The National Lottery Heritage Fund
As the largest funder for the UK’s heritage, our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future.
We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to past.
Our mission is to use our expertise to support and champion the UK’s heritage and demonstrate the transformative potential of National Lottery funding through delivering our new strategy Heritage 2033. We ensure that money from The National Lottery makes a decisive difference for people, places and communities.
We are currently recruiting for a full-time Director, Northern Ireland, on a permanent contract based in our Belfast Office (Hybrid Working).
The primary purpose is to lead on developing and delivering the approach to implementing Heritage 2033 across Northern Ireland as framed by the Heritage Fund Board of Trustees and the Heritage Fund Executive. Responsible for leading stakeholder engagement across Northern Ireland and for managing the team’s business support, engagement and investment functions. This includes responsibility for oversight and direction of case management, delegated decisions, approaches to all aspects of engagement and collaborating with the Chair/Trustee and Executive Director, Business Delivery on the work of the Committee for Northern Ireland. Leads and develops the Northern Ireland team ensuring efficient, coordinated and integrated delivery of all the Heritage Fund activity across the nation.
The Director is responsible for ensuring good collaboration between the Northern Ireland team, other parts of Business Delivery and the wider Heritage Fund and Memorial Fund. They will also take the lead on a portfolio of other cross-departmental activity which will take up about 10% of their time.
The Director is responsible for managing a team of approximately 12 people (can vary from time to time) and an annual grant budget of approximately £11m or 2.9% of budget allocated to UK teams.
If you are excited about helping ensure that heritage is inclusive and accessible to everyone, for now and future generations, then we want to hear from you.
- Applications close on Tuesday, 9 June 2026 at 23:59 pm.
- Interviews are expected to take place on Friday 19 June 2026. Second stage Interviews will take place on Monday, 29 June 2026.
Our Values
Our Values and Behaviours sit at the heart of our work and are central to how we recruit. How you demonstrate our Values is just as important to us as your skills and experience.
- Inclusive of all aspects of heritage, people and communities
- Ambitious for our people, communities and heritage
- Collaborative by working and learning together
- Trusted for our integrity, expertise and judgement
Flexible Working
The National Lottery Heritage Fund has offices all over the UK and we champion a flexible approach to working where this supports our business needs. We have formally adopted a hybrid working approach. This means that most employees will work from their contracted Heritage Fund office twice a week at minimum. Time spent on site visits to projects or other meetings based at another Heritage Fund or external office are counted as part of those two days. The other days in the week employees may work from home.
Disability Confident Employer
We guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum essential criteria for every vacancy. We always endeavour to make reasonable adjustments and special requirements can be discussed and arranged before an interview.
The National Lottery Heritage Fund pledges to provide an inclusive working and learning environment for our people which prioritises fairness, equality, diversity and inclusion as well as dignity and respect for all. We will create a workspace where intimidation, discrimination, harassment, bullying and victimisation are not tolerated and actively prevented and opposed.
