Growth Lead

The role

We're entering the next phase of growth for IF and looking for a Growth Lead to drive new business and deepen our reach across the industries where trust matters most.

The message we hear about how important and urgent IF's work is for supporting organisations to create trustworthy products and services is widening across new industries. Your role will be to take that momentum and turn it into a pipeline of meaningful, high-quality work - supporting the senior team in originating opportunities, building relationships and progressing them through into projects.

IF operates in a complex and nuanced space. You wont't be expected to know it all from day one. You'll work closely alongside IF's leadership team, learning the landscape and gradually building your confidence to represent IF's expertise in the market.

Business development

You will originate and respond to incoming new business, building relationships across industries and widening the reach of the IF brand to make sure we continue to be the go-to partner for the work that we do.

You will develop and maintain IF's target client list - a researched, prioritised wishlist of the organisations and people we want to work with. You'll keep this live with data, market intelligence and outreach activity, using best-in-class tools and AI to make prospecting sharper and more efficient.

You will own and manage IF's pipeline - identifying, qualifying and progressing opportunities with clear reporting on health, conversion and priorities.

You will lead the process of scoping, writing and presenting proposals, working closely with IF's delivery and strategy team to craft responses that are sharp, relevant and compelling.

You will work with teams to extend work or start new streams, further developing strategic relationships across clients and opening up opportunities for IF to play a significant role across programmes of work.

You will develop strong, lasting relationships with prospective and existing clients - understanding their challenges, spotting opportunities and positioning IF's expertise with confidence and credibility.

Positioning and visibility

You will contribute to IF's thought leadership content: helping to write blogs, supporting the development of frameworks based on our findings, and growing our set of tools used by practitioners globally.

You will help shape how IF shows up in the market - contributing to events strategy, partnerships and outreach that build IF's reputation in the sectors we care about.

You will bring market insight and a point of view on where IF should be growing - which sectors, which problems, which types of clients - informed by what you're hearing and what you believe about the work.

The company

You will contribute to company-wide conversations about strategy, direction and culture.

You will bring market insight and commercial perspective to leadership discussions, helping inform decisions about what we do and how we grow.

About you

You have experience in business development within a design consultancy, digital agency or similar professional services environment. You may not have led all of it independently, but you've been meaningfully involved in originating and winning work and are ready to step into a more prominent role.

You're comfortable engaging senior stakeholders - from Heads of Product and Design through to C-suite - and you understand the value that client engagement moments create for both the work and new business opportunities.

You have experience supporting the sale of strategic and design services, not just execution. You understand how to position consultancy work and can hold credible conversations about design, technology, data and trust.

You bring a growing network, or a credible and energetic plan to build one, across sectors where IF's expertise is most relevant - technology, public sector, healthcare, financial services or adjacent industries.

Youve been involved in managing proposals, budgets and commercial terms. You'll have support across these activities, but we're looking for someone who understands what good looks like commercially.

You're a brilliant communicator: able to craft compelling stories, present IF's work and thinking with clarity, and write succinctly.

You're a low ego, compassionate individual who wants to work hard within an environment that genuinely cares about its people and the impact we have on the world.

You're genuinely curious about the intersection of design, technology and trust. IF's work sits at the cutting edge of responsible innovation and you'll need to engage with it meaningfully - not just sell it.

You're excited by how AI and emerging tools can enhance how you work - whether that's prospecting, pipeline management, content or outreach. We're not looking for someone who knows every tool, but we do want someone who actively experiments and stays current.

You have tried things that havent worked and have learned from the experience. You're comfortable not knowing everything, but have the drive to keep learning.

Your location

IF is based in London and we're looking for someone based here or within commutable distance. We're largely a remote-first team and currently spend Wednesdays together in a co-working space in Old St. We also spend some time with clients but plan this to be infrequent and valuable. Client-facing work requires flexibility but we're designing a setup to enable deep-work and balance.

The hiring process

You're likely to meet one member of the team at each stage because we're a small team. We may use an AI notetaking service to assist your interviewer in capturing the conversation.

An initial 30 minute introductory call to discuss the role, your experience and ensure alignment.

A 60 minute interview to discuss your background in more detail. We'll dig into your approach to business development and growth, and ask some questions based on real-world IF context.

A practical task, this allows you to get close to our work and the IF team to better understand your thinking.

A 60 minute interview to have a final chat about your experience, as well as your ways of working, motivations and working at IF.

Benefits

Salary banding for this role is £60,000-£70,000. We'll assess experience throughout the interview process to determine where within this band you would join. Our benefits also include:

• Company Bonus. We're introducing a bonus scheme for the 2026 calendar year designed to ensure all team members to benefit from the studio's success. Beyond 2026 we're developing a simple scheme that recognises individual performance as well as overall company success.
• A time off allowance of 25 days each calendar year, in addition to bank holidays (which typically tops this up to around 33 days).
• Christmas closure. The dates for this differ each year but we're offline between Christmas and New Year to enjoy this busy holiday season.
• We also aim to schedule a week-long summer closure each year, to all be offline during the warmer months, putting on the collective breaks and pausing all notifications.
• 5 days of paid emergency carers leave. Last minute caring responsibilities need to be prioritised and this leave is there to support you taking the time you need.
• Enhanced parental leave for all genders and routes to becoming a parent.
• A proactive and considered approach to balancing work and life. You can read more about our team-wide practices below, and this is teamed up with an openness to understanding and supporting individual needs.

Working at IF

We encourage a balanced way of working. We're ambitious, hardworking and constantly juggling the demands of our work. However, we also offer flexibility and a deep appreciation of life outside of work. We're creating an environment where you will do some of the most fulfilling work of your career and with that comes a deep commitment to our collective network's care and wellbeing.

Core hours. We're online and schedule meetings . Outside of that, we encourage you to start and end your day between , allowing you to design your working day around your needs and preferences.

Flexible Fridays. We try to keep this day meeting free to facilitate a sense of calm and completion to end the week. And once work is finished, clock off. There's no expectation to work the whole day if the work is done.

Thoughtful approach to sync vs. async work. To deliver our expertise we must carve out time for deep-work. How we communicate, document and spend time together is thoughtfully designed and iterated upon.