Senior Media Manager

Senior Media Manager 
Fixed Term Contract (12 months)   
Full time (34.5 hours),we are open to a conversation about how you work these hours  
Location: Hybrid, Split between home and our London Office / Shipley Office / Glasgow office 
Salary Range– £53000-£59000 – benefits and recognition

About us 
 
At Macmillan you'll find talented people working together to do whatever it takes to support people living with cancer. We're going all out to find even better ways to help even more people who need our support. Our values are at the heart of who we are and everything we do, inspiring our thinking and guiding our actions. 

Our organisational strategy sets out how we'll fight even harder to make every pound raised count for even more. With your help, we'll transform cancer care for good. 

 
About the role 

We're looking for a strategic and experienced Senior Media Manager to lead high-impact media activity that raises awareness of Macmillan's work and strengthens our reputation across the UK. This is a key leadership role responsible for proactive and reactive media relations, developing our channel strategy across UK-wide, devolved nations, local and community media, and managing a high-performing team to deliver impactful external communications activity. Reporting to the Head of External Communications, you'll play a key role in increasing brand awareness, positioning Macmillan as a trusted voice, and providing strategic communications and reputational advice across the organisation.  
 
Working closely with colleagues across Communications, Brand & Content, Advocacy, Fundraising, Services and Partnerships, you'll lead integrated communications activity that is audience-led, insight-driven and aligned to organisational priorities. You'll oversee an effective newsroom function, manage reputational risks and opportunities, and ensure Macmillan delivers impactful media activity that supports people living with cancer and strengthens engagement with key audiences.  

 
Key responsibilities 

• Lead the development and delivery of Macmillan's media channel strategy across national, devolved, local and community media.  

• Oversee proactive and reactive media relations activity, maximising opportunities within the news agenda and managing media enquiries.  

• Provide strategic communications and reputational advice to colleagues and senior stakeholders across the organisation.  

• Leading and project managing major media moments as well as delivering focused briefs as relevant to the role 

• Build strong partnerships across Communications, Brand, Content and other internal stakeholder teams to deliver integrated activity 

• Use audience insight, monitoring and evaluation to measure impact and continuously improve media performance.  

• Lead, coach and develop a high-performing and inclusive team, including matrix-managed colleagues.  

• Manage reputational risk, issues and crisis communications while supporting organisational objectives.  

About you 

The skills and experience we are looking for in the role are: 

• Significant experience working in a senior communications or media relations role.  

• Significant experience managing and developing teams, including matrix management.  

• Experience of strategic communications planning, implementation and evaluation.  

• Strong experience of reputation, issues and crisis management.  

• Excellent written communication skills with the ability to create high-quality communications materials.  

• Outstanding relationship-building, influencing and stakeholder management skills.  

• Understanding of devolution and health and social care policy, with Welsh language skills desirable but not essential 

In return, we offer a range of benefits including: 

• 25 days holiday plus flexible bank holiday options, increasing by 1 day every year of service up to 30 days. 
• Pension matched up to 7.5%. 
• 120+ learning and development offers, with access to external professional qualifications. 
• Flexible working patterns, such as compressed hours, flexibility to work earlier or later around our core working hours of 10am-4pm. 
• Holiday buying and selling scheme, life insurance, free wills, retail discounts and much more. 

Recruitment Process 

Application deadline: 11th September 2026 
Interview date: Week commencing 21st September 2026 

To ensure fairness and consistency to select the best candidate for this role, all our applications are anonymised up until an interview has been confirmed. 

We are an organisation that is committed to setting candidates up for success, so we can support you to be at your best during the application or selection process, please contact Macmillan TA Team at TATeam@macmillan.org.uk for advice, or a conversation on reasonable adjustments. 

If you would like to discuss your application or anything further in regard to a career at Macmillan Cancer Support please email us at TATeam@macmillan.org.uk. 

We welcome applications from everyone who meet the criteria and strongly encourage individuals to apply who have a disability, impairment or health condition or individuals who identify as Black, Asian or from another minority ethnic background, as these groups are currently under-represented at Macmillan. Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy here along with our internal employee representation body, ‘Our Voice’ and 8 Employee Network groups help us promote fairness and belonging, becoming an engaged and inclusive organisation for all our people.