Job Title: Head of Presales
Salary range: c£65,000 per annum negotiable depending on experience
Jisc grade: PRS4
Job Type: Permanent
Hours: 35 hours per week
Reports into: Director of Presales, Professional Services and Delivery
Working style: Hybrid - A blend of working from home and your nominated hub office. We have hubs located in London, Bristol, Manchester and Oxford.
About Jisc:
For 30 years Jisc has pioneered digital solutions for UK education and research, transforming how knowledge is created, shared and used.
We are uniquely positioned to protect, promote and lead the sector in digital and data transformation, making a difference to students, communities and society. Together, we are
working to build a better digital future for education and research.
Raise your potential at Jisc through our culture of lifelong learning. At Jisc, we're all about growth, so embrace new challenges, sharpen your skills and shape a career that excites you.
The role:
Head of Presales – Shape Solutions. Lead with Impact. Deliver Outcomes.
We’re looking for a collaborative, forward-thinking Head of Presales to lead and evolve our presales function—someone who is as comfortable guiding strategy as they are supporting teams and contributing hands-on.
This role is central to how we create meaningful customer experiences. You’ll bring people together across Sales, Product, Delivery, and Onboarding to shape thoughtful, outcomes-led solutions and ensure a smooth journey from first conversation through to mobilisation. Your work will help ensure every solution is not only compelling, but practical, deliverable, and set up for long-term success.
You will bring clarity, raise standards, and align teams around practical, outcome-focused solutions. You will ensure a seamless customer experience from first engagement with robust qualification and delivery-ready handovers that minimise risk. Through clear communication, high standards and a focus on continuous improvement, you translate complexity into confident decisions while building a high-performing, accountable team.
What you’ll be doing
- Lead the Presales function, driving a supportive, high-performing team culture
- Work closely across teams to ensure solutions are customer-focused, realistic, and aligned to measurable outcomes
- Guide your team to produce high quality, consistent, delivery-ready outputs, with clear visibility of risks and decisions
- Strengthen and build collaboration with colleagues across Jisc, specifically in Sales, Product, Delivery, and Onboarding to improve experiences for both customers and colleagues
- Support and develop your team to adapt to with the needs of the organisation, and helping individuals grow their skills, confidence, and impact
- Drive continuous improvement, evolving processes in ways that make work clearer, smoother, and more effective
- Act as a trusted partner in key customer engagements, bringing both technical credibility and commercial understanding
Why this role is exciting
This is a crucial leadership role in the end-to-end customer journey. The Head of Presales plays a key part in making sure solutions are shaped in the right way from the outset—well qualified, well governed, commercially sound and ready for delivery.
You’ll bring the leadership, oversight and structure needed to create consistency across the team, raise standards, and make sure solutions supports both customer outcomes and operational success. For someone who wants to lead with clarity, build a high-performing function, and have a visible impact across the organisation, this is a role with real influence.
Key deliverables:
In this role, you’ll balance leadership with hands-on involvement—stepping in where it matters most while supporting your team to do their best work.
- Be a trusted escalation point for the Presales team, stepping into complex or high-priority opportunities to support decision-making, protect solution quality, and ensure strong commercial outcomes
- Review and guide high-value or complex solutions, ensuring scope, assumptions, commercials, and delivery readiness are clear, realistic, and well-aligned before progressing
- Support prioritisation across the pipeline, helping ensure the right expertise is focused where it adds the most value, especially on critical opportunities
- Lead regular deal reviews, creating a collaborative space for coaching, challenge, and shared learning across qualification, solution design, commercials, and risk
- Continuously improve ways of working, evolving templates, tools, and governance to support consistency, efficiency, and quality
- Work closely with the Director of Presales, Professional Services & Delivery as well as cross-functional teams to ensure solutions are achievable and aligned with capacity, capability, and standards
- Use data and insight to guide decisions, monitoring pipeline health, conversion, and cycle times to identify opportunities for improvement
- Ensure smooth handovers into Delivery and Onboarding, with clear documentation, expectations, and success measures in place
- Encourage learning from experience, reviewing stalled or unsuccessful opportunities to identify themes and strengthen future approaches
- Build strong, positive relationships with internal teams and key customers, offering credibility and support in important engagements
This is a role where thoughtful leadership, collaboration, and attention to detail come together to create strong outcomes—for both customers and the teams supporting them.
What we are looking for:
Experience:
Essential
- Proven experience leading a Presales, solution consulting, or technical consulting team in a customer-facing environment.
- Able to lead through difficult situations, including ownership of complaints, complex challenges and sensitive conversations, bringing sound judgement, professionalism and a calm approach to issue resolution.
- Demonstrable ability to deliver team transformation and continuous improvement (clarifying roles/standards, improving ways of working, and raising quality and pace).
- Strong data and performance management capability: defining metrics, creating dashboards, and using insight to prioritise action and track impact.
- Expertise in qualification, shaping customer requirements, and producing delivery-ready scopes/proposals (assumptions, dependencies, risks, acceptance criteria).
