description, please refer to the link at the bottom of the advert on our careers site.

We are a Disability Confident (DC) employer that is committed to equality and inclusion ensuring our recruitment process is accessible to all. The DC scheme's Offer of an Interview commitment applies to applicants who opt in, and disclose a disability or a long-term health condition, and best meet the minimum criteria for the role. In instances where interviewing all qualifying candidates is not practicable, we prioritise those who best meet the minimum criteria, as we would for applicants who do not have a disability or long-term health condition.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is an approved UK employer for the sponsorship of eligible roles and applicants under the Skilled Worker visa route. Please refer to the gov uk website for guidance to understand your own eligibility based on the role you are applying for.

Rewards and benefits
We will support you to be at your best in work and to live well outside of it. In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a world-class, flexible rewards package, featuring family-friendly and planet-friendly benefits including:

• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Private medical and Permanent Health Insurance
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Group personal pension scheme
• Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
• Green travel schemes

Ready to pursue your potential? Apply now.

We aim to support candidates by making our interview process clear and transparent. The closing date for all applications will be 24th March .59pm BST. We will review applications on an ongoing basis, and shortlisted candidates can expect interviews to take place from week commencing 30th March 2026.

If you are shortlisted and progressed through the stages, you can expect:

• First stage virtual interview via MS Teams.
• Final stage interview: in-person at our offices in Cambridge. You will be provided with a brief to complete a role related task which will need to be returned by email in advance of your interview.

If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process due to a disability or a long-term health condition, there will be an opportunity for you to inform us via the online application form. We will do our best to accommodate your needs.

Please note that successful applicants will be subject to satisfactory background checks including DBS due to working in a regulated industry.

We are committed to an equitable recruitment process. As such, applications must be submitted via our official online application procedure. Please refrain from sending your CV directly to our recruiters. If you experience technical difficulties or require additional support with submitting your online application, contact the Recruiter.

Why join us

Joining us is your opportunity to pursue potential. You will belong to a collaborative team that is exploring new and better ways to serve students, teachers and researchers across the globe for the benefit of individuals, society and the world. Sharing our mission will inspire your own growth, development and progress, in an environment which embraces difference, change and aspiration.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is committed to being a place where anyone can enjoy a successful career, where it is safe to speak up, and where we learn continuously to improve together. We welcome applications from all candidates, regardless of demographic characteristics (age, disability, educational attainment, ethnicity, gender, marital status, neurodiversity, religion, sex, gender identity and sexual identity), cultural, or social class/background.

We believe better outcomes come through diversity of thought, background and approach. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and communities, actively seeking to employ people from a wide range of different communities.

Content Operations Director - Apply now.