Professional Development Specialist - Cornwall/Devon
SteplabWe’re looking for someone who has previously worked in (or is currently based in) the Cornwall/Devon area.
Salary: £60,000-£70,000 dependent on experience
Employment status: Full time
Job location: Work from home, meet occasionally in London and run training and school visits in and around the UK, Cornwall and Devon
Application closing date: Friday 2nd October
Pre-interview tasks sent: Wednesday 7th October
Zoom interviews: Friday 16th October
Job start date: January 2027
We’re looking for an experienced school or trust leader of teaching & learning who can support our schools and MATs, building networks across Devon and Cornwall. We are particularly keen to receive applications from candidates who have successfully developed teaching in schools through whole-school instructional coaching programmes, ideally using the Steplab model. We’re also keen to receive applications who have experience of leading professional development at trust-level.
You should be well versed in contemporary educational research, pedagogy and leadership, with a particular focus on understanding the best ways to help teachers to improve their practice and learn effectively. You should be as comfortable engaging in educational research around how teachers learn as you are working with school leaders and coaches.
At Steplab, we’re on a mission to transform the lives of young people by giving teachers, coaches and school leaders simple, effective and powerful tools to systematically improve.
Steplab is a complete professional development (PD) platform for schools, giving them everything needed to deliver evidence-informed PD. Designed by educators and grounded in research, it supports whole schools – from teachers and teaching assistants to senior leaders and pastoral staff. Whatever their context, Steplab enables schools to build a bespoke PD approach that is practical, impactful and easy to implement.
Your role is to provide trust and school leaders with everything they need to implement high impact professional development.
The role includes:
- Managing a portfolio of MATs and schools, using data to support their implementation journeys ensure they experience success with Steplab
- Running masterclasses and 1:1 support sessions with school and trust leaders to design impactful PD programmes
- Presenting Steplab’s PD approach to school leaders via expert demos - exploring their needs and finding solutions for how Steplab can help
- Delivering high quality in-person Steplab training to school and trust leaders and coaches
- Presenting at educational conferences and trust events
- Responding to queries from school leaders to help maximise their use of Steplab
- Helping to develop our PD content & tools
Our productivity tools include Notion, Slack, Google Workspace, Intercom, Zoho and more. You’ll be given a MacBook to work on and whatever kit is needed for the role.
Skills and experience
Essential
- Experience of working as a leader of teacher development, ideally across groups of schools in Devon and Cornwall
- Familiar with contemporary educational research on pedagogy and leadership, with a particular focus on understanding the best ways to help teachers learn
- Experience of having led, or participated in, Instructional Coaching
- Experience in delivering high-quality PD to teachers and/or leaders
- Have a high standard of written and verbal communications
- Be great at building relationships with a wide range of teachers, coaches, middle, and senior leaders
- Have exceptional organisation, planning and administrative abilities, including the ability to prioritise own and others’ workloads
- Able to offer high-quality customer service, taking ownership of queries, problem-solving and using technology with confidence
- Able to travel regularly, visiting schools and running training across the UK (and occasionally internationally), and meeting with the team in London
Desirable
- Experience of using the Steplab platform as a school leader
You’ll work with a team of over 40 highly motivated and dedicated individuals.
Send a CV and maximum one page covering letter to hello@steplab.co before noon on Friday 2nd October. In your covering letter, share why you would be a great fit for this role.
If you have any questions, or want to talk it through, please do reach out to rachel@steplab.co
We’re just at the start of our journey to become the most impactful teacher training tool in the world. As part of this journey, we will be recruiting a larger team. As an early member of this team, you’ll be in a unique position to develop your career as we grow, and to help lead our growing team.
(Not including bank holidays!) We think everyone who works at Steplab should have plenty of time to recharge and enjoy life outside of work. We offer 28 days leave plus an additional day for every year at Steplab, up to 31 days.
We work hard and we want to give the chance for our team to play hard (or in whichever way they want) during the summer months so Fridays during the summer are half days to allow for the team to enjoy those long summer evenings to the fullest.
It’s important to us to provide our team with the best possible care and support. This includes offering a fully comprehensive health insurance package for all staff.
We now work with schools all over the world and have teams in Australia and the US, as well as close partners across Europe. So that working at Steplab feels like being part of the wider international team, we offer many opportunities to travel to work with schools and our colleagues all over the world to ensure Steplab offers the same benefits and experience to every school we work with - regardless of their location.
Our priority is creating powerful content & tools for teachers. But we also care about doing this with integrity, pushing ourselves to continually learn, and having fun along the way. We are a small, high-performing team who care about our mission, but also want to work in ways that ensure we get to live our best lives.
Visit https://steplab.co for more.
We have an office in central London, in Highbury and Islington. We have an in person meeting there once per month. Many colleagues work remotely but we stay connected online and have a very collaborative culture.
We believe that the entire Steplab team, whether you work in technology, support or teacher training, should get to experience the good Steplab does, day in day out, hands-on. That’s why we make sure that the entire team gets to spend some time in schools, seeing how Steplab works. We believe this is how we make a product that really works.
Of course! Mosi lives with our co-founder, Ben, and she often comes to the office with him. Myrtle lives with Abbie and occasionally gatecrashes!