Head of Learner Experience
Location: Home based, UK (with occasional travel to our London office)
Reports to: To be confirmed
Hours: 37.5 per week
Salary: (Depending on experience)
Role Overview
This is a senior leadership role at the intersection of learner experience, commercial product design, and apprenticeship quality. The Head of Learner Experience owns the end-to-end learner journey across Cambridge Spark's AI and data apprenticeship portfolio, from how programmes are designed to meet enterprise transformation needs, through to how learners experience and achieve through them. The north star for this role is learner outcomes: completion rates, EPA achievement, CSAT, and most importantly, whether learners are genuinely applying what they learn in the workplace.
Cambridge Spark's approach has always been to design apprenticeship programmes that solve real problems for enterprise clients, not simply to package KSB standards into teachable content. This role requires someone who can hold that tension: building programmes that are commercially compelling and employer-relevant, while remaining fully compliant with apprenticeship standards and Ofsted requirements. It is not a traditional curriculum production role.
The Head of Learner Experience sits within the Apprenticeships business unit, reporting to the VP Apprenticeships, with a dotted line to the Director of Customer Solutions to ensure the curriculum supports Open Programmes and Executive Education. They will lead Learner Experience Product Managers (LE PMs), a LE Project Team Lead, and Learning Designers, working closely with the Chief AI Officer, the Head of Training, and the Engineering team.
Key Responsibilities
Learner Experience & Programme Quality
- Own the learner experience strategy across Cambridge Spark's apprenticeship portfolio, ensuring every programme is designed around how learners actually learn, not just how content maps to KSB standards
- Drive a continuous and iterative approach to content review, working with Learner Experience Product Managers (LE PMs) to ensure programmes are improved in response to learner feedback, CSAT data, and delivery insight, rather than through periodic formal audits
- Set the quality bar for programme design: clear learning objectives, strong KSB signposting, effective assessment design, and a learner journey that builds capability progressively rather than frontloading complexity
- Use learner experience data (CSAT, module NPS, completion rates, EPA outcomes, workshop feedback) as the primary signal for what is working and what needs to change, ensuring the team acts on it quickly
- Ensure all programmes are Ofsted inspection-ready, owning the curriculum's contribution to the self-assessment report and quality improvement planning, in close collaboration with the Quality team
Apprenticeship Standards and Compliance
- Work closely with the Quality team to translate regulatory requirements into programme design decisions.
- Lead the curriculum response to regulatory changes when KSB standards are updated or assessment requirements change.
- Own the process of ensuring programme content is updated proactively and work with Quality to agree ownership boundaries, particularly on assessment reform.
- Own the curriculum's interface with End-Point Assessment, ensuring programme design gives learners the best possible preparation for EPA, and that EPA outcomes feed back into content improvement cycles
- Collaborate with the Quality and Funding teams to ensure curriculum documentation supports accurate ILR data and audit readiness without duplicating the expertise that sits in those teams
Team Leadership and Product Development
- Lead and develop a multi-disciplinary team of Learner Experience Product Managers (LE PMs), a LE Project Team Lead, and Learning Designers setting clear direction, coaching individuals, and building a culture where learner outcomes are the measure of success
- Own the learner experience product vision and strategy, working with PMs and project team lead to define what each programme needs to achieve commercially and pedagogically, and holding the team accountable to that vision.
- Oversee the quality of content produced by external SMEs and contractors, ensuring what goes into the platform meets Cambridge Spark's standards for applied, work-based learning
- Be the internal champion for learner-centred design, pushing back on content that is technically compliant but pedagogically weak, and creating the conditions for the team to build programmes learners actually want to complete
- Build a learner experience function that can scale: clear standards, repeatable processes, and a team that improves continuously rather than waiting to be told what to fix
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work closely with the Chief AI Officer and the Solutions Engineering team to ensure the curriculum reflects the latest developments in AI and data practice, keeping Cambridge Spark's content ahead of competitors.
