Associate / Senior Associate

HBGI UK Associate / Senior Associate, Projects and Growth

Home-based, with an ability to travel to London once or twice a month

£45,000-£50,000 p.a., plus benefits

An exciting opportunity to help build mental health systems that deliver meaningful outcomes for the people they serve, with a focus on the UK and sub-Saharan Africa. The Healthy Brains Global Initiative UK (HBGI UK) is looking for early-career professionals to help design, launch and manage new pilot programmes, and work alongside the Chief of Staff to support the running of a small, ambitious global charity. Applications close 20 November 2026.

Please note: appointment is subject to projects being confirmed. We are inviting applications now so that we can move quickly as and when projects are secured.

About HBGI

HBGI is a registered charity in the USA (501c3) and UK. Our mission is to transform the effectiveness and efficiency of mental health services and systems – putting people first, focusing on outcomes, and holding systems truly accountable.

We don't fund services and we don't provide them ourselves. We are a partner to funder and to provider, helping to maximise the impact of the money, delivering more of the outcomes that matter to the people being served. We pride ourselves on our operational experience, and we apply very practical and concrete tools. Our approaches include user-centred design, outcomes-based contracting, strengthening the performance management of services, and deploying innovative finance.

We focus on mental health services/systems but mental health touches every aspect of our lives.

Our work spans multiple focus areas across continents, including behavioural health and homelessness in California, maternal mental health in sub-Saharan Africa, connecting adolescent services in Malawi and focusing them on the outcomes defined by young people, and livelihood programmes in South African townships. In the UK, our Fixing Futures review of children & young people’s mental health services is identifying scalable pilots to drive efficiency and effectiveness, and we are about to begin mobilising these.

Working in a small team, joining HBGI is an opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a dynamic environment. You will develop and demonstrate a raft of project and organisational skills, learn about the nuts and bolts of performance management and outcomes in the delivery of vital social programs, and see the impact of your work across our organisation and beyond.

Key responsibilities

Projects – UK and international

• Research and service mapping, including through conversations with practitioners, literature and information review, and analysing data. With the objective of informing project decisions, service design recommendations and the development of new pilot programs.
• Turn research and discussion into practical next steps and delivery plans, including options papers, timelines, budgets, outcomes that can be measured and governance arrangements.
• Support performance management of pilot programmes. This means working alongside delivery partners in a cycle of tracking, managing and measuring progress, so that delivery can be adapted to maximise achievement of meaningful outcomes for individuals. We support partners in bringing the right data and facilitating the right conversations.
• Produce clear presentations, briefings and reports, and support project governance, including minuting and presenting at Advisory Councils and project board meetings.
• Build and manage relationships with partners, commissioners, practitioners and funders, including leading meetings and following up actions.
• Keep projects organised and moving forward, maintaining documents, recording decisions and making sure agreed follow-up happens.
• Support HBGI’s business development and project fundraising. Our work often brings together multiple partners across systems to initiate new and different ways of delivering.

Organisation – working with the Chief of Staff

• Provide operational support to the Chief of Staff, including drafting internal documents, supporting recruitment and minuting HBGI Board meetings.
• Lead HBGI’s communications group, coordinating our external voice (including LinkedIn) and improving internal information sharing.
• Contribute to the growth of HBGI, supporting new business development and representing HBGI at relevant events.

We envisage that this role will support project work across our UK and international portfolio for around 75% of the time and work with the Chief of Staff for the remaining 25%.

Candidate profile

You’ll probably have around three to five years’ professional experience: enough to manage your own workstreams and relationships with confidence, while still early enough in your career to be building your skills across a range of technical and functional areas. We are looking for individuals who are proactive, agile and eager to take on a role with many opportunities for learning and development, and hungry to make a tangible difference, with the below skills and experience.

