Online Community Manager

Overview

• Reporting to: VP Growth
• Visa sponsorship: Unfortunately, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants should have the right to work in the UK at the time of application.
• Background checks: Due to the non-partisan nature of the work we do with global governments and partners, all employees need to pass background checks, verifying your identity, education (if relevant), work history, sanctions, criminal record, adverse financial history, right to work, media and social media.
• You can expect to hear from us, no matter the outcome, by:  27th March 2026
• Salary expectations: We aim for transparency on salary bands. If our range is misaligned with your expectations, we’d welcome an open conversation as early as possible.

Role

Apolitical’s mission is to make government smarter by connecting and equipping public servants worldwide. Apolitical's online Community spaces sit at the heart of this mission as a place where public servants from around the world learn from one another, exchange practical insight, and build the connections that strengthen governments everywhere.

We’re hiring an experienced Online Community Manager to scale engagement in Apolitical's online Community forums on the topics that matter to public servants, on everything from the application of AI in government to the experience of neurodiversity in the public service.

You’ll create opportunities for meaningful peer-to-peer discussion, amplify diverse voices, and shape online Community experiences that help members feel the value of being part of our global network.

This is both a strategic and hands-on role: you’ll help set direction through insight and experimentation, while also rolling up your sleeves to moderate community discussions, events, and champion member contributions.

You’ll be accountable for growing Community engagement metrics and ensuring our members are active, connected, and supported. Success looks like more high-quality user-generated contribution, stronger member retention, and a growing number of public servants who say Apolitical helps them do their jobs better.

Team

You’ll sit within the Community Engagement and Growth team, working closely with colleagues across Product, Learning, Partnerships, and Communications. This is a highly cross-functional role, with real scope to shape how community impact is embedded across the company.

Tasks and remit

Community Engagement and Growth

You’ll combine online community expertise, product thinking, and experimentation to:

• Help create the systems, playbooks, and product improvements that enable community engagement at scale.
• Grow the number of public servants around the world who join and interact in Apolitical communities.
• Increase the volume of high-quality posts and comments contributed by members, developing strategies to convert passive members into active participants.
• Identify and empower top contributors, power users, and champions to sustain ongoing engagement.
• Outreach to experts across government in order to grow the diversity of voices sharing their experience on Apolitical.
• Lead innovative community initiatives, prompts, discussion threads, networking events, Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) sessions, and more.
• Develop moderation and safety standards for inclusive community discourse, aligned with Apolitical’s values and our wider mission.

Insights and Impact Measurement

• Track and analyse community metrics (e.g. participation, retention, engagement).
• Run rapid experiments to test new formats, incentives, and AI-enabled workflows.
• Collect and share member feedback to inform community strategy and product development.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Translate community insight to align with internal stakeholders on community product feature roadmaps, content programming, and marketing.
• Work with Product, Learning, Partnerships, and Communications to represent the needs of the Community product and its members.
• Develop and refine company-wide processes that support deeper member engagement.

Onboarding milestones

Within one month, you will…

• Understand Apolitical’s mission, members, and community strategy.
• Moderate your first online Community discussion.
• Begin building relationships with key internal teams and member contributors.

Within three months, you will…

• Launch and manage a Community engagement initiative (e.g. discussion series, marketing campaign, networking event , or AMA).
• Share insights from community data and member feedback to influence product and strategy.
• Identify and begin working with top contributors to grow their impact.

Within six months, you will…

• Demonstrate measurable growth in community engagement metrics.
• Shape cross-company processes to integrate community needs into Apolitical’s strategy.
• Establish yourself as the go-to person for community best practice across the organisation.

About you

This role is a great fit if you…

• Have experience in online community management, engagement, or growth.
• Thrive on connecting people and creating spaces where they can learn from one another.
• Have a product-led mindset — you think in systems, incentives, and user journeys.
• Are data-informed, using insights to test, learn, and iterate quickly.
• Are an enthusiastic adopter of generative AI tools to improve moderation, engagement, personalisation, and scale.
• Relish the unpredictability of working in a scale-up environment, balancing strategy with hands-on execution.
• Are collaborative by nature and enjoy working across teams.
• Care deeply about public service, and are inspired by learning about the work and lived experience of people working in government.

Let us know if you have…

• Worked with public servants, policymakers or government experts and thought leaders before.
• Facilitated events or discussions, either online or in-person.
• Used analytics tools to track and report on community metrics.
• Have product management experience or built online community products, for example as a product manager of a network product.

This likely won’t be the right role if you…

• Prefer highly predictable work with clearly scoped tasks.
• See community as a support function rather than a driver of impact and growth.

Don’t meet every single expectation? Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. Apolitical is dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Application Process

Apolitical uses Applied in our recruitment. Applied aims to overcome unconscious bias in recruiting. Instead of using your CV alone, we'll be asking you to answer questions to test skills needed for the role. The answers are then anonymised, and reviewed in a random order by members of our team. 

The Applied platform also asks some demographic questions before you start your application. These answers are never visible to the hiring team and don’t affect your application in any way. We only see summary statistics to help us check if our candidate pool is balanced and if everyone has an equal chance to get hired irrespective of their background. If you prefer, you can easily opt out of answering these questions.

Using AI in your application answers

At Apolitical, we embrace new technologies and encourage the use of AI in our work. However, as AI becomes more prevalent, it can be difficult to distinguish between machine-generated content and the unique perspectives of candidates. We’re excited to see how you use AI tools to structure and refine your answers, but we value your unique insights above all else. Ensure your application reflects your voice and how your skills align with our mission.