- Partner with the Head of Training and the training team to ensure curriculum design supports effective delivery, and trainer feedback informs content improvements
- Via the dotted line to the Director of Customer Solutions: provide curriculum content input and support for Open Programmes and Executive Education, ensuring these products benefit from the same rigour and currency as the apprenticeship portfolio
- Work with Sales and Client Success to understand what employers actually need from a programme, not just what the standard requires, and translate that into curriculum design decisions that drive renewal, upsell, and employer satisfaction
- Contribute to the commercial positioning of Cambridge Spark's programmes, helping articulate what makes our curriculum distinctive and why it delivers better learner outcomes than competitors
- Partner with Engineering (EDUKATE.AI platform) to ensure curriculum is designed to make full use of the platform's capabilities, including agentic feedback, sandbox environments, and learning analytics
- Represent Cambridge Spark externally where relevant: awarding bodies, apprenticeship standard-setting panels, and sector working groups
Candidate Specification
Essential
- Proven experience in curriculum design and development within the UK apprenticeship sector, ideally in an AI, data, technology, or digital skills context, with a track record of building programmes that learners complete and employers value
- Demonstrable commercial awareness; understands that programme quality drives employer retention and upsell, and can design curricula with that commercial logic in mind, not just regulatory compliance
- Deep knowledge of the apprenticeship regulatory landscape: ESFA funding rules, apprenticeship standards and KSBs, Ofsted Education Inspection Framework, and EPA processes
- Track record of leading curriculum improvement initiatives that have resulted in measurable improvements in learner outcomes: completion rates, EPA results, or CSAT
- Experience managing and developing a team of curriculum or learning design professionals
- Strong understanding of applied, work-based learning pedagogy: able to design programmes that are genuinely used in the workplace, not just studied for assessment
- Excellent project management skills; able to manage multiple curriculum development workstreams simultaneously with clear milestones and stakeholder communication
- Strong written and verbal communication: able to translate complex regulatory requirements into practical curriculum decisions, and to brief senior stakeholders clearly
Desirable
- Experience with AI or data curriculum specifically; familiarity with the L3/L4/L5/L6 apprenticeship standards in the AI and data landscape
- Experience working with a technology platform as part of the learning experience (LMS, portfolio system, AI-powered feedback tools)
- Involvement in apprenticeship standard development, EPA design, or awarding body engagement
- Teaching or coaching qualification (e.g. PGCE, AET, CAVA, TAQA), not essential but valued
- Experience in a fast-growing, commercially-driven training provider environment
You'll thrive in this role if you are:
- Genuinely passionate about the quality of learner experience. You care about whether people actually learn, not just whether they complete
- A builder; you enjoy creating systems, processes, and standards that others can use, not just doing the work yourself
- Commercially aware; you understand that curriculum quality drives learner outcomes, which drives employer retention, which drives revenue
- Comfortable with ambiguity and pace; Cambridge Spark is growing fast and the learner experience function needs to scale with it
- Curious about AI; you don't need to be a practitioner, but you need to be genuinely interested in what's happening in the field and what it means for how we teach it
Company Benefits:
- Pension with 4% matched contributions, opportunity to opt into salary sacrifice scheme
- 25 days holiday + Flexi bank holidays + 1 day off on your birthday
- A day for volunteering
- Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave
- Health & Wellbeing allowance of up to £30 per month
- Annual Summer and Xmas events
- Company socials including everything from Cambridge College formals, pub nights to team building events
- CPD Allowance alongside quarterly reflections to ring fence time for development and growth
- Private medical insurance and cash plan
- Holiday buy back scheme (up to 10 days p/a)
- Employee Assistance Programme with a dedicated company counsellor
Background to our Organisation
We are an education technology company that enables corporate and government organisations to achieve their business goals by educating their workforce with critical digital transformation skills to succeed in the AI era.
We deliver unique and innovative professional education that is accelerating the digital transformation of our clients, advancing the careers of their employees, helping people get into work and closing the digital skills gap. We are in a sector that is crucial to the economy and workforce, with a lot of opportunity for change and innovation. We are at the cutting edge of teaching applied data and digital skills, with our unique patented learning platform EDUKATE.AI offering our clients and learners a unique learning experience. EDUKATE.AI was developed with support from Innovate UK and provides all of our learners with 24/7 immediate feedback on their work, helping accelerate the learning process and providing a sandbox environment to experiment on real world datasets.
Since 2016, we have supported more than 15,000 learners across four continents with nearly 550,000 pieces of code submitted for feedback on EDUKATE.AI. We are trusted by some of the most recognisable brands in the world to educate their workforce, including Microsoft, the NHS, GSK, easyJet, the BBC and John Lewis. Our focus on applied learning to create business impact sets us apart - individual learners have reported applying their skills at work to generate recorded value of up to £40m.
Our Values
At the centre of the way we work together and inspire each other to achieve success are these core values:
Entrepreneurial
We take initiative and show entrepreneurial spirit which fuels innovation at Cambridge Spark. This includes identifying opportunities for improvement, taking ownership for implementing solutions effectively and driving improvement by using proof of concepts to demonstrate the feasibility and value of their work.
Team Spirit
Everyone is part of building an open and transparent culture, communicating effectively to raise issues, discuss improvements and share the evidence used to make decisions.
Customer-focused
Our customers are at the centre of everything we do, inspiring us to create great work. We strive to build friendly, professional and lasting relationships with them to better understand and anticipate their needs.
Gold Standard
We are experts in our field and are constantly developing our technology and offering. We set the benchmark in our industry: both in what we offer customers and in how we deliver it.
____________________________________________________________________________
Cambridge Spark is an Equal Opportunities Employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind. Cambridge Spark is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunities for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at Cambridge Spark are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, colour or ethnicity, ability or disability, gender or gender reassignment, sexual orientation, marital status, religion, age or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Cambridge Spark will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. Cambridge Spark encourages applicants of all ages.