Essential

• A Bachelor’s degree, plus around three or more years of relevant professional experience.
• Adept at researching and analysing (sometimes imperfect) evidence and data (qualitative & quantitative), able to bring together insights from data, literature and conversations with practitioners, and relate this to the delivery/performance of frontline services targeting vulnerable people. Candidates should be comfortable with Excel-based analysis, survey data and dashboards.
• Experience of planning and coordinating projects, including developing project plans, timelines and budgets, and turning analysis and discussion into practical recommendations and next steps.
• Strong communication skills, including verbal, written (such as reports, presentations, briefing notes, meeting minutes and stakeholder correspondence), and visual communication (such as to effectively present data analysis).
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, able to build respectful relationships across a range of internal and external stakeholders – including partners, funders, commissioners and practitioners in different countries and contexts – and supporting and challenging as required.
• Excellent organisational skills and attention to detail, able to manage multiple priorities across different projects, coordinate workstreams, keep accurate records and meet deadlines, working proactively and with agility.
• Excited to work in the non-profit sector supporting mental health initiatives and the growth of HBGI. We value candidates with a willingness to learn and who show intellectual curiosity, including an openness to learn more about outcomes contracting and performance management.

Desirable:

• Experience of working on the frontline in services targeting vulnerable communities.
• Experience of, or strong interest in, global health or international development.
• Experience of supporting governance (such as boards or advisory groups), communications (including social media) or organisational operations such as recruitment.
• Experience in policy, research, consulting, or non-profit/charity settings.

We don’t expect you to be the finished article; we will support your development journey, guiding your learning and growth. But we do want you to have high levels of energy and be self-driven and proactive, and motivated to grow into roles of greater responsibility. We are looking to change millions of life chances, and in the process, show the world that there is a better way to manage services/systems. We love what we do and we have lots of fun doing it, but everything we do is about maximizing performance and we set the bar high.

We approach our work collaboratively and with humility, respecting everyone around us and their wellbeing. We actively seek out diversity across our team because it makes us – and our own performance – stronger. Many of our current team and Board have lived experience of mental health conditions. We are committed to recruiting the best, most diverse HBGI team. We do not tolerate any form of negative discrimination, abuse, office politics or bullying.

Terms of Employment

Reporting to: Chief of Staff

Location: Home-based, ideally within easy access of London. You must have the right to live and work in the UK.

Salary & pension: £45,000 - £50,000 per annum FTE. HBGI will contribute up to 10% to a pension, matched against your contribution.

Work life: To make sure you can participate actively in our largely virtual business, you will need to organize your own technology, including a laptop, internet connection and telephone.

Our normal full-time working week is 40 hours. You can plan these hours to suit you within the working week (Monday-Friday) but must take business needs into account, i.e. be available for meetings when needed. You must inform your team and line manager of your plans.

At HBGI, we care about your wellbeing and want you to take time for yourself. We keep Fridays free of internal meetings, so you can end your week on a positive note, with your to-do list clear.

The full-time paid, annual holiday allowance is 33 days. This total is inclusive of all bank holidays.

How to apply

Please send: a) an up-to-date resume (no more than two pages), explaining any gaps, and; b) a covering letter (no more than two pages) which addresses the following:

1. Who are you? (Have fun with this! Give us a non-resume answer.)
2. Why do you want this role, and why HBGI?
3. Tell us about two recent projects that show some of the experience you’d bring to this role. For each, what was your part in it, and what difference did your work make?
4. Tell us about something that happened in a recent role that was a big learning for you. What happened, and what do you do differently now?
5. Think of a service you’ve used, worked in or seen up close – it doesn’t need to be mental health. What’s one thing that wasn’t working for the people it served, and how would you know if performance had improved?

Given the very high volume of applications, we greatly regret that we cannot provide individual feedback and will only follow-up with short-listed candidates. Please ensure you have provided all the detail requested for us to consider your application. Applications that are written with AI or that cut and paste sections on mental health from Google will not be considered. We request please personal responses.

Please email your application to opportunities@hbgi.org with HBGI UK application in the subject line. The closing date is 20th November 2026 at 23.59 GMT.