Senior Sustainability Manager

We’re searching for a Senior Sustainability Manager, to work alongside the Sustainability Director and contribute to Virgin’s sustainability strategy and collaborate with core Virgin companies to drive these goals.

This person will lead on workstreams and strategically align key projects across communications, ESG strategy and reporting, to deliver a cohesive approach to sustainability. Additionally, this person will build on existing good practice, identify, and address gaps, and draw it together into a coherent approach that can be successfully used in the core proposition.

Virgin is a purpose-led business, committed to Changing Business For Good. If you have multifaceted experience across sustainability topics and sectors, the ability to lead projects and influence stakeholders, then this is the role for you! 

Our Virgin Family

Join the Virgin Group – a diverse collective driving change, enhancing customer experience, and having a blast. We're daring, disrupting industries from finance to space, united as part of the Virgin Family.

Virgin Management, the heart of Virgin, nurtures the brand globally. Our diverse, 180-strong team in London and New York, supports every facet of the Virgin empire, including Virgin Unite, our entrepreneurial foundation, and Virgin Start-Up, empowering UK entrepreneurs. Working in synergy with various Virgin entities globally, our interests are as diverse as travel, health, music, media, finance, and space. Our unique work culture and purpose unite us.

Our mission

To create a thriving world through entrepreneurial initiatives. Our work revolves around:

• Incubating courageous collectives
• Backing entrepreneurial solutions
• Convening purposeful communities
• Challenging unacceptable issues

Tell me more

• Support the Sustainability Director to execute the sustainability strategy and ensure strategic momentum is delivered across Virgin companies.
• Ownership of key ESG projects, including Double Materiality and our SBTI strategy.
• Provide insights and advisory on best practices, risks, opportunities, and emerging trends.
• Identify gaps in Virgin companies’ performance and practices and encourage working to best practice standards. 
• Collaborate with other departments to integrate sustainability into overall business operations, write reports and create business cases on ESG impacts of operations and make recommendations for improvements.
• Lead special projects related to sustainability and work with senior leadership on strategic initiatives.
• Build and nurture relationships to progress internal team objectives, create effective sustainability programs and help meet group targets.
• Develop systems and processes that lead effective decision-making.

What you’ll need

• Significant experience in the field of sustainability, across environmental, social and governance, with a systemic thinking approach.
• Significant sustainability leadership experience, including emissions across all scopes, carbon offsetting (removals based), waste, sustainable and ethical supply chains, data management, responsible consumption, climate and environmental innovation.
• An appreciation of the power of brands, customer experience and leveraging partnerships to deliver behaviour change and how it leads to ethical decision making.
• Significant experience managing sustainability teams to drive global goals forward. 
• A comprehension of how to drive and support culture change in an organisation.
• The ability to work directly with, influence and sometimes upskill senior leadership teams on material sustainability topics.
• Subject matter expertise across ESG, with the ability to provide input to decisions that drive the overall strategy.
• The ability to resolve issues arising from operations, and if needed, coordinate with other departments and external consultants.
• The ability to think strategically across multiple business lenses, while also being able to ‘roll up their sleeves’ and provide guidance and support on day to day issues.

The extra details

Role type: Permanent

Location: London hub & your home space

Working hours: Full time - We embrace flexible working. Let us know what hours empower you to be at your best both professionally and personally, we’ll try to find a perfect match for you and us.

Direct reports: None

Benefits: Dive into a fast-paced, evolving workspace, where your hard work and dedication is rewarded. Fancy unlimited holidays and weekly yoga? That's the Virgin way. We champion inclusion, wellbeing, and purposeful points strategies. Further benefits include flexible working, healthcare, dental schemes, pension contributions and an employee rewards scheme.

Closing date: 05 August 2024

Some of the attributes that define a Virgin person just can’t be quantified in words. We pride ourselves on welcoming people from all walks of life, with all sorts of skill sets. Most recently, we successfully campaigned to add ‘Dyslexic Thinking’ as a skill on LinkedIn. Any uniqueness is a strength and will be considered an asset to our workforce. If there is something you would like us to consider, to tailor the hiring process to the way you work best, please don’t hesitate to let us know. 

Excited to make each day rewarding? We'd love to learn more about you!