- Experience operating a consistent “one door” approach and managing handoffs to delivery/onboarding teams to reduce rework and late-stage surprises.
Core Behaviours and skills:
We’re looking for someone who brings strong, consistent professional behaviours and personal qualities that support both individual success and team collaboration. These behaviours help create an environment where people feel supported, empowered, and able to do their best work:
- Strong governance mindset: able to run prioritisation, service levels, and expedite/escalation routes with clear decision rights and transparency.
- Excellent communication and influencing skills—able to translate technical detail into clear options and decisions for a range of audiences.
- Customer-experience focus with evidence of improving satisfaction and outcomes through better expectation-setting and more consistent engagement.
- Comfortable working cross-functionally with sales, product and delivery teams, and able to handle competing priorities calmly and pragmatically.
- Takes ownership of their work, development, and priorities, managing time in a way that supports both personal effectiveness and team outcomes
- Seeks out feedback and clarity, using it as an opportunity to learn, grow, and continuously improve
- Communicates thoughtfully and clearly, adapting approach to different audiences and situations
- Builds and supports high-performing teams, creating clarity in expectations, sharing knowledge, and helping others develop with confidence
- Encourages open, respectful dialogue, contributing to healthy debate and navigating challenges in a constructive way
- Stays dependable and composed, even in fast-moving or uncertain environments
- Brings a positive, pragmatic mindset, focusing on solutions and helping others move forward
These behaviours underpin how we work together—they create a culture of trust, inclusion, and shared success.
Qualifications:
- Relevant degree, professional qualification, or equivalent practical experience.
- Desirable: certification/training in cloud, cyber security, service management, agile/lean improvement, or project/programme delivery.
Don’t meet every single requirement?
We know that sometimes people can be put off applying for a job if they think they can’t tick every box, so we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet 100% of the requirements, but if you feel this role is perfect for you. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles!
Hybrid working:
Specific patterns for working in the office are not mandated, and the frequency of time worked in the office is agreed with your manager. Meeting in person is something we value, so you may need to travel on occasion to any of our hub offices.
Why work for us?
At Jisc, every role is meaningful, and every individual is valued. We foster a culture of continuous learning and personal growth, offering opportunities to develop new skills and make a real impact in education and research. With a strong focus on work-life balance, we embrace flexible working that prioritises outcomes over hours, empowering you to create a rhythm that energises both your professional and personal life.
Our Guiding Principles:
Jisc’s culture is powered by our four guiding principles: putting customers first, driving innovation, creating impact, and championing inclusive collaboration to deliver sustainable outcomes and shape a better future.
Discover the amazing benefits we provide! Here’s what you can look forward to:
- Flexible work pattern, which can adapt to suit your schedules and personal commitments
- 31 days annual leave (plus bank holidays) that includes three closure days over Christmas
- Buy up to an additional 5 days leave during the flexible benefits window
- Generous flexible pension schemes
- A range of wellbeing lifestyle benefits including company paid health care cash plan, mental health first aiders and support
- A company culture of continuous learning with access to thousands of LinkedIn Learning courses, and lots of resources and opportunities to support your development
- Allocated allowance of up to £250 to equip your home office
- Financial well-being support including access to preferential loan and savings plans, mortgage advice, will writing tools and support and resources to help you make the most of your money
- A wide range of discounts and cashback from retailers and big-name high-street stores
- Family friendly policies including enhanced parental, maternity and paternity and co-parental leave as well as opportunity for career breaks
- Support your volunteering with up to 3 days volunteer leave
Equity, diversity and inclusion:
Jisc believe our people make all the difference in cultivating an inclusive culture that welcomes ideas, encourages innovation, and values belonging.
We work hard to create an equitable experience for our candidates and workforce which embraces all aspects of their identity including race and ethnicity, religion and belief, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, trans identities, age, class, disability, neurodivergence, or veteran status.
Application process:
Please let us know how we can best accommodate you throughout the recruitment process. We’re committed to making our process accessible and comfortable for everyone - just tell us what works best for you.
Just so you know, we review CVs as soon as we can and aim to provide an update on your application within 4 weeks of receiving it. However, you may hear from us a lot sooner, so please keep an eye out for our emails or calls!
We’re really looking forward to getting to know the real you. While we encourage the use of AI tools to help you get started on your CV or cover letter, we encourage you to review your application before submitting. Make sure it truly reflects your own voice, experiences, and personality.
If you are currently a Jisc employee, please apply through your Dayforce Employee profile.
We have a thorough background screening process that verifies the details you share with us in your CV and your application. Any inaccurate information supplied during the application stages can lead to a job offer being withdrawn.
Sponsorship:
Jisc has an active sponsor licence to recruit on a Skilled worker visa basis. Candidates wishing to apply who require sponsorship should determine the likelihood of obtaining a Certificate of Sponsorship for the role by assessing their circumstances against the relevant Home Office criteria. Jisc does not offer any financial re-imbursement towards the applicant costs, such as re-location, skilled worker visa and dependant costs or the immigration health charge.
No agencies